Going Crazy at work



  • Ok! The product I work on is great, but has had virtually zero support (or, hell, attention) from management for, oh, about 2 years now. It's been about a year since our last sales-y person left the company. In that time the number of projects have dwindled and dwindled while the product has gotten better and better.

    For the last 6 months, I've had almost nothing to do here. Nothing. I've been moved into a group that's supposed to be working on new product development, but it turns out the director of that group just ignores me entirely, just like the last 2 years of managers. I'm supposed to be given directives from above, but they never arrive-- none of the product ideas our group presented at "innovation day" have seen the light of day. My product needs maybe 2-4 hours of maintenance every week, so as you can imagine that doesn't take up much of my time, and while I sometimes get people asking me JS or SQL questions, it seems like no other groups in the company (at least in the Seattle office) need a full-time developer.

    So I end up working on these stupid projects nobody wants, and which die on the vine as soon as I reach a stage where I need either managerial support or budget to buy servers/programming libraries/whatever. I think three of these in the last year and a half. Some of these I know would save money, but without any marketing-type people, I have no idea how to sell the idea, or even to whom to sell it.

    It's starting to drive me mad, and I don't know what to do.

    Anyway, so now you know why I post here so much. I literally have nothing better to do at work.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Anyway, so now you know why I post here so much. I literally have nothing better to do at work.


    Morbs 2.0?



  • @boomzilla said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Anyway, so now you know why I post here so much. I literally have nothing better to do at work.


    Morbs 2.0?
    Was that a suggestion for a product Blakey could produce at work?



  • I dunno, I guess it was the talk about the Peter Principle in the other thread. It's kind of like that stupid and completely untrue metaphor about how if you put a frog in some room temperature and heat it up slowly he doesn't realize he's getting boiled... it didn't really hit home how crappy this job has gotten until recently.

    I guess it's time to move on, but man I'm such a wimp... I get paid good money to go to an office, do nothing useful, and be unhappy. Whee.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I guess it's time to move on, but man I'm such a wimp... I get paid good money to go to an office, do nothing useful, and be unhappy. Whee.

     

    I had one of those.  You can't do actual development because you can't charge your time against a project that hasn't received funding.  And you can't work on anything of your own just to keep your mind active because your entire day is taken up finding places you can charge against without someone screaming at you for blowing some other project's budget.  You can only charge so much against "education".

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I dunno, I guess it was the talk about the Peter Principle in the other thread. It's kind of like that stupid and completely untrue metaphor about how if you put a frog in some room temperature and heat it up slowly he doesn't realize he's getting boiled... it didn't really hit home how crappy this job has gotten until recently.

    I guess it's time to move on, but man I'm such a wimp... I get paid good money to go to an office, do nothing useful, and be unhappy. Whee.

    It unfortunatly does sound like you need to move on.  Could you perhaps take some time to develop new skills?  This would help put you in a desirable place in your job search.  Plus you might even be able to get more money out of the switch. 

    My biggest worry about your situation would be stagnating, where you end up with outdated skills. 



  • Hey I learned in a meeting this morning, a re-org is coming next week. Whee? I guess?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Hey I learned in a meeting this morning, a re-org is coming next week. Whee? I guess?
    Get your resume in order.  Sounds like lay-offs to me



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So I end up working on these stupid projects nobody wants, and which die on the vine as soon as I reach a stage where I need either managerial support...

    So... your group develop any ultra-tear-resistant carbon wires lately, by any chance? Or armor-suits? Or mobile bridge building devices?



  • What the hell are you talking about?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So I end up working on these stupid projects nobody wants, and which die on the vine as soon as I reach a stage where I need either managerial support or budget to buy servers/programming libraries/whatever. I think three of these in the last year and a half. Some of these I know would save money, but without any marketing-type people, I have no idea how to sell the idea, or even to whom to sell it.

    1. Buy the results of your work from your company cheap, because they don't want it.
    2. Sell it back to them a couple of levels up the managerial chain as a third-party 'solution' for ten times the price.

    With your inside knowledge, it can't be hard to sell it if it really will save money - as long as you come along from outside, looking all professional, and have a half-decent sales guy/gal.



  • Wow I come back to work after the weekend and BAM suddenly my good mood dissolves away and I'm going crazy again. Whee!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Wow I come back to work after the weekend and BAM suddenly my good mood dissolves away and I'm going crazy again. Whee!
     

    No offense intended or anything, but you have good moods?  Most of what I see from you is vitrol aimed at whoever was being dumb (or being a poor communicator) so I wasn't sure.



  • @locallunatic said:

    No offense intended or anything, but you have good moods?

    Fewer and fewer.

    @locallunatic said:

    Most of what I see from you is vitrol aimed at whoever was being dumb (or being a poor communicator) so I wasn't sure.

    That's because it's funnier that way.


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