Do you work? ... In work?

ryo.jodeci

Hi All,
I've gone re-reg for this because I know that some of my colleagues know my true username here and I'd rather not share this dilemma with them.

Do you work in work? Because I don't. There is literally nothing for me to do.

I work in IT for a global company. I was hired to code in Python/SQL as part of my job.

I've been in my place for 2 years, and out of those two years, there has been a couple of hectic days where I earned my money. Aside from this, I literally sit on BBC, RTE, Udemy, and stack exchange all day. I sit beside my manager, who is on her phone all day (facebook mostly, or some other social media sites)

At the beginning of my career, I spent about 4 years working in an international bank, and god did they work us. I worked some nights until 4/5am. Everyday was crazy, nothing was good enough. Strangely I think I enjoyed it.

Eventually, because of the lack of money through internal promotions, there were people on the level below me earning more money, so I left.

I went to a similar company (my previous company) for 2 years, and that's when this "problem" started to present itself. There was nothing to do there. The managers kept talking about how stressed they were, but none of the 15 resources under them were doing anything. Actually none of the managers were doing anything, except talking about how busy it was.

I moved again. That was 2 years ago. And here I am, logging in at 9am, sitting in the chair all day, and then going home at 5pm.

Should I stay? The only thing that's keeping me there is the day rate of 625 euros. But I'm losing my coding skills. I'm losing my mind. Is this normal nowadays in IT?

The thing is the manager keeps renewing all of our contracts because she doesn't want to lose knowledge in case something comes along, and it's not out of her pocket, so she doesn't care. Also, I should note that as a contractor, there's no internal projects/societies or things for us to do. They actively keep us out of those.

I know it sounds lovely on the outside because the money and the lack of work. But it's been so long. I'm worried, say for example, they don't renew my contract someday, and not only will I have lost my skills, but I'll have lost the ability to put in a hard day's work.

SCOOP 64

Sorry but what do you mean by the day rate of €625?

seannash

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

Sorry but what do you mean by the day rate of €625?

Id Assume he's a contractor and as such is paid per day. That's the rate.

ifElseThen

Use some of the time to keep your skills relevant and up to date.

ryo.jodeci

It means you get 625 euros per day, but nothing else (such as job security/healthcare/bonus).

runawaybishop

Happened to me in my last job. Was playing Xbox all day at work, given trivial tasks to do that took no time or effort and had a few times I was actually busy - this was at a time other colleagues were busy but my managers were useless and unable to organise workloads. Having nothing to do gets boring very very fast. I decided enough was enough and did a good few online courses and left for a more challenging job.

ryo.jodeci

seannash wrote: »

Id Assume he's a contractor and as such is paid per day. That's the rate.

Correct. Sounds great (until of course the contract isn't renewed, and you're turfed out to the job market with 15 other coders at the same time).

ryo.jodeci

ifElseThen wrote: »

Use some of the time to keep your skills relevant and up to date.

I've tried doing Udemy courses, but unfortunately I can't download (or upload) any datasets to the local pc in work, which means that I'm just watching people coding, rather than being able to practice it myself.

Oasis1974

Python language coding is very advanced and most sought after for big pay checks.

runawaybishop

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

I've tried doing Udemy courses, but unfortunately I can't download (or upload) any datasets to the local pc in work, which means that I'm just watching people coding, rather than being able to practice it myself.

Transfer via your phone? Or tell work you need access to training material to keep your skills current

ryo.jodeci

runawaybishop wrote: »

Happened to me in my last job. Was playing Xbox all day at work, given trivial tasks to do that took no time or effort and had a few times I was actually busy - this was at a time other colleagues were busy but my managers were useless and unable to organise workloads. Having nothing to do gets boring very very fast. I decided enough was enough and did a good few online courses and left for a more challenging job.

I'm at that stage now.. Do you regret it? Did you find the interviews tough after not been busy for so long? I remember after my first company, I felt ok going into interviews because I felt like I had worked hard for the next step. Now I would be a bit nervous about sitting in front of someone.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Surely somebody in that company would question the contracting cost. Pretty good money I must say.

marketty

You're pulling around €150k pa out of this place without being expected to deliver anything? And this is a problem?
You must have been hired on the basis of having great skills, couldn't you apply them to personal projects during 'working' hours and keep your skills sharp that way while building your own side gig?

