1 Month barely have done any work (System Engineer) [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I was hired about 30 days ago by the COO who's recruiter is a "friend" of his. I also interviewed with the VP and Director of IT who I directory report to. After waiting an unusual month and a half they finally gave me a start date.

It has to be very obvious that I barely being put to any use. I have been given micro tasks by the VP and not only immediately came back with scripted solutions, I have even solved security issues that no-one can figure out. The problem seems to be here that the CTO pushes back on giving me production access, or installing any development tools. To make this company even more odd, the development team that works offshore for us, He is the CEO of. To be clear, during the interview the CTO did tell me this is not a position for development in their primary system. The VP and COO said they have a lot of other systems that have technical debt on top of a technical need for local support of how the main systems works from a technical perspective.

I literally sit here. Some of you would say i am sure to try to be pro-active and ask questions or talk to HR. First of all again its obvious to my manager I am not being used and to the co-workers around me. Second, there is no HR, at least not until last week did they finally fill that position.

I took this job because I could not stand the commute of 1 hour plus a day, of 10 hours of hard work a day. I now have a 5 minute commute of absolutely no work a day and its driving me insane as I would like to be productive.

The company making money and moving forward, Is it growing They are busy, and I am getting paid

Is it a small to midsize company in its growth post start up phase in the USA, my department there are about 7 people.

I am using my office time to keep up on technologies that are relevant to the position.The co-workers are just working and making regular conversation with me. I have asked them to please let me know if there are any tasks they have that I could take off of their hands.

My contract (full time) is full of vague IT related responsibilities and is very vague but all of what i would suspect for a System/Software Engineer

What should I do here?

P.S. I would really like to make it work here. Another job move would look horrible on my resume. The company and people are very nice here personally. I really should not make another move until at least 3 months and do not want to start any bees nest and find myself out of employment.

manpreet 2 years ago

You're seen as a potential threat by the CTO and therefore are being left out. However you're being paid which is pretty important and your job would be viewed as ideal by a lot of people and you were told at the start that you wouldn't be working on their primary system.

Basically you have a support role but nothing much has come up requiring support, so you don't have many choices and you haven't been deceived.

If the job is a bad fit then job hunt, you seem to still be on probationary period, this is one of the reasons there is one.

Personally it has only been a month, I'd do whatever I could find and fill the time educating myself on how the business works and looking for potential tweaks I could make in my field. I have had jobs where support was hardly ever needed, but when it was it was critical. Many jobs can be like that in many industries. Think airport firecrew, once every five years they may have an emergency, the rest of the time training, upskilling etc,.

Most likely they are still finalising what tasks to give you, it would be rare outside of govt to employ a person to do nothing in your position. So just keep mentioning you are short of work.