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?

Im happy for you and your situation, but your perspective is similar to that of someone saying “I’m a size 10/12 BMI of average, but I’m not at my peak fitness yet and I plan to get back to trail running and my triathlon weight “.

It's really not similar. Being a healthy size and doing exercise are positive things.
Not feeling valued in your work for whatever reason is not a positive thing.

in my (similar) situation it definitely hindered my career. Whilst i had young children I didn't mind too much as I'd taken my foot off the gas but when they were school age I tried to get going again and found it really difficult to get back on the ladder as I'd pretty much de-skilled myself. I felt like everyone around me had progressed their career and I'd been left behind at a more junior level but looking back it was probably the right thing at the time as I didn't want a big career with pre school kids.

It's one of those things that is ok for a bit but after a while you can feel like you are stifled not valued not respected and not using your potential .I totally get it!

Thing is, even if you work in a classically socially "valued" job, it's only valued in sound bites and fucking clapping.
We're still left shitting ourselves about how to pay the gas bill.
I'd bite your hand off for 50 grand and boredom (time to get things done)
Don't mean this to be bitter at all, just a different perspective, life is short but your working life is long, make the best of the 'lucky' bits 🙂

It's actually very much related to IT. It also involves statistics.

@DrMorbius

Actually you absolutely need good IT skills to be a data scientist. I worked for a Recruitment Agency that specialised in IT roles for years and the people we submitted for this job absolutely needed you to be very proficient in IT and many wanted applicants to know several coding languages.

@WellThatSeemsFair - I understand what you are saying but you can’t get anything done. You have to be sat at your computer in case someone calls or emails or sends you an instant message. It’s not like you can clean the bathroom or take your child to the park or cook a nice meal. I don’t think you understand how demoralising constant boredom is until you’ve experienced it. Yes there are worse things but it’s really quite mentally harmful.

Have you posted about this before?The last post started off all 'look how cushy my life is' until the admission that 'you' suffer from depression and are miserable. This post looks incredibly similar to that one.

I once heard it described brilliantly as like being a remote controlled car being driven endlessly against a skirting board. The battery will still run down even while the car goes nowhere.

Agreed that it’s not free time if you can’t fill your working hours. The tyranny of the little green dot in Teams. The inner guilt of just sacking it all off and doing something else. The genuine desire to find something useful to do to justify the salary.

I’ve ended up in my job because my boss likes to recruit ‘the best people’, but once he has them, he does nothing to develop them or respond to being told of their frustrations. I’ve tried to address the situation with him and ask for more responsibility but get nowhere. He is just happy that he knows he’s got someone in my role that he knows can do it easily. But it means that I am on alert at all times in case he needs me to do something quickly.

My husband is the same! Data scientist earns 75k a year and maybe works 5 hours a week at home. Madness isn't?!?

It does mean he does all the school and nursery runs and all the housework and cooking though as he has so much free time. The madness is, his work are super happy with his work, he only just recently got a pay rise from 60k to 75k... but he doesn't do anything most days! I can't understand how he gets away with it or how his manager is happy.

ilyx · Today 19:17
@DrMorbius
Actually you absolutely need good IT skills to be a data scientist. I worked for a Recruitment Agency that specialised in IT roles for years and the people we submitted for this job absolutely needed you to be very proficient in IT and many wanted applicants to know several coding languages.

I am not sure how good you were at recruitment if you don't know the difference between software programmers and IT professionals. My DD has a maths PhD, programs in a several languages, but would never call herself an IT person and certainly would not be interested in an IT role.

I'm stuck in this situation and looking to move. I'm miserable. Everything goes through or is taken over by my manager, never finish anything as she takes it over and I'm left with little to do. I've lost confidence, and I struggle to make a decision now whereas a year ago I managed a big team of 25 people and made hourly decisions

um - surely there are loads of online courses to upskill on? Set yourself a challenge of automating all your outputs. Then learn data science skills from the internet.

ML, web dev, docker, kubernetes, terraform, cloud…. Do everything you have done in another language?

