Surviving in a "workless" Job 13

[cancsco]

Hi folks,

I am a new engineer(just a couple of years of exp) and I am working in a company where practically there is no work for me to do for more than 3 months.

All I can do is to sit and wait for the work to be assigned to me by my immediate supervisor who is a good for nothing person.

I know that he has got loads of experience behind his back and I know that he knows his stuff, but for a person of his caliber he should be good engineer not a manager.

What exactly is happening is that when I have joined this company I had to put in a lot of overtime to cope up with the schedules and deadlines as others.
But after that period there is literally a slump and nothing to do.
When ever I get my paycheck I really feel bad for taking it as I have done nothing productive. I feel that this thing is jeopardizing my career.
Is this the way it is around in all the corporate environment or is that myself the anomaly here.
It is getting really hard for me to watch the clock from 8 to 5. Please suggest

Nick

 

[That1Guy]

I would suggest, if you have nothing productive to do, make something productive. You can do research on your products / process, you can delve into reference books giving you a technical edge over others, you can even try to find other projects for your particular company that might be out of the norm for what they produce or sell. There are many ways to be productive, and not all of them require you to make things.


Byron T. - P.E.

 

[Maui]

Nick, find something to do to enhance your skills that will make you more valuable to either your current or future employers. Learn AutoCAD, or take a class in Finite Elements, and study these subjects during the lulls in your work day. By staying positive and doing something productive, you will be able to get through the day more easily, and feel better about yourself in the process. Just sitting there and feeling underutilized is the most aggravating part of it. Find something productive to do.


Maui

 

[MadMango]

Workload is always cyclic.

If you work in manufacturing you can always take a stroll through assembly or manufacturing and talk with the people in the trenches. Understanding their point of view of your company's products can only help you in engineering better ones.

Instead of waiting for work to be delivered to you, seek it out. Stay proactive, not reactive.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[sms]

I agree,look of something to do, and if you really can't find it, crack open the books or journals relevant to your area of interest and invest the time in improving yourself. If your employer is willing, now is the time to sign up for conferences or training opportunities. They won't let you go when it is busy. This approach will pay off for your employer later.

 

[ctopher]

I agree with the others. When I have down time, I learn something new. Between learning, I clean up my office and PC files.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD

 

[TheTick]

Things I learned during slumps:

•Pro/E
•Visual Basic
•boss's salary
•fly casting (don't ask)
•juggling (what?)
•how fast money disappears when daytrading
•Monster.com
•IT department monitors Monster.com queries
•anyone can write an article for a CAD magazine
•having time to write is a bad sign that there isn't enough work

 

[TheTick]

Here's a good trick for cold climates...
Bring two coats. Leave one on your chair so it looks like you're around. Sneak out and see a movie after lunch.

 

[Rich2001]

I had been working as a young engineer for a mechanical contractor, just finishing a multi-million dollar cehmical plant, with the next major project starting for at least 9 months. I wrote a proposal to upper management to develop the quality system to obtain the ASME B&PV U, PP & S stamps.

Look for something that can be improved or would open up new markets.

Take an online course. If you have plans on obtaining your PE license take the Universityof Alaska-Anchorage course on Arctic Engineering.

Read up on law, patent. copyright, management, human resourses ... ad infinitum. Topics that are remotely related to your work .

Learn a few simple magic tricks that you can use during presentations.

Spend time on the shop floor, learn to weld, the shop procedures, et cetera.

Do not have an affaire de coeur during your work slump. I know an engineer and clerk that did, both were terminated, and then divorced by their spouse. They managed to tranformed a minor slump into a vexing dilemma.

 

[ghghghgh]

I dunno,
- you're not doing anything
- you're boss knows you're not doing anything
- you're still getting paid.

Sounds pretty good to me.

Seriously, there's good advice here, albeit TheTick's suggestions may require some contemplation before implementing. Take a graduate class, study at work.
Create/modify spreadsheets that will help expedite your tasks. Learn new software. Refine your solitare skills.

Or, you may have to consider other employment opportunities.

Earlier in my current job I had several months like that, how I yearn for those days now.

 

[APH]

Geez....I wish I had that once in a while. It must be nice not to have someone breathin down your neck all the time.