Or are you winding us?

ryo.jodeci

runawaybishop wrote: »

Transfer via your phone? Or tell work you need access to training material to keep your skills current

I tried to connect my phone before (for a different reason) butwhen I plug it into the USB, the computer's firewall doesn't allow me to access any data on the phone. I haven't raised your 2nd point to my manager yet, but it's a good idea.. maybe she knows of a way to get data down to the pc.

runawaybishop

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

I'm at that stage now.. Do you regret it? Did you find the interviews tough after not been busy for so long? I remember after my first company, I felt ok going into interviews because I felt like I had worked hard for the next step. Now I would be a bit nervous about sitting in front of someone.

No regrets in the slightest. Bit apprehensive that I would find the new job hard after having it soft for so long but realistically I was unmotivated, not lazy. Everyone told me I was crazy to leave my job ( I was in charge of international Xbox testing which was cool) but for my own sense of worth I needed something that challenged me. New job has a good bit for me to learn but I am loving being busy, learning new things and actually stretching myself.

Andrew00

OP, stop complaining. That is a dream job to have, And ur on good money.

Lots of us have to work our backsides off just to earn a **** wage. You don’t yet you have a good wage

ryo.jodeci

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Surely somebody in that company would question the contracting cost. Pretty good money I must say.

Seems like the way some companies are going to protect themselves. Particularly the ones who carried a huge redundancy cost during the downtime. Also, they don't have to worry about employees having sick days, or holidays, or complaints with HR. Because if we do, we're gone! Also, no healthcare/bonus/complaints about promotion etc.. It's still very expensive but maybe in the long run it suits them best. Hire when the company's making money. Dump us when it's not.

marketty wrote: »

You're pulling around €150k pa out of this place without being expected to deliver anything? And this is a problem?
You must have been hired on the basis of having great skills, couldn't you apply them to personal projects during 'working' hours and keep your skills sharp that way while building your own side gig?

Or are you winding us?

I would love to get further into python and machine learning, building complex artificial intelligence tools (neural networks etc) but the problem is being able to access data in work. I was thinking about bringing in my laptop, but I think my manager would say that a step too far. It would be taking the mick in fairness. No, not a wind up, promise you that.

SCOOP 64

Wow €625 a day, different world.

Tell me how

I find it hard to believe that any company is paying circa €2.4M/annum (15 resources + manager @€;625/day) to have those people do as little as you say they do.

ryo.jodeci

Andrew00 wrote: »

OP, stop complaining. That is a dream job to have, And ur on good money.

Lots of us have to work our backsides off just to earn a **** wage. You don’t yet you have a good wage

Until I lose the wage and have to interview against the coders who have been pushing themselves!

SCOOP 64

How do you get onto this coding malarkey?

delly

I was all in until the rate was mentioned. While your issue is real and many people can experience it, not a hope in hell at that rate as an outsourced contractor. The rate may exist, but not for idle resource.

runawaybishop

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

Seems like the way some companies are going to protect themselves. Particularly the ones who carried a huge redundancy cost during the downtime. Also, they don't have to worry about employees having sick days, or holidays, or complaints with HR. Because if we do, we're gone! Also, no healthcare/bonus/complaints about promotion etc.. It's still very expensive but maybe in the long run it suits them best. Hire when the company's making money. Dump us when it's not.

Not to be the bearer of bad new but if you are a contractor after 2 years you need to be made permanent so if the 2 years isn't up I would be be expecting them to not renew. If the two years is up you should be permanent though.

Also the money you are paid will be way way less then what they charge your customers. Contract prices for senior devs (5 years experience) would be about 1200-1500 charged to a customer.

the_syco

Buy TeamViewer. Install it on your PC & your phone. Remote onto your PC from your phone (not using your works WiFi).

Get a Celluon light keyboard (something like this; http://amzn.eu/d/e2EQh1a)
Hook it up to your phone, and do some coding on your PC via your phone.

Tell me how

the_syco wrote: »

Buy TeamViewer. Install it on your PC & your phone. Remote onto your PC from your phone (not using your works WiFi).

Get a Celluon light keyboard (something like this; http://amzn.eu/d/e2EQh1a)
Hook it up to your phone, and do some coding on your PC via your phone.

Add in a google chrome and a tv to cast and hey presto, your working at home from work as opposed to the current trend towards working at work from home.

ryo.jodeci

Tell me how wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that any company is paying circa €2.4M/annum (15 resources + manager @€;625/day) to have those people do as little as you say they do.

