I had a job like that. I got to know people and made up my own workstream and then people started giving me work.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started a job earlier this year that I was really excited about. Long story short, I’m about eight months in now and there is very little work to do. At first, I was constantly raising my hand to get additional tasks, but at a certain point this got demoralizing. Now, I do the limited work I do have on my in office days and on my WFH days, study for a certification and apply for other jobs. I’m always available if someone needs help and offer to help when requested, but I can’t just make up work to do.

I’m grateful to have a job, but it’s kind of discouraging and very boring.

Has anyone else had an experience like this, and what ended up happening?

It this a government job?

Absolutely not - I’d never work there in light of everything going on lately!!

Sounds like my dream retirement job.

-a teacher

Anonymous wrote:I started a job earlier this year that I was really excited about. Long story short, I’m about eight months in now and there is very little work to do. At first, I was constantly raising my hand to get additional tasks, but at a certain point this got demoralizing. Now, I do the limited work I do have on my in office days and on my WFH days, study for a certification and apply for other jobs. I’m always available if someone needs help and offer to help when requested, but I can’t just make up work to do.

I’m grateful to have a job, but it’s kind of discouraging and very boring.

Has anyone else had an experience like this, and what ended up happening?

It this a government job?

Anonymous wrote:I have been at such a job for 15 years now and counting..biggest mistake of my life because because I didn't learn new skills in the process, have low salary only $105k, although I have amazing health insurance and 6 weeks vacation, I am kind of stuck.

What should I do? I am 47 and have really no relevant experience. Nobody is going to hire me at this age since I have done nothing the past 15 years. But now I have been stuck at $105k. They do slightly adjust my salary with inflation but still I need more money.

So my advice if you are at job and not enough work leave else you will end up like me close to 50 no relevant experience and low pay.

Are you married with kids?

I've been doing nothing for three years, earning $160,000, and I really think I should leave. I'm 35 and single. lol.

Anonymous wrote:I have been at such a job for 15 years now and counting..biggest mistake of my life because because I didn't learn new skills in the process, have low salary only $105k, although I have amazing health insurance and 6 weeks vacation, I am kind of stuck.

What should I do? I am 47 and have really no relevant experience. Nobody is going to hire me at this age since I have done nothing the past 15 years. But now I have been stuck at $105k. They do slightly adjust my salary with inflation but still I need more money.

So my advice if you are at job and not enough work leave else you will end up like me close to 50 no relevant experience and low pay.

I am definitely trying to. The market is rough right now :/

Anonymous wrote:I have been at such a job for 15 years now and counting..biggest mistake of my life because because I didn't learn new skills in the process, have low salary only $105k, although I have amazing health insurance and 6 weeks vacation, I am kind of stuck.

What should I do? I am 47 and have really no relevant experience. Nobody is going to hire me at this age since I have done nothing the past 15 years. But now I have been stuck at $105k. They do slightly adjust my salary with inflation but still I need more money.

So my advice if you are at job and not enough work leave else you will end up like me close to 50 no relevant experience and low pay.

Your job must have some duties on paper you can put on a resume, even if you do nothing all day in actuality.

I have been at such a job for 15 years now and counting..biggest mistake of my life because because I didn't learn new skills in the process, have low salary only $105k, although I have amazing health insurance and 6 weeks vacation, I am kind of stuck.

What should I do? I am 47 and have really no relevant experience. Nobody is going to hire me at this age since I have done nothing the past 15 years. But now I have been stuck at $105k. They do slightly adjust my salary with inflation but still I need more money.

So my advice if you are at job and not enough work leave else you will end up like me close to 50 no relevant experience and low pay.

Yes, at a federal agency. I think they needed my position filled for statutory reasons, but really, there was almost nothing to do. There's a bigger story here, but I will just say that I left when the time was right for me.

Yes, I had a job that had 2-4 hours of work to do generally. I lived it up until we moved a year later. Used the "experience" to get a promotion at a new job.

Anonymous wrote:I started a job earlier this year that I was really excited about. Long story short, I’m about eight months in now and there is very little work to do. At first, I was constantly raising my hand to get additional tasks, but at a certain point this got demoralizing. Now, I do the limited work I do have on my in office days and on my WFH days, study for a certification and apply for other jobs. I’m always available if someone needs help and offer to help when requested, but I can’t just make up work to do.

I’m grateful to have a job, but it’s kind of discouraging and very boring.

Has anyone else had an experience like this, and what ended up happening?

It sucks because you learn nothing.

I was hired by a large big name defense contractor to work on a large delivery and was put on a team with a near retirement aged man who refused to share any info with coworkers. It was miserable.

My first week there the old guy pointedly told me they hired me to take over his job because he was too highly paid and that he would not allow that. They hired me because he complained he had too much work but he was a 9 to 5 worker in a company where many worked overtime trying to get a large delivery done on time.

Our manager was a nice guy but a terrible manager. They knew this guy was secretive and only cared about protecting his job but did nothing to help me when he wouldn't share anything with me or give me work. For over a year another employee and I had less than an hours work each day.

It was very demoralizing. To add to the misery my coworkers saw I had little work and treated me poorly. Everyone knew the old guy was the issue but the misogyny at this place was horrible. I hated not being useful when there was a ton of work to do and I learned absolutely nothing. I would hunt for technical manuals to read to learn something.

I found another job in the organization and was excited and the old guy complained way up the chain and blocked my move. This jerk refused to involve me in any of the work and then threw a hissy fit that I was leaving his team. Management was so afraid of him that they gave him whatever he wanted. I left the company. My lousy manager asked to meet me several times after I put in my resignation and I refused. He knew what was going on and did nothing. The company allowed our customer to be charged salaries for two employees who did little work. To this day I despise my manager more than the old guy.

Yep this happened to me. I moved internally to an office with tons of work. I love being busy, but I do fondly remember days of not having enough work. It would be nice once in a while.

yes, my 2nd job out of college i was hired to be the low level PR person at a nonprofit think tank. I had about 4 hours of work every month to put together a text based newsletter. I just took other people's copy and formatted. No content creation of my own. It was insanely boring and i was glad to quit at the one year mark to go back to school. They continued to staff that job with 1-year hires for at least 5 more years.

I assumed they kept hiring for the role because to not hire would be to acknowledge that my boss (PR director) himself had very little to do. Like, if he declined to re-hire someone, people in the org would get the idea that there wasn't much going on in his department. I still don't know what that guy did all day long and he's still there 25 years later as like a c-suite role now. Still living in his large bethesda house. Unbelievable.

My takeaway was to never work in nonprofit again. I am now a biglaw partner, work 60+ hours a week and am much happier.

Yes, and BEWARE ! For apx 6 months I didn’t have enough to do because not enough direction from my government customer. So I researched a lot and made work, all well documented, in anticipation of starting a project we discussed. I was billing the customer for 40 hours/week as directed by both my manager and project lead because they didn’t assign me to other work even though I asked. I realized too late they were using this customer as a gravy train thinking they could get away with it… but once the government customer realized what was going on they were furious. Both the customer snd my management blamed ME and fired me, even though I had documented proof that I was working on stuff related to the group goals and future work!

Basically, they had to cover their butts so used me as the scapegoat (probably timecard fraud by my employer for allowing me to bill without government direction, but my manager signed off on it). I should’ve known this would happen so my bad for staying there.