Due to a reorg, I've been left without work and haven't been doing much.
With a recent, completely unexpected reorg, the product my team owns has effectively been cancelled and will be sunsetted. The company is trying to figure out new scope for my team, but in the meantime, I don't really have stuff to work on. Here are my questions:
- Is having 1-2 months of downtime like this okay for my job and career?
- What can I do in the meantime to be productive? I've mainly just been doing auxiliary things like reading documentation.
![Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Famazon_logo.jpg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Dff5f2302-08be-43bc-b7b1-d381ba508d99&w=48&q=75){kind=logo}
Discussion
(1 comment)- 12 years agoMeta, Pinterest, Kosei
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At a company like Amazon, having downtime is probably fine, given that this situation was completely out of your control. However, I'd be looking around at your teammates -- are they able to find something productive to do? You don't want to be the only one left twiddling your thumbs.
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Instead of just reading documentation, work backward from the deliverable. For example, can you target some tangible improvements in the documentation? Fix up a flaky test case? Automate an existing manual process? Start with some known pain point, however small, and improve it. Talk to people to find out what these are!
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