I’m in kind of a strange and awkward situation… I’m not getting enough work to do at my job, yet nobody seems to mind…
I’ve tried to hint at it a few times (“Hey boss, my plate isn’t very full right now and I have some extra time, can I help with anything?”). Sometimes I’ll get a small project here and there, but that only takes me a few days. Other times they’ll just be like don’t worry about it, you don’t have to make busywork for yourself or others, just go take a walk, etc.
I’m a salaried employee, so the idleness doesn’t affect my income. It just makes me feel guilty, like I’m not doing enough to justify my wages. It also makes me a bit afraid for my job, like they could maybe cut my position without losing much…
It wasn’t always this way. It was very busy when I first started at this role. For a variety of reasons, though, things have slowed down lately: time of year, market shifts, customer changes, macroeconomic trends, AI, my own efficiency gains, etc.
I’m not the type to just want to milk this situation. As much as I enjoy wasting time on the Dope, I’d prefer to actually be a more productive and helpful part of my team. It’s a tiny, private company with no middle management (and really, very little management of any sort). I work remotely and there are no regular check-ins or anything of the sort. I just kinda of exist, do my job, and so far nobody’s questioned it — I have decades of experience and am overqualified for my role, so they just generally trust me to do what I do. That part’s all fine and great.
But I really want to push harder and ask for more work, or an expansion in role/responsibilities. I’m just afraid that pushing too hard might force them to ask some uncomfortable questions, like “do we really even need Reply’s role anymore”. In prior years I would’ve taken that risk, but right now I don’t think can afford to lose the job. Unemployment right now would probably mean homelessness again, which I am not eager to return to, or doing gig work for Lyft/Doordash. I’m pretty scared of that. There are not many openings available in my field, where I live.
What’s the best way to handle this? Should I say anything at all, and if so, how should I phrase it so I don’t make myself sound unnecessary…?
In my experience, it’s less that they’ll decide your job is superfluous, and more that they’ll assign you something worse than just not having enough to do. Sort of a “be careful what you wish for” type situation.
Another way to look at it is that you’re good enough at your job that they’re both satisfied with the job you’re doing AND you don’t have to put much effort in. Would someone else be able to do the same? I highly doubt it. Just enjoy it for what it is.
I would offer to help with other projects, especially those that aren’t moving as quickly as they should. If your boss says, “ No thanks”, then enjoy the extra time not working on anything. You could also try to come up with projects that would help the company but have not been considered before or are not being worked on currently. Don’t feel guilty, but keep your resume up to date just in case they decide they really don’t need your position anymore.
Are there any general inefficiencies or things that can be improved that you can take on as a separate project? I’d very occasionally be in that situation and that’s what I would do.
How well do you know your boss? How well do you know their obstacles and issues in the org? Are they skilled at politics up and/or down? Are they on the ins or the outs?
Is this a large professionally run company, or an living example of Dilbert from the 1970s? Or a small outfit with an autocratic but clueless owner? Or?
What is the nature of the business? I know your role is some manner of web dev. But there’s a huge difference in attitude between companies selling stuff, who think all IT is wasted money, versus companies selling IT services or products who know their dev department is their product factory.
I’m not asking you to dox yourself here. I’m suggesting that until you know all those answers in the privacy of your own mind, you’re stumbling around in the dark if you try to raise your head above the parapet. Your boss may take your well-intentioned request to help do more work as an attack on them and their (in)competence.
Until you know enough about them to know how they’ll react, you’re blindly firing a gun in a crowded china shop. Don’t do that because the bull who gets gored is you.
Honestly, if I were you, I’d just chill and enjoy it. It may not be ideal, but it’s better than getting unpleasant work, and it’s better than no job at all. I have never had a job in which I had too little to do - always a full plate - and sure could use a breather like what you’ve got.
I believe this can lead to issues with some overlapping issues with the government on tax or whatnot that could lead to both employers discovering the scheme - not sure exactly how, but I’ve heard tales of it. Or getting sued because both employers believe they are entitled to the employee’s full time when they are paying for full-time salary.
Lots of good points already raised. I can sympathize with you position. Before I led the sale of the company I worked for, I had a long period where I could have just as easily logged in a couple times a day to address an email here or there and done nothing else. It’s not easy for someone saddled with at least a little bit of a work ethic. During that time I reported to exactly nobody, so I always wondered if I had just been forgotten.
No, things dramatically changed and now I long for the days of the two hour lunch followed by a nap.
Anyway, I would not go to boss and say “I don’t have enough to do.” in this situation. If I were to do anything, I would find some sort of project or initiative you see others working on and frame it as, “Boss, I find project XYZ to be super interesting. I’d like to step up and help. How can I get involved?”
