I earn £50k and barely do any work - AIBU?

[lexjoey]

I competed my MSc in 2020, managed to get onto a very good grad scheme and landed a role where my current line manager and his "right hand" woman barely have time to share work with me. TBF I would not have accepted this scenario if it had not been for Covid, I was just grateful to have a job but honestly I do about 15 hours worth of work per week and just waste time for the rest. I will say I complete one ouptut which the team hates.

It makes me feel like a great big lump of useless space and I plan to move jobs in the near-ish future. I've witnessed my sister go from being a wet blanket to the ultimate professional which has only highlighted the fact I have reached a dead end with this corp/team.

I'm really not gloating, just curious if anyone has found themselves in this position. On the one hand, I am lucky but it's only a ST solution and I really DO want to develop and I'm just stagnating.

The 2 people above me are very possessive with their work and don't have the time to upskill me.

AIBU?

Happened to me some years back and I don't think I really got back from it, my confidence was knocked, and interviewing for subsequent positions was a nightmare, I felt they could see right through me. You need to get out ASAP.

I'm genuinely taken aback by how many of you are genuinely trying to help me with my situation! Thank you!

Have wanted to share this for an age

Out of curiosity, is it the public sector? I had a job like this and made sure I got out as quickly as I could.

In my company I'd worry about redundancy. There are always cuts/restructures and if I'm not being useful then I'd serious think they'll want rid.

You're so early in your career - you should be learning and gaining good experience. Speak to your boss. And yes I'd probably look for something else sooner rather than later. Your next job might question why you haven't achieved much.

Yes! Also, I don't really love working from home but everyone else in my team has young children so it suits them just fine. Limits my ability to pick things up imo.

I’m in a similar situation and I also take this approach. I’m not paid to find more work for myself or anyone else that isn’t necessarily to the benefit of the company, for the sake of looking busy. I’m paid for my very specific knowledge about often rare but potentially very costly queries which arise. If there is work to be done then I’ll be nose to the grindstone, but I don’t feel at all bad about the fact that Friday was such a slow day at the WFH office that I essentially got paid £600 to clean my kitchen cupboards out.

When I interview, I focus on e.g. the times my action has identified income increases or loss mitigations or saved a whole team of people from pressing forward with a transaction which would have ultimately have fallen at a distant hurdle. That’s what employers want to hear.

I get it, I'm paid really well to do very little in a similar role, really anyone would think it's ideal but it isn't, I feel stressed a lot at my lack of input, I'm not useless I'm very well qualified but my boss passes very little over. I also hate large meetings where you have to share successes and that sort of thing it makes me very uncomfortable. I have really small children though at the moment so I am happy to carry on for a while and then apply for other things and get my brain back in gear. If it's only a grad scheme just use it as a springboard to better things, don't stress over it for now.

I know how you feel. If I were you, I would discuss it with manager and depending on the outcome, I would start looking for a new job. It really is waste of your life. As time goes by, work skills and experience are more important than qualification to get a new job.

I was in exactly the same position a couple of years ago and I was on 60k working from home. I was So bored. In the end, I left

If you're WFH then lucky you, you have time to do a hobby. We must be very different people if all this free time doesn't seem like a gift to you (and I doubt future employers will care whether you really worked 15 or 40 hours a week).

It feels like the opposite of a gift. I have not gained any skills, lost some if anything. All the while I've seen my sister flourish - I genuinely used to cringe hearing her inputs but now she's about to start a job with a big 4 firm and is killing it (happy for her of course but it gives me existential dread)

I had a job in the third sector once and they did nothing. Had meetings about meetings and people never completed the tasks I needed them to do on time. It would take months upon months to get any definitive answers from anyone so projects were never completed. It was such a waste of my time but the money was good at the time. In the end when a new boss stripped me of
half my responsibility for her pal to do I left. It was bad enough having a full time job of nothing to do but having a full time job with half of that nothing was even worse. An entire sector is built upon that model though.

I have worked in tech for over a decade and never been given enough work to fill half my time. I do a lot of extra initiatives like running wellbeing sessions, improvement workshops and social events. It's pretty disheartening but I tell myself that I'll be productive in other ways.

