Your main job is done
Any administrative like things are done
Your emails are cleaned out
You completed all required training and some extras for “fun”
You’ve asked peers if they need help
You’ve asked management for extra work and completed that too
Scheduled PTO for the year
Browsed all the teamworks articles
What do you all do? Im running out of ideas and the days are long. Especially when remote.
in short, you are no longer needed.
Ummm…in that situation, it’s probably time to look for a new job or use some PTO.
@zyx+1fUkiClk
If you are not busy constantly, and absolutely crammed during the busiest times, yes you are over staffed.
OP here: this isn’t typical and is temporary. We fluctuate up and down a lot. I wouldn’t say we are over staffed because when we’re “up” we get deadlines done by the skin of our teeth. If it were that constant, I’d probably find a new role. Just looking for fresh ideas of what others do during these times that I may not have thought of.
Appreciate the input thus far.
Wow, I have a backlog hundreds of hours long and work 60-70 hours a week. All thanks to “do more with less” manager style here. I never have a time when I have no work to do, just times I’m too tired to do more work.
Maybe OP will luck out when I find a better place to work and inherit some of the backlog to keep them busy. 🙄
Something that I do is go over spreadsheets that I use to track my work and remove unnecessary or outdated activities. Delete old and outdated files from my computer. Delete unneeded emails. File emails sitting in my inbox that I will need later. Get things ready and organized for upcoming work.
Read articles on Yahoo. Shhhh...don't tell anyone. Lol
Lift
I experience this situation often. Between doing crosswords, school work, reading scathing political satire, reading good literature, and dreaming about quitting this rat race to become a global nomad I play a lot of video games.
Nap
@waw+1fUkiClk
Agreed - if a manager has employees with that much time on their hands repeatedly they are over staffed. They should be trimming those employees down or taking on new work to assign to them. Bad management indeed.
are you in tech? cause i’m slammed. i can’t even have time to think about my projects, i just go go go.
Welcome to corporate America. Too much fluff is built in. Those of us who grew up blue collar and first generation college have a hard time adapting to the make believe work that takes place in financial services and banks. When I hear someone complain about how 'tough' their day was takes all I can do to not laugh at them. Try working somewhere where you have measurable output to complete. Most everything here is so non consequential, it is laughable. Before attacking what I said, how many projects have you been on where the final output is not recognizable as to what the initial goal was? Keep changing the goal and you can never 'fail'.
Take some training courses to better yourself or to better the skills you already have. =)
My team works hard all week and whenever we have times where things are slow we are packing our schedules or volunteering to help other groups in our umbrella. If your manager sees your downtime and requests for more work and you still have that much free time - that’s poor management.
Be glad you’re not in an open office.
you start attending the stanford AI seminars
Don’t tell anyone
Search for a new job!
Have you binge watch Netflix Dirty Money series?