My advice, enjoy it while it last. I would hate to work 12 hours straight in 2 months and have another month off before doing it all over again.

APH

 

[BJC]

Always do something that makes your more marketable. That is makes you worth more money, if not to your present employer then to the next.
Some people wind up with 1 year of experience repeated 20 times. If you see that it's happening to you it's time to hook up and stand in the door.

 

[Tobalcane]

In the ten years that I have worked, I have been part of three companies. I have realized that in each company that there was a cycle of work. I’ll have months of work to the hilt and then a month or two of down time. Enjoy and make use of the down time. It is a good opportunity to teach yourself or improve a skill that you did not have time to do in the past. I always have a list in the back of my mine on what I would like to learn or improve my self in (engineering related). The only person who is interested in your progress is yourself. To be honest, I have yet to have a manger teach me anything. I have picked up most of my analysis skills from a book and computer (CAD, ProE/ProM, TAS, MATHCAD,…) skills from just jumping into the software and practice. When you are improving your self during company time (during down time of course) it is a benefit to the company. So when you come up to a task that needs a set of skills that you have learned during your down time, you will be prepared.

Good Luck!


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[DRWeig]

Hey Nick,

Since you posted here, I must assume you haven't gone the way of most underemployed engineers and gotten yourself addicted to minesweeper. (I'm a twelve-stepper on it myself)...

My only sincere advice is to mix up your days with both technical and non-tech self-enrichment. Learn a new skill in your technical area, then learn or improve a business skill (get Covey books Good to Great, whatever, the best-sellers in the business area at B&N).

Having some planned variety makes it easier to get up and go to work in the morning for me...

Good luck!

Old Dave

 

[sms]

The other one I forgot to mention is write a paper for a conference or an article for a trade journal or magazine. Great way to impress your boss and add fodder to your resume if you ever go look for a new job. Conferences and journals are always looking for content, and it doesn't even need to be very high level or sophisticated.

 

[quark]

First of all you should get rid off the idea that you are being paid for nothing. This may be appropriate to think in your capacity but what you are getting may be a fraction of your company's expenditure and your higher ups may be thinking something better about you(for future).

After 8 years of hardwork I joined this company and was without work for almost a year. During initial months I thought like you but when I realized that another person(very knowledgeable) who was getting 10times my salary was just roming around explaining people how hard he was working, I stopped bothering.

Then the work started afterwards with full swing and it is going on. Now I am thinking about how to avoid work.

Meanwhile try to improve your skills as suggested by others. I used to participate in eng-tips.com frequently during those times. I improved my knowledge and starcount as well during those days.

Nice idea by The Tick. It's bad that we in hot climates can't try with two shirts.

 

[epoisses]

Come on, Nick, it's not up to you to look for things to do. This is a problem for management, it's not yours. Talk about it, they should solve it. Meanwhile it never hurts to get your cv up to date. Having no work is just one small step away from having no job, so you wouldn't want to stay there long if the slump seems to have become a permanent situation.

 

[Berserk]

I feel for you.

I worked on a company where I came in at 7:00, read the USATODAY webpage all day.

It is HARD doing nothing and feeling guilty about it.
I did it for 5 months and I quit and move to a smaller but busier company.

 

[BJC]

Berserk
Doing nothing is really hard. You never know when your done.

 

[HgTX]

When I first started working, I didn't know how to do anything, and all I could do was read up on things, which puts me right to sleep. There was a lot of sleeping those first few months. Good thing at the time we still had offices instead of cubicles so the sound of the door would give me a chance to pick my head up out of the book.

I went through a training rotation a couple of years ago where the manager said he'd tell me when he had a project insignificant enough to risk on me and then I sat around waiting for weeks. I whined about this to others, and finally someone else offered to give me something else to do, and when I told my manager I was thinking about taking on this other task, lo and behold he found me a project. (It was a pretty yucky task, so it was kind of like I walked in pointing a gun to my own head...)

There's some truth to epoisses' statement that it's management's failure, not yours, but you'd be missing an opportunity to show off your motivation if you just march in and demand that they find you something entertaining to do. Instead follow sms's and others' suggestions--march in there, tell them you're underutilized, and then give them some suggestions for how you'd like to fill the time, such as off-site training courses or conferences, which have the added advantage of increasing your network.

Hg