Last year I because extremely unwell with HG and got signed off for 3 weeks. No one noticed I was gone to the point that when I was still too ill to return I didn't get signed off again and barely did anything for another two months. No one said anything. When I finally went on maternity they were wondering how they would cope without me. I feel like I'm on some kind of reality TV show and someone will come out and say it's all been a wind up.

I have been in this situation also. I hated it and it was so demoralising. No amount of saying to my manager I was under utlised made a difference. he just saiud 'find something to do'. In the end I started an organisation wide newsletter; preapred and conducted training courses that no-one really needed and started a book club at work.

Eventually I left because i lost my self confidence., was stagnating and was literally wasting my time.

It was actually a pretty shit time. I do not envy you at all.

I do a lot of extra initiatives like running wellbeing sessions, improvement workshops and social events

Yes I am the person driving wider team engagement activities just so I have something to do. But I've pulled back as I don't want to be perceived as the person who feels they have ownership of the area

My WiFi went down at 10:30 and I’ve not been able to log on since.

so I’ve missed my one meeting of the week.

im off out to buy some jalapeños for my nachos tonight.

also data science (public sector)

And yes, the entire situation makes me feel useless and incompetent.

It must be so obvious to everyone in my team as the Kanban board (I set up) shows my lack of productivity.

I really hit the ground running when I started, improving processes etc. but everything has ground to a literal halt in the last few months

I had a job like this a few years ago, in an office not WFH and for much less money. It was really easy and I got praise/bonuses for achieving things that a child could manage which should just have been BAU. I absolutely hated it, the clock ticked around really slowly and yes it really had an effect on my mental health. I think most of us like to be busy actually, not ridiculously busy as that also brings stress but definitely need plenty to do.

I’d be more concerned about getting found out.

I will have NOTHING to say in future competency-based interviews

I'm studying data science right now part time with the Open Uni, can't wait to start in this new career, such a hot industry, loads of jobs out there! There are so many skills you could be improving in your spare time, I can't believe you are just sat there moving your mouse every 5 minutes. Yes I understand you are demotivated, it sucks, so spend your free time learning something, there are endless free courses out there, or cheap courses (you also seem to have a bit of money to pay for a decent course too), or work on a project that will impress at your next interview! Good luck, future is bright :)

I was in the same situation as you and changed jobs just as Covid struck. Have been in my current role since March 2020 and despite sometimes not having a spare 5 minutes to make a cup of tea I'm much happier now and feel like a useful member of my team.

I have worked for almost three decades in the public (local government) and charity sector and in almost all the jobs I have had I have not had anywhere near enough to do. One job I did for a year I literally had nothing to do. I would estimate I had enough work to fill my time for three, maybe four, of the 30 years.

I'm not the only one either. I once knew an entire team whose function had disappeared to another agency and were left for years with shite all to do before being disbanded.

Leave ASAP OP. As you know, it will destroy your health and your ability get another job. I've hated it. Despite rising to a good level and salary, I feel my career has been destroyed through never materialising into that satisfying feeling of busy usefulness, and my desire to contribute something meaningful to society largely wasted.

I have just applied for a job in another public sector org, but a friend whose friend works there says she complains of not having enough to do, so........

Its poor management. Managers in my experience are not appointed nor performance managed against how well they manage staff. And there is increased pay and status of having staff which provides incentive to accumulate staff for the sake of it.

Of course, having nothing to do is made easier by homeworking. Before I sat there bored, stressed from trying to look busy when I had fuck all to do, and resentful about how I could be getting on with stuff at home. Now I actually can get on with that stuff at home. I can't help thinking this is behind many other people's protestations about not wanting to give up home working.

Its not the staff's fault. Its a failure of managers and of organisations to know how to performance manage managers.

Don't waste your time. Use that time to learn something. A new (programming) language or something like front end or back end development. If you are a data scientist the amount of updated knowledge and skills you constantly need is overwhelming and you'll never have an opportunity again to update your skills. You can also give yourself little projects and save them in GitHub or something to later put on your CV (you can give potential recruiters the link to your GitHub account for them to have a look at what you have done)

What MSc did you do? And where?

I'm researching them currently, I do a vaguely related job which I could leverage in an application. I'll be 40 when I start but I want to earn some decent money.