That works a couple ways; one, you frame it as a personal challenge to step up, two, you get to pick which thing you want to contribute to instead of getting whatever floor sweepings you’d get if you just asked for more work without a plan.
Alternately, if there aren’t any initiatives underway that you think you could worm your way into, invent one. Find some thing you think could be sold as a pervasive problem that you’d, once again, like to step up to solve.
For context, I work for an internet software company. We basically sell business software to other online companies (it’s a “SaaS”, software as a service). It’s a small business (< 20 total employees, including the owner-operators and a few part-time contractors). Business is good, and we make enough to pay a living wage to the staff (nothing like FAANG level, but enough for at least a lower-middle-class lifestyle for everyone). As far as I can tell, everyone is quite happy, myself included.
This is important: They’re based out of Europe (and I’m in the US). I’ve met the others and they’re very nice and generally quite relaxed. It’s a very different sort of culture and work-life balance compared to, say, the venture capitalist funded “tech bro” mindset of our Silicon Valley. While I’ve never worked in conditions quite that cutthroat, as an USian, I’m definitely accustomed to having to work my ass off every hour of every workday. It just feels really weird to have any sort of sustained downtime at all. I’m too used to hypervigilant management and mandatory overreporting. The last company I worked for was a US Fortune 500, where I was paid more, but micromanaged to death like a lab rat (it’s why I quit). This situation, now, couldn’t be more different — it is an astoundingly different way of working and living (and thinking).
I don’t know exactly how much my European colleagues usually work (they’re going to bed when I wake up & vice versa), but they do frequently take time out of their days to run errands, be with their kids, etc. Many of them have families, and vacations are frequent (and long by US standards). So I get the feeling that nobody is quite that much of a workaholic, at least not by US standards. My boss is one of the owners, and he’s the one who told me to take it easy, so… I suppose I should just listen to him
The international split is part of the difficulty here, I think. Not just because of time zone differences, which makes real-time collaboration difficult, but also because of geopolitics. Some of the critical stuff must remain in EU data centers for privacy/security/legal reasons (the EU has much stronger consumer and data protections). Recent tariffs and tensions have not made that situation any better, obviously. As such, there is a realistic limit to what projects I can realistically participate in. I just don’t know if I’ve reached that limit… i.e., whether there are any “export-safe” projects I could potentially work on. I would like to, but I think I would need to explicitly ask them to find out, so it’s hard to just brainstorm something on my own.
I mean, this part is true, but it’s also bit more nuanced than that.
I have the background of a web developer, but I’m currently working in a more customer-facing role, providing support and co-development expertise for (mostly) our American time zone customers. There are occasionally days where I spend hours jumping into a customer’s convoluted codebase, digging through thousands of lines of code to find that one improbable bug, then meeting with five of their developers to explain it. THAT is what they pay me for — that part of it isn’t easy (at all), and actually does require substantial technical expertise and communication skills, even in the age of AI. But then there are also those days where I just respond to a few emails and reset some forgotten passwords and that’s about it. Those are the days I feel guilty about. Lately, there’s been more of the second type than the first.
If I were doing full-time web dev, I’d be a revenue driver (and slightly underpaid). Conversely, if I were solely doing basic customer service, I’d be a cost center (and drastically overpaid). As it is, I’m a little of both, which makes everything complicated… I’m in that awkward gray area where they’re basically paying me a “retainer” of sorts for difficult but infrequent work.
It started as a sort of ad-hoc arrangement early on when I was going to school part-time and working for them part-time, but that eventually turned into a full-time job because they liked me enough. Then it just kinda evolved into the present day situation.
I would love to… but see above about international complications It’s not so easy for me to find a project that adds value to the software or for our customers, without 1) creating more work for the others who already have fuller plates (they have to review everything, which is difficult across time zones) and 2) doesn’t run afoul of any export controls.
That’s a good idea, though. I’ll keep an extra-careful eye on what everyone else is working on, and see if there are any that would make sense for me to jump on.
Still, the difficulty here is that these individual projects tend to be short-term, i.e., if I found one today, I would probably be done with it by next week or next month at the latest, at which point I’ll have time again. It’s not a good way to self-manage my workload.
The others don’t have that issue as much because for the most part they all work close together in time zone and within the EU. I’m the lone wolf in the Americas.
I will take this advice to heart. Thank you. So far I’ve been mostly asking in vagaries… “is there anything…”, “any random projects you need help with…”, etc. Perhaps I need to be both detailed and specific and propose something to them myself. I’ll look over the existing possibilities and see what makes sense.
