I had a data science position with a large non-tech company. It did B2B sales, and had a giant office for us, done up in brushed nickel and Edison light bulbs. The rest of the company was designed in standard cheap-cubicle format, but they took visitors (i.e. sales targets) through to see the data science team, so we got the fancy layout. After working there a few months, I realized that I was also there as part of the decoration. My work didn't matter (it took them 4 months to stand up a server for a project I was working on) and my boss didn't understand what I did. Very cush. Could have gotten away with a few hours a week of real work, though I still had to physically be there most of the time. I left for more money, plus ultimately having to surreptitiously waste 35 hours a week turns out to be quite draining.
> My work didn't matter (it took them 4 months to stand up a server for a project I was working on) and my boss didn't understand what I did. Very cush. Could have gotten away with a few hours a week of real work, though I still had to physically be there most of the time. I left for more money, plus ultimately having to surreptitiously waste 35 hours a week turns out to be quite draining.
Yup. I've occasionally landed on projects like this and had the same reaction. Sure, you can coast for NOW... but it always makes me feel like I'm rusting, and that the slow pace is undermining my competitiveness for the next position.
My view is that job security is your ability to get your next position. Any given job can blow up on you for reasons beyond your control. You have to continuously push yourself so you can easily pick up the pieces if/when that happens.
But 2008-11 was a formative experience for me, so maybe I'm just bitter.
My view is that job security is your ability to get your next position. Any given job can blow up on you for reasons beyond your control. You have to continuously push yourself so you can easily pick up the pieces if/when that happens.
But 2008-11 was a formative experience for me, so maybe I'm just bitter.
Same with the dotcom crash. Those with sharp technical skills soon found work with old-skool companies when the dotcoms evaporated. The others struggled for a long time after.
Pretending to work at an office for 7-8h is soul killing. If it was remote then it might be a different story as you could just work on something else.
> having to surreptitiously waste 35 hours a week turns out to be quite draining.
This is the real nightmare for me. If I go in and code for 7 or 8 hours a day, time flies and my mind is active and focused. Really doesn't matter what it is, just needs to be clear and well defined.
At the my current job, I don't even have tickets just slack messages consisting of hey can you do this inset vague thing, and after asking for multiple clarifications to narrow the possible interpretation I start working on it.
Guess what ? The last Big task/Project I had to do morphed into another one each time I reported that I was done for 11 times in a row, midway I just gave up mentally.
And it all started with "hey can you do a small script to download some CSVs from this server"
> having to surreptitiously waste 35 hours a week turns out to be quite draining.
I 100% agree with this. I'd much rather have actual work to do. My workaround has been to find 35 hours a week on something meaningful to me that won't upset the company if they find me doing it. So when I need to kill some hours looking productive, I find a way to use that time on a side project or hobby work.
Good idea, but for data-security reasons, they disabled all the USB drives. It would have been quite a challenge to get the code out without a trace. Probably no one would have cared if I emailed it to myself, but it would have been a very bad look.
