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I am a new joiner in my company, its been 1 month. I am working on a project with a counselor who is senior to me (works remotely) and we both share the same manager. My manager also sits remotely and I am not sure if he has any idea at all about my work, as even after my repeated insisting for introduction call, I was unsuccessful in receiving single email back.

I have had sent an email, requesting to schedule a call and allow me a chance to have a discussion over my work, past projects and background. Again, my email received no answer. How should I proceed?

I have 7 years experience in my work domain and I am sitting on bench these days.

Update: I report my work to counselor, who is also based out remote and lies when asked for work and gives false hope. We have been told that we are finalized for a project and budget has been approved. But even after listening to this, there has been no call, no client interactions. The second resource in "we" is moved to another billable project. There were no calls with client to convey that second resource is no more in the same project. This confirms there has been no project at all.

I work at main office, my manager and counselor both are in UK.

Incredible
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    Do you have the managers number? Are you able to call them without scheduling it first? – thebluefox Jul 18 '17 at 07:57
  • No, he is in a different country and is too senior to be called adhoc, I doubt if he even knows I am in his team. – Incredible Jul 18 '17 at 07:57
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    Nobody should be too senior to call adhoc. – thebluefox Jul 18 '17 at 07:59
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    " I doubt if he even knows I am in his team". Your manager is utterly failing at his job, then. – Erik Jul 18 '17 at 08:20
  • By the way, you say your manager is remote, does that mean you are in the main office and he is not, or are you the remote one? (Or both of you?) – Erik Jul 18 '17 at 08:21
  • I would add to Erik's questions, is there anyone you can contact in the company that could contact your manager? (who seems like a bad manager from the fact you can't even contact him) – sh5164 Jul 18 '17 at 08:22
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    To whom do you report the status of your work, and how often do you do it? – Masked Man Jul 18 '17 at 08:29
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    To avoid comment chain, edited the question. – Incredible Jul 18 '17 at 09:25
  • @ItiTyagi If he doesn't know you are on his team, that's probably why he isn't responding. – SaggingRufus Jul 18 '17 at 09:50
  • Joe's question is most important. They might be trying to keep a workforce available on the chance they find some work. – David Jul 18 '17 at 13:10

2 Answers2

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This is a difficult situation. I feel for you.

To answer your original question: If the company is paying you to sit on your hands for months at a time, you should email the manager advising him or her of the situation, and ask when you can expect to be working. If the manager doesn't respond within a couple of days, or the response is non-committal or inconclusive, you should email the person to whom the manager reports. Wash, rinse, repeat until you hit a level of management that has profit-and-loss responsibility. Those are the people who are going to care about losing money to that kind of waste.

If the company uses Exchange (or a comparable solution), another decent option would be to use the scheduler to send the manager an invitation for a brief (15 or 30 minute) teleconference/Skype/Zoom session. If you take that approach, you should use the description to clearly state the purpose of the meeting, and what questions you expect will get answered (or what actions will be planned.)

All that being said, if the person to whom you report is lying to you, you should consider either looking for an opportunity to move to a new role in the company, or seeking employment elsewhere. I know it's more complicated to switch companies in India than it is in the US (or at least that's what I've been told), but it'd be worth it if you get to do work you can take pride in under someone you trust.

Bill Horvath
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Call the manager directly. Of course pick a reasonable work time in whatever timezone he is in.

Personally I find it annoying when people email me to ask for a time to call. I usually think something like "Then why didn't you call in the first place, moron?". Most of the time I simply ignore such emails because I don't want this annoying process to work for the other party.

If you want to talk, phone. If he doesn't answer, leave a voice message.

If you want a email reply, send your request via email.

Olin Lathrop
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    Personally I consider an email asking for a time to call perfectly reasonable, especially in this scenario where the call has an 'official' tone, instead of just a quick call for an answer to a question. A better approach depending on the tech used can be to set up a meeting on their calendar or, if there's no shared calendar, at least propose your preferred time in the email. Ignoring these emails will only lead to the requestor feeling more abandoned, which is besides the point that ignoring emails from your direct or indirect reports can be considered unprofessional. – DrewJordan Jul 18 '17 at 14:07
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    I totally agree with @DrewJordan here. This is more a request for a meeting than a phone call. It is just that it has to take the form of a phone call because the manager is remote. – Ian Parry Jul 20 '17 at 23:29
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    @Joker: So maybe others don't mind the email to request to phone later. However, that doesn't make phoning directly a bad way to go. People have phones in their offices for a reason. There should be nothing wrong with calling your boss on his office phone during working hours. If he's not there or doesn't want to answer, you leave a voice message. I wouldn't be upset if someone working for me called me, especially when they're remote and can't walk into my office to talk. – Olin Lathrop Jul 21 '17 at 11:19