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John8990
Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2012 5:04 AM
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Just curious, has anyone ever had to quit a job because they just can't keep you busy?
Post #1375963
Daniel Bowlin
Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2012 8:13 AM
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Wow, what an odd problem to have.

Personally I would rather be a bit too busy, than not busy enough. If lack of work was a real pattern I would first start to look for additional work I could do within the company, but if that did not really help much I would probably fill my time honing my skills here on SSC and other places and probably searching for my next job unless I was being paid a stupid amount of money for doing very little.
Post #1376076
Stuart Davies
Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2012 4:55 AM


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Ha! - if only.

At the moment I have three projects to do - each one should take 3 -6 months to complete. They are all required this side of Christmas - no surprise there (I guess I can complete these as long you don't specify which Christmas). And I have to support "day job" to do. And the day to day enquiries, ad hoc queries etc. to do.

I am the only person in the company who has the knowledge to do my work and they aren't considering employing anyone else either temp or perm to assist.

Am I complaining though? - no, I see all of this as a perverse form of job security.

And yes I would rather be like this than scratching around trying to find things to do.

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Post #1379240
Evil Kraig F
Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2012 1:42 PM


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John8990 (10/23/2012)
Just curious, has anyone ever had to quit a job because they just can't keep you busy?


Quit? No. I use those downtimes to self-train, explore for new optimizations in their system, clean up old documentation, create said missing documentation, etc.

I've never had a job that couldn't keep me busy where I couldn't MAKE myself busy.

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Post #1379507
jmadsen 98862
Posted Thursday, November 01, 2012 9:31 AM
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I actually have had this exact situation. There really was nothing I could do, other than surf the web trying to self train. But I couldn't hardly take online course work or even do much "hands on" simulated work to reinforce anything I was reading.

I was a contractor at a telecommunications company. The operations side of the business could not hire IT staff so they used contract staff as "perm" workers. The contractors historically survived extensive layoffs while "perm" workers came and went. There were contractors that had been there for 5+ years.

As a contractor I could really only do projects/tasks that were assigned to me by several managers. I firmly believe that management did not want to let contract staff go because they were concerned they would not get the head count back later if needed, so I believe they continued to claim a standard head count to upper management, regardless of workload.

The final straw for me was when I came to work one week, 5 days straight, 8 hours each day and logged ZERO work load. Literally surfed the web for 40 hours.
I tried to look at it as a training opportunity, but I just couldn't do that week after week.

Post #1379888
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Posted Thursday, November 01, 2012 9:43 AM


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Yes. Well not quit, but looked for a new job and moved on a couple times. The lack of challenge or excitement is a problem in work.

One time it was a good move, one time I wished I hadn't, but things worked out well overall. I think in both cases I was a little immature and not really looking for things to do for my company. Later in my career when I found I had extra time, I'd use it to learn other skills, or work on building something for the company. I have ended up writing reports, helping with infrastructure, understanding Exchange, etc because I had extra free time.






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Post #1379896
FunkyDexter
Posted Monday, November 05, 2012 8:01 AM
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Never actually quit but have thought about it once or twice. There's nothing worse than trying to "look busy" for 8 hours a day. Looking at Lolcats can only amuse you for so long.

I'm generally pretty pro-active so I can fill my own time but I've worked for some companies where doing anything outside your primary role is actually frowned upon. Particularly if it was technically inside some else's primary role and they should have bloody well done it themselves two weeks ago.
Post #1381092
mike.7654321
Posted Wednesday, November 07, 2012 7:25 AM
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If you have time on your hands, you need to keep busy to avoid attracting negative attention. On Sologig you can find projects that will further your skill set, and pay you. Do the research at work (keeping busy and training yourself) and do the coding work at home (avoid conflict of interest.)
Post #1381973
chrisn-585491
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2012 6:36 AM
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If you need ideas on training projects I have a list of them. Or you can work through the Stairways series here.
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