And then things that could be done better (reactive programming, declarative UI, etc).
Then finding weaknesses in the code, documenting them, educating the team. For example, we're not handling enough error codes properly like no bandwidth and when certain endpoints are down, users tend to panic. Or sometimes, certain endpoints should be combined for performance.
It could be putting down more logs, benchmarking performance, integrating analytics into the sales funnel, monitoring user frustration.
No offense, but I think asking around for things to do is a fairly junior attitude. The more experienced ones usually don't look at tickets, but instead start proposing things that can be done.
This might be true in the startup world where product managers have less well defined boundaries on what their role entails. At bigcorp© it’s generally frowned upon to go rogue and start working on stuff at random.
While talking with your teammates try to ask what projects or tasks they would like to see done but don't have the time. Flaky integration tests? Implement a ticket flow for incoming bug reports? Improve team wiki and system documentation? There's got to be lots of things to do.
And like a previous comment said, waiting around for work is a junior mindset. Take a look around and try to improve the pain points for your team.
When I had not much to do, I'd sharpen up my own skills by building tools for others. I quickly become the guy to go to for tools. Instant credibilty in a Fortune 50 company. Making others' life easier is a quick way to win them over and be your advocate for life. If you do this enough, it compounds and pays dividends in your career.
It's why there's daily stand ups too, so the entire team can approve or reject.
I think it was great for my career/professional development early on, and I highly recommend early stage startups for people early in their careers for that reason. It's not just that you're doing a bunch of stuff, but you're doing stuff that really matters. There's just way too much important work to give the new person pointless work. You're going to get handed real tasks that affect the business immediately, and if you show you can handle them, you're just going to get increasingly important work.
It's also one of the reasons I got recruited from marketing in my first job to PM in my second - they knew I didn't have PM expertise, but I had done meaningful, visible work, been promoted every year, and had built up domain expertise that was valuable for my second job.
It's not just junior people, either - at my current job, which I started <2 months ago, I was doing doing meaningful work in week two. It's definitely hard work, but it's also really nice that your coworkers appreciate you, because you're immediately picking up stuff that either they were having to do or that just wasn't getting done.
If it's some bit of refactoring or performance improvement, then the tech team or engineering manager.
If it's a feature, perhaps the designer or product lead.
If it's marketing related, then the marketing team, mostly to see how they work and whether it affects them as expected.
If it saves money... then not finance, but whoever takes credit for cost cutting.
If you've been turned down, why? Is it not helpful? Unnecessary? Are you misunderstanding the situation? Are you making them look bad? Do they not trust you?
I’ve been in your shoes before and when I was more immature I would just browse the Internet and not do much.
However, as I became a more experienced engineer (and currently CTO of my startup), if I ran out of things to do I would think “how can I make this product better?” and just start working on stuff. Or if you can’t figure out what to do on your own, you can always ask your manager or product owners.
From a management and personal growth perspective, you should try to become as autonomous as possible where you provide value even if nobody directly commands you to. This will also grow your skillsets. People don’t like micromanaging other people - ideally you would just be a useful employee without anyone continually asking or assigning you things.
Also just imagine - what if you owned the company? Surely there is something to do that makes it more appealing to the end-users, makes the product better, makes the code quality better, or so forth?
If your issue is you don’t feel incentivized, or are just bored, then maybe look for a new job. If you are just staring into space at work then there are better things you could be doing with your time.
Your message sounds like a spiel from a CTO given to his employee in order to motivate them and it's like you used this opportunity to practice a spiel that you have to give instead of looking at the OP's situation.
If he can’t figure out how to be useful, that is also a sign of immaturity (at least in the workforce context), and also points to communication issues and incompetency.
I've become a skeptic of this attitude.
That's unfortunate that they aren't giving you more tasking, especially if you're asking for more. But, without knowing too many details, it probably is just the normal ebb and flow.
My experience is that it can take several months to a year before I get really fully spun up on a new job. A lot of more senior people generally feel that it will take longer to hand off a task to someone new than to do it themselves. So it takes time for them to know and get comfortable with your skills and abilities.
Never again. I didn’t have a spare moment for 3 years.
Now I ask for priorities.
I would suggest that you hone in on this, and given the size of your company, I would also hazard the suggestion that you ask HR if they have any supplemental training that they can provide to help you grow in that area.
There are a tremendous number of resources on the internet for how to improve your social skills, such as https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
If you want more to do, work hard and find somebody like me with tasks that they either don’t have time to do, or don’t want to do; then volunteer to handle one that you want to learn how to do. They will shrug and say, “I guess.” You could even get started on it ahead of time so that you can present an idea for how to solve it at the pitch stage — after all, you say you have nothing else to do.
If you do that enough times over the years, you’ll learn so much that it will be you who the company depends on to do way too much, and you’ll start being thankful (if a tiny bit skeptical) when a junior offers to take a task off your hands…
Enough to do in terms of stuff I've found that needs doing; always.
I guess I'm lucky to have a degree of autonomy that lets me shape a percentage of my workload towards stuff that just needs to get done, so I never really run out of stuff to do. I find the biggest challenge is actually finding stuff that needs doing and also motivating/organising myself to actually do it.
Moral of the story; if you find you've got nothing to do then go out and look for stuff to do. Have a look at stuff like ticket backlogs, documentation that needs doing/cleaning up, analytics, bug reports, feature requests etc.
So you say you don't have much to do at work? Are others complaining about that? If not, good for you. It's better to do less, but do it well, than the other way around.
Neither of the two situations is good.
I’d suggest looking for another job. Life is too short to schmooze. The other option is to spend the extra time learning. Most important - don’t feel bad about getting paid for not doing much work. It is not your fault, it is your employer’s fault
But I've had several jobs where there's way too much to do and you'll never get it all done, so you have to prioritize. My current job at a consulting firm is like that. Working at startups tended to be that way as well.
Likewise all of my team - never a shortage of work - even if all client work is done there are a billion internal product things to be worked on!
