My current job doesn't excite me, and any exciting work is taken over by senior members. How should I discuss this with my manager?

Question

I joined a product company 1.5 years ago as a full stack developer. As per the Job description it was mentioned they need people skilled in Java as well as HTML and JavaScript. I was asked interview questions related to Java and my current experience.

I got hired but there was not much work when I joined the team...

Me and one more person joined together as full stack developers. I was very excited to join the company since this is my first job experience in a Product based company. We went for Learnings like React and Python. (They asked us to just learn as it may be useful but there were no practical application for the same). But then we were asked to get trained in low code tools like workflows, decision service etc - something similar to Pega. (Here there is some need to use Java and JavaScript skills to design solutions)

So our expectations got totally crushed. They already had formed teams and actually all interesting development work within that automation platform was done by the existing team; we were only doing manual testing of their work.

We got totally frustrated, then after 8 months since the start of our team, our team got split. Thinking we will get interesting opportunities, especially I thought I will get to work in some challenging requirements..

But no, I realised that this team was formed only to create POCs and any complex business requirements would be given to the "expert team" (another team within the same department).

My current work is totally adhoc and doesn't involve challenges at all which doesn't excite me at all. In January 2022 it will be 2 years in this company.

My team structure is also very weird. Any challenging requirements which comes within the tool itself is taken over by our senior team member who is around 20 years experience and he doesn't let us work on those requirements even though there is not deadline for the project submission. Then I am left with only doing manual testing for those solutions created.

My manager doesn't work in my team directly. He works in another team and gets updates about my work monthly twice in one-on-one meetings.

I have indirectly told about my concern to him but how should I tell him about my concern in a even more polished way? I see better opportunities and teams in the same company but my bad luck that I got struck in this team. Please help me in understanding how better I could communicate this with my manager.

I feel time is running and I am not able to plan anything properly. Only getting worried about my career since I feel from past 1.6 years I have done nothing good to show in my resume or profile. I feel it is not because I am not capable of doing it but it is because I didn't get chance to showcase of utilise my skills properly.

PS: Another guy who joined with me as full stack developer just resigned and joined another company because he was also not satisfied with the work here. I am still in a dilemma because the company which I am working in is a very good company and I just don't want to quit without trying out some other opportunity within same organization.

Answer 1

Please help me in understanding how better I could communicate this with my manager.

Be direct. Schedule a meeting with your manager. Tell them you feel you have grown a lot and you feel that you belong in one of the expert teams. Ask what the path for a transfer to one of those teams is.

If your manager cannot show you a path forward, be prepared to look for another job.

Answer 2

Schedule a meeting with your manager about career growth. Talk to him and say that you want more challenging work. Say you have different ideas about how this could be done: Different tasks in your team (the stuff the senior does), changing team. Ask your manager how you could do more challenging work, if he has any ideas. Because change of team is only one solution, he might come up with other things.

If you would really change job over this, I might add the subtle threat. A phrasing like: I want more challenging work, and I would like to do it here. -> Meaning: If I don't do it here, I will quit.

Sometimes, you have to make clear that your wants can't be ignored without consequences.

This has worked for me in the past, you have to gauge the risk of being fired first. That's up to you, and depends on country/law situation. In my country, I can't be fired for telling somebody I will quit if nothing changes.

What can work too is showing subtle signs of thinking about change. Like making or updating your Linkedin-Profile. I worked for a company, if you did that, you immediatly got a meeting with the manager asking what's up, are you thinking about leaving, what reasons could there be for you to stay? Of course, this meeting might have ended in them not willing to accomodate you, but sometimes accomodation happened.