15 resources was my last company 2 years ago.

This company has over 12/13 levels of mgmt. I'm not sure what some of the other lads are on in my current place. I got wind of the upper end of the bandwidth so I asked for that during the interviews and got lucky.

delly wrote: »

I was all in until the rate was mentioned. While your issue is real and many people can experience it, not a hope in hell at that rate as an outsourced contractor. The rate may exist, but not for idle resource.

Like I say, there have been a couple of busy periods, but it seems the managers above me want to appear busy, so they completely blow the level of work out of proportion when talking to their seniors (I guess).

frozenfrozen

guacamole to your home pc or something on gc, aws, do, etc... work on some other projects while you're in there and get another couple hundred quid a day.

ryo.jodeci

runawaybishop wrote: »

Not to be the bearer of bad new but if you are a contractor after 2 years you need to be made permanent so if the 2 years isn't up I would be be expecting them to not renew. If the two years is up you should be permanent though.

Also the money you are paid will be way way less then what they charge your customers. Contract prices for senior devs (5 years experience) would be about 1200-1500 charged to a customer.

I'm an independent contractor as opposed to working with Accenture/KPMG/First Derivatives. I'm aware those companies charge ridiculous amounts of money, it's crazy really. But as far as I can see, the company gets good staff in return.

siblers

I don't really understand how you work in I.T but aren't able to do online courses that only require a basic IDE and access to YouTube. You must be using a very outdated system.

Why can't you do the course at home in your own free time

ryo.jodeci

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

How do you get onto this coding malarkey?

I studied it in college, and then did a ton of Udemy courses to help build up a portfolio on github. All they care about is your portfolio, although certificates and grades can help. In my opinion, Python is the way forward. But that statement has the potential to unleash hell in the coder's world, so maybe have a look and see what suits you!

ExoPolitic

Bring your own laptop in and code on that? Hotspot on your phone?... cant understand the problem.

SCOOP 64

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

I studied it in college, and then did a ton of Udemy courses to help build up a portfolio on github. All they care about is your portfolio, although certificates and grades can help. In my opinion, Python is the way forward. But that statement has the potential to unleash hell in the coder's world, so maybe have a look and see what suits you!

Would you say its been genuinely hard work to get to were you are today?

runawaybishop

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

I studied it in college, and then did a ton of Udemy courses to help build up a portfolio on github. All they care about is your portfolio, although certificates and grades can help. In my opinion, Python is the way forward. But that statement has the potential to unleash hell in the coder's world, so maybe have a look and see what suits you!

Fair enough about the contract stuff, as long as you know what you are doing

Portfolios are definitely useful but I have found that a lot of senior management are overly concerned about certs. If you are thinking about moving some qualifications in agile/scrum project management will help and maybe PRINCE2 (if you are doing government work) or a PMP if you have someone in work willing to support you.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

AIG?

ryo.jodeci

siblers wrote: »

I don't really understand how you work in I.T but aren't able to do online courses that only require a basic IDE and access to YouTube. You must be using a very outdated system.

Why can't you do the course at home in your own free time

Sorry, I should have said that I am doing some home projects by myself in the evenings, but my problem is more whether I should move jobs or not. Only because I feel like I'm wasting time during the day. I have an IDE, and access to Udemy/youtube.. But I'm not able to scrape data off the web, or download data sets. That's the only issue really. Also, I'd feel a bit cheeky doing that beside my boss.. but sure if there's nothing else to do they can't complain.

runawaybishop

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

Sorry, I should have said that I am doing some home projects by myself in the evenings, but my problem is more whether I should move jobs or not. Only because I feel like I'm wasting time during the day. I have an IDE, and access to Udemy/youtube.. But I'm not able to scrape data off the web, or download data sets. That's the only issue really. Also, I'd feel a bit cheeky doing that beside my boss.. but sure if there's nothing else to do they can't complain.

Why would your boss have a problem with you increasing your skillset?

fullstop

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

It means you get 625 euros per day, but nothing else (such as job security/healthcare/bonus).

You'd hardly be expecting a bonus on top of €150k+ a year for doing no work would you?!!

ryo.jodeci

ExoPolitic wrote: »

Bring your own laptop in and code on that? Hotspot on your phone?... cant understand the problem.