Classic tech recruiters. Based on the daily irrelevant LinkedIn messages I get bombarded with.
Writing some code to manipulate data is very different from writing full on application code that needs to run on a production (or otherwise) environment, meet security standards, have a database, front end, API etc, logging.

‘IT’ generally means infra/sysadmin roles. But in terms of jobs people lo use it to mean good af Excel, PowerPoint or some other business software which is really not the same as actually writing software!

@DrMorbius I don’t think you have any clue how good @ilyx was at recruitment…

I don’t really understand. I came to tech through an informal route - hobby coding with my husband. I did some personal projects (which I talked about at interview), did istqb certificate.

I would love a job where I had to work like 10hrs per week and do personal development (all related to technical things) in the rest of the time. Is the problem that you don’t know exactly what things to learn that would be relevant to your career? Or you lack motivation to do personal projects so need a professional context?

perhaps joining professional body might be good. They do continuing professional development activities, certificates, run networking events. Depending on exactly your ‘focus’ - there is IET, BCS, RSS. I saw online IoA global (though not a U.K. specific org - and I dunno how established). All these things would both build your CV and be interesting. And if your work asked you - it would also be valuable to them too if they chose to use your new skills/knowledge (to update processes etc)! Though I probably wouldn’t advertise that you spend all your time on it.

OP do you have a personal laptop as well as a work one? I'd be tempted to find yourself a course you like the look of, either a personal hobby like photography or a language or something work related, sit and do that on your personal laptop, next to your work one. Anyone needs anything at work you can do that immediately but you are using that time to upskill yourself.

Yes, I was briefly in a job like this.

Looking back I'm like why didn't I do all these other productive things with my time, but it's really hard when you need to be at your laptop "just in case", and generally feel really demotivated by the situation.

Also - am a data scientist (academic sadly, rather than industry) and can confirm you don't need good IT skills particularly

I code to manipulate data & do statistical analysis, which is very different.

Only if OP is happy to take a massive pay cut to around a 14k stipend. When I look at moving outside of academia, it doesn't seem like a PhD is essential.

Far better to move to a company where they support career progression, and would consider paying for you to do a doctorate if it was useful to them.

Yes, I had exactly this!

Working remotely, for a pharma giant. Pay was around 90k but the job was… nothing. Basically my brief was just check if any updates were being made to a database. If they were, I didn’t have to do anything. And if they weren’t, I didn’t have to do anything either. Spent whole days just lying on my bedroom floor, intermittently napping and occasionally jabbing the laptop touchpad to stay showing online. Friends and family thought it was a dream setup but I was sinking quite slowly yet steadily, into depression.
I lasted 3 months before I got a lower-paying job elsewhere with some actual purpose. Amazingly, they tried to convince me to stay because I’d been doing ‘such a great job’.

Madness.

@discofizz - what job was it? I work in databases! Sounds great.

I think it sounds awful.
I presume the job was mis sold at interview and there was no probation period, or training or any sort of management.
That would destroy my sense of worth.

I am also in your position and have been for several years now - again because senior people are too busy to share work or give the necessary inputs for me to do my role.

it sounds like I’m living the dream, particularly as I wfh and have kids. I am essentially a paid sahm with a few written tasks through the week.

BUT it is soul destroying from a personal achievement perspective. My peers have fulfilling challenging roles that they can be proud of. I’m now terrified to move job for something more interesting as I don’t think I can hack it in a ‘real’ job. And I was also once an educational high-flyer. I feel I have wasted my potential.

I am coasting to retirement now, but you’re obviously still young, so prioritise your confidence and skills. Whether by laying it on the line with the current job or looking elsewhere.

ps. Not everyone is cut out to manage/mentor. Sounds like this is entirely your bosses’ issue with delegation and nothing to do with how they view your competence

I mean - I’ve had my fair share of rubbish jobs - but more ones with high pressure, high expectations, not enough time. I have kids and would value something low stress. Current job is fine and decent pay but would probably like a change. Good luck in finding a job that is right!

I have both been the person in need of training and the person with no time to give training… it is hard. Maybe suggest to ur boss a small area you could work on to automate something?