In theory I have the perfect job: I create developer tools to be used with my company's platform. I choose the tech, decide the features and when to deliver. The commute is OK - about 30 minutes from door to door. I get reasonably paid but the workload is just too little. I have to come up with things to do just to fill in the mandatory 40 weekly hours in Jira.
There aren't that many developers using our tools and there isn't a "push" to improve/evolve them so I just drag any tasks endlessly so I have enough to do all week. Still everyone is quite happy with my performance as I get shit done. I know I am not the only one. Other departments have people just idling most of the time.
I feel that I am completely useless. I've already mentored a junior developer so I guess he could handle it on his own.
I am seriously done with this and I would consider moving to a new job if it weren't for two problems: I am having my first baby in a few months and there aren't any product companies around (I don't want to go to a consulting company again).
If I stick around my unit test code coverage will be 200%.
If you're going to be sticking around, is there someway you can (perhaps covertly) pivot within the company? You didn't mention what the platform does, but is there some featureset you could work on in your free time, and then surprise the company?
I don't think I could do something within the platform itself because it's a different team, a different tech stack and a different mindset. They are disconnected from reality and build whatever features the product owner & CTO puts on their plate.
The only thing I could do is to try to convince Sales or Account managers that we need new integrations and POC projects...
Okay, how about: make extremely casual friends with the developers you can resonate with the easiest, and unofficially learn about any and all pain points and so forth. Maybe even hint at the truth about not having enough work to do, if you think it would be understood correctly (something to play by ear), and point out the specific area of tooling you work on.
If you play your cards right, you might be able to go up your chain at the same time you get your new friend(s) to go up their chain, producing a most odd coincidence where some random idea you offhandedly mention to your boss one day happens to be exactly what the boss heard the developer team lead really wanted :) or something to that effect.
Basically figure out how to engineer a planets-aligning moment in terms of approval. If possible, mix things up so it looks like your initiative was key in the new feature happening.
Maybe (more playing by ear) you could skip the coincidence stuff and just mention that you happened to grab lunch with a developer and heard they really wanted XYZ feature (that happens to be exactly the kind of thing you'd be perfect to implement etc etc). Sort of sounds a tad less impressive put that way, but could still work.