The boss works from home 1/2 days a week so it's a runner. But I'd feel a bit bad on the days they're there. Also, I feel like I'm part of her game to make the team look busy so that I keep the job! There are seniors walking around and they might see the laptop and ask about it. Bit easier to minimise the chrome browser when they're strolling by.

ryo.jodeci

fullstop wrote: »

You'd hardly be expecting a bonus on top of €150k+ a year for doing no work would you?!!

Nah, we expect nothing. If we fall down a slippy stairs there's no chance of us suing either!

Bonus or not contract work is extremely insecure.
You could be out on your ass in a few months.
The good salary offsets the fact you have no pension, no health benefits , no increments, no job security.

I feel your pain op, life is unfair.

ryo.jodeci

runawaybishop wrote: »

Why would your boss have a problem with you increasing your skillset?

I think because what I would be interested in studying has nothing to do with what we're doing in work currently. It's all coding, but I would like to get into artificial intelligence like image recognition, natural language processing, creative AI, or self driving cars type stuff!

scwazrh

its very surprising that someone who can earn €150k per yr with no effort cannot figure out a way to increase or continue to use their skill set during the 8 hours a day they are being paid to do nothing.

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Bonus or not contract work is extremely insecure.
You could be out on your ass in a few months.
The good salary offsets the fact you have no pension, no health benefits , no increments, no job security.

Most jobs have no pension, no health benefits, no increments and don't get paid &150k pa, do you realise how you post reads?

runawaybishop

Dav010 wrote: »

Most jobs have no pension, no health benefits, no increments and don't get paid &150k pa, do you realise how you post reads?

The op is earning good money, fair play to him. He is not happy at work. Money isn't the be all and end all.

ryo.jodeci

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

Would you say its been genuinely hard work to get to were you are today?

Everyone sits down for the first time and are clueless. But eventually patterns emerge, logic is repeated, and a confidence grows. That's the coding side. On the contracting side, I always think your network is key, especially in Dublin. I enjoy it, but that's me.. courses for horses. I certainly think coding is a lot easier than what people think on the first day.

Edit: I'd recommend you take a look at some Udemy courses. They're 10€ and can give a great insight.

OU812

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

I'm not able to scrape data off the web, or download data sets.

Assuming you're doing the standard 220 days at your daily rate, that's a job paying circa €135,000 a year before taxes that you had such a strong skillset & were clever enough to get, and you haven't figured out you can bring in your own laptop & datasim modem to work on so you don't have to connect to the wifi ???

Honestly if you worked for me & I found out that you hadn't been clever enough to do that, I'd fire you.

Do some courses, skill up & then move on for more money elsewhere, stop bitching about it.

runawaybishop

runawaybishop wrote: »

The op is earning good money, fair play to him. He is not happy at work. Money isn't the be all and end all.

It's not "good money", it's great money for doing by the the op's admission, nothing.

And the op is complaining.

s7ryf3925pivug

Oasis1974 wrote: »

Python language coding is very advanced and most sought after for big pay checks.

Pretty sure its focus is readability - not more advanced than other OO languages, and intended to be easier to learn afaik.

...
I do work at work, and so do the other developers there. It’s the opposite extreme to the OP, instead of having too little to do, focus on throughput tends to affect quality and therefore skill development. My project is largely an exception to this because of various things including its scope, the customer being nice, me having a good relationship with them, and I’m greatly involved in determining requirements and design in an ongoing manner.

Every other project has greater pressure on throughput and it is common for people to work weekends as well as long hours during the week. The A&D is big design up front on these really, masquerading as scrum. That itself is done under pressure, and is focused on closing a sale more than anything else.

... anyway yeah I work in a company selling custom software development as a service and everyone in the department is kept very busy... We don’t get paid as much either (though the customer pays more for our time).

nim1bdeh38l2cw

delly wrote: »

I was all in until the rate was mentioned. While your issue is real and many people can experience it, not a hope in hell at that rate as an outsourced contractor. The rate may exist, but not for idle resource.

I can assure you that it does

ryo.jodeci

Dav010 wrote: »

It's not "good money", it's great money for doing by the the op's admission, nothing.

And the op is complaining.

Just to clarify - I'm not complaining. I can leave at an instant. I can stay at an instant. The purpose of this thread was purely to see if anyone was ever in a situation where they were paid well, but weren't growing in their role and had concerns of regressing as a result. But to re-iterate, I am in no position to complain and I know that. I didn't think that was necessary to clarify, but here it is for you.