I would never do that (to any employer) unless there was a clear mutual understanding about it. It’s unethical and makes WFH more suspect for everyone… it’s hard enough to find any sort of remote work already! Respect needs to be a two-way street.
Though in my particular case, I hate the remote-ness of it… I would much rather be in an office than WFH, but I know that’s relatively unusual. I’m just more social than most developers.
Besides, I both love my current job, and also need to be available if and when work (customer requests) do randomly show up through the day. Not an easy thing to schedule other jobs around.
That said, I could probably at least be better about using the downtime better… learning another programming language or such.
Yeah, using the downtime for professional development is a good idea. Could be in programming, a language course in the language used in the country the company is located in, or learning more about the export controls that the company has to deal with. Anything that aligns with the job would be good in case anyone decides to question what you do with your time.
Now I got it. You are probably okay. When I visited our factory in the Netherlands, I was shocked that the engineers all left at 5 pm. The engineers in our US factories never did. Not from evil management, just from the culture.
My son-in-law is German, and lives here working for US companies. He takes full paternity leave, he uses his vacation. I was nervous for him, but he has never gotten pushback. It’s what people in Europe do and more people in the US could do if they could get away with it.
So you’re probably ok. If you are bored (and being bored is worse for me than being overloaded) I might ask a boss if there was a small project that they never were able to get started due to lack of resources. That gives the boss the opportunity to ask you to work on an existing project without you giving the impression you are butting in, or you might get to own something interesting.
You’re salaried. You’re getting paid to do your job. Not on a per widget or per hour basis, but an a ‘get the job done’ basis. You’ve let your boss know you could handle more, and your boss has basically shrugged his shoulders. Enjoy it while you can. The time of year will change. The markets may shift. Costumers and macroeconomic trends may suddenly reverse. In which case you may be busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.
It’s a lot easier for me to support people’s requests than to come up with things for people to do. And the items in my “job bucket” (when it isn’t empty) typically aren’t the fun ones. My bossing is much more enablement than tasking. YMMV.
For example, someone asked me if she could use admin time (as opposed to direct client billable, which is most of our work) to take some AI training that was relevant to her client work. Sure. Another asked me what he should do next month. I . . . don’t know. Maybe update these training slides to the new template if you can’t find something more interesting in this science and engineering candy shop.
My experience, having worked for both US and European companies is just what others have said- the work your fingers to the bone mentality just isn’t a thing (for the most part) over there.
I’d suggest thinking about some other role in the company you’re interested in- QA, Biz Dev, Sales, and ask for a small side assignment to someone or something there.
You’ll learn a new area and get something to fill some time.
I’m in a very similar situation to the OP. I am a WAH professional in a marketing / tech related industry, and lately work has been very slow for me. The nature of my job has always been ‘feast or famine’ to an extent: slow slow slow…then BUSY BUSY BUSY. And it will likely get back to ‘feast’ but the ‘famine’ has gone on for longer than I can remember since I started here. In my case, I have a good relationship with my manager, and have made it clear I am available to help out the team in any capacity, but I do understand the corporate mindset fear of “stick your head up too far, and it might get chopped off”. If I stay slow for too much longer, and if I make it so my bosses’ bosses notice, I could very well be let go at some point. But the same could easily happen if I do nothing.
A lot of good advice so far. Your own is probably the best:
You said you ethically do not want to get a second WAH job, which is all good and admirable. But maybe some sort of ‘gig’ work or piece work? Doing actual work on things has always been the best way for me to learn, and in addition to learning and staying active, you make some side money too.
Also, get your resume polished up, and maybe even actively look for other jobs. You don’t need to take action (until-- if and when you do), but the simple act of being prepared for the worst will ease your mind.
While I was in IT (early 90s then again for most of the 2000s) 60 hour weeks were standard. One of our customers was in New Zealand. They worked closely with an NZ-based IT firm, so we sorta got roped into partnering with them. Nice folks and both sides gained from the collaboration.
Anyhow, the idea that anything was important or urgent enough to skip lunch or stay after hours was simply unthinkable to the Kiwis. Likewise working weekends or opening emails at home after dinner.
They worked diligently when they worked, but their work hours were an accessory to their real life, not the purpose and substance of their real life.
It is very hard for an American to accept that’s how the civilized world lives. We’re used to thinking that we’re the civilized world. We’re not.
Returning to the OP's specific situation.
Our OP is something special to his company; you're the US division. That has real value for them. The fact you're not snowed under with work is simply you living the life of an EU employee in the USA.
It’s not so easy for me to find a project that adds value to the software or for our customers, without 1) creating more work for the others who already have fuller plates (they have to review everything, which is difficult across time zones) and 2) doesn’t run afoul of any export controls.