I have became a boring manager

8 points by backendsbelike 5 years ago | 11 comments

For the past couple months I feel like I am doing nothing.

I'm part of the research team, but the only 5 people I was managing were moved to a different project.

I've been working with the same company for 5 years, and I've build a lot of stuff, and I guess I'm at a position where they just pay me before I become relevant with some new project.

What do I do? I talked to my supervisor, and I'm suppose to conduct research in AI, but I don't even have a proper hardware to run training, or enough space to download datasets. I just so easy to procrastinate and do nothing.

I'm also going through some hard personal time, and it's impossible to focus on research while alone at home.

Should I just take time of to recover and don't do any work? Should I change my job?

I feel like I have lost my function at the company. Is that normal from time to time? Maybe I should just enjoy the freedom while it lasts

I hope there is someone who went through that, or someone who can give me some perspective. I'm 30 yo & company pays me great money.

Jugurtha 5 years ago |

>I've been working with the same company for 5 years, and I've build a lot of stuff, and I guess I'm at a position where they just pay me before I become relevant with some new project.

I'm sure there are a lot of problems you really wanted to solve in the past but you couldn't because you were on other projects. Now might be a good time to look at those.

>What do I do? I talked to my supervisor, and I'm suppose to conduct research in AI, but I don't even have a proper hardware to run training, or enough space to download datasets. I just so easy to procrastinate and do nothing.

I'll send you an invite link to our machine learning platform[0] while your supervisor, who probably has a lot going on, gets you the resources. There's a Slack workspace if you encounter troubles using it.

>I'm also going through some hard personal time, and it's impossible to focus on research while alone at home.

My contact information is in my profile page. It'd be my pleasure to go over things with you.

>Should I just take time of to recover and don't do any work? Should I change my job?

This could be one of those times where having more free time could be harmful: one gets too much into their head. Physical activity works for a lot of people who can do that.

>I feel like I have lost my function at the company. Is that normal from time to time? Maybe I should just enjoy the freedom while it lasts

Have you looked at the state of the world? It could affect anyone and we go through situations differently. It happens.

[0]: https://iko.ai

sowhat_alex 5 years ago |

First of all, sorry to hear about going through hard times in your personal life. We are not machines, all facets of our lives related to each other. My first advice is: be kind to yourself. You are not alone, we are all broke one way or another.

As for the job, I used to be a director in a large global financial institution, and every now and then an younger colleague would approach on tips to be a leader. I will give you the short version answer: if you want to be a leader, someone that does work that matters, that is emotionally engaged on the work at hand, then just be it. Leadership is not given, it is taken, it is an attitude.

Seems like you have the potential to be and want to be a leader, but was derailed for one reason or another.

Rethink where you want to go. Set your priorities right. You are the CEO of YOU (https://sowhat.substack.com/p/hiring-the-ceo-of-you)

Best of luck!

segmondy 5 years ago |

Is the hardware what's stopping you? Let's suppose you really want to do this and it's exciting. Go buy the damn hardware yourself. They pay you great money, spend $5,000 buy/build a beefed up desktop with GPU and start training. Submit an expense report. If they deny, no problem, it's your hardware. At the end, you end up working/producing, having fun doing what you want to do, end up with valuable experience.

ManlyBread 5 years ago | |

I feel like spending 5k of your own money to provide value to someone who is not obligated to pay it back is risky at best and utterly stupid at worst. The fact that OP is paid well isn't really an excuse to suddenly start sponsoring his own employer.

giantg2 5 years ago | | |

They might even fire you for running unapproved (unmonitored) hardware/software.

el_dev_hell 5 years ago | |

Alternatively, just ask for the hardware.

cdnsteve 5 years ago |

Do the leg work and provide your manager options with a clear recommendation, with costs. That could be hardware purchase, cloud options in GCP or AWS for a PoC short and longer term.

Start small and build from it. Then look to standardize where and how you do ML.

This sounds like a good opportunity to greenfield ML and create something new.

thedevindevops 5 years ago |

Have you documented what you've built?

You mentioned that you don't have the hardware/space to do your research, have you looked into 3rd party solutions? Budgeted and planned future projects?

You do sound burnt out, maybe taking some holiday leave isn't a bad idea.

quickthrower2 5 years ago |

Would it be a good time to take holiday leave? Work on some side projects or hobbies?

sdf98721 5 years ago |

The symptoms you describe have happened to me, might not be the same cause but worth sharing. At a certain point I felt like it had been months since I had delivered anything of engineering value.

The underlying issue was that my priority alignment is heavily skewed towards delivering solutions to technical problems. On discussing with my leadership, while they appreciate that I'm hands on their read was my organizational experience and "oversight" for major projects was the most valued.

Knowing that really helped me to relax a bit and understand that I won't always be working late nights to deliver some sweet resiliency workflow and thats fine.

TLDR: sync with your leadership and ask what value you bring so you can align your time to their priorities. Warning, this may not be a fun conversation.

apineda 5 years ago |

imo just do nothing. get help or get balance in your personal life while taking it easy a bit. wait for a spark to get engaged at work again. ofc be wary of any performance concerns so make sure there aren't any.