No offense, but I think asking around for things to do is a fairly junior attitude. The more experienced ones usually don't look at tickets, but instead start proposing things that can be done.
There is a difference between going rogue and taking initiative though! Talk to your manager or set up some 1:1s with people on your team, just saying "I have bandwidth" during standup isn't really the best time.
While talking with your teammates try to ask what projects or tasks they would like to see done but don't have the time. Flaky integration tests? Implement a ticket flow for incoming bug reports? Improve team wiki and system documentation? There's got to be lots of things to do.
And like a previous comment said, waiting around for work is a junior mindset. Take a look around and try to improve the pain points for your team.
Depends on the culture. After working in startups, I joined a bigger company. I burned through the work they gave me & convinced myself that I’d get fired for not having stuff to work on. I started proposing stuff to work on, but the problem was I couldn’t get access to any of the systems. I couldn’t push containers to the container registry. I couldn’t access GitLab admin settings. I couldn’t commit to repos with our Chef recipes. Everything I wanted to improve was in someone else’s sphere of influence, and I had to justify extracurricular commits on my team’s projects because every change had to be review by our understaffed QA team. I finally realized that the expectations of me were really low and that I needed to accept being underutilized or I’d go crazy.
Perhaps you mean to say don't be a bull in a china shop? That could be a problem. I've worked in large companies and taking initiative is the way to get recognition and build rapport. Company size is irrelevant to people recognizing that you take initiative. Taking on new things doesn't have to involve disrupting others, stepping on people's toes or otherwise doing things that are harmful to other teams. In fact, the larger the company, the more there is to do. People get deep in the complexity and there isn't anyone to repair duct taped stuff that that makes the giant machine run.
When I had not much to do, I'd sharpen up my own skills by building tools for others. I quickly become the guy to go to for tools. Instant credibilty in a Fortune 50 company. Making others' life easier is a quick way to win them over and be your advocate for life. If you do this enough, it compounds and pays dividends in your career.
I think it's a balance. I worked at a large company for years and never felt weird picking up coding tasks that weren't strictly in my task list or even immediate responsibility area if I felt they needed to be done, or if I just had an interest in learning more about that thing. To an extent it's probably about having a good overview of what kinds of tasks are "up for the taking" and being able to find the right people to communicate with if unsure.
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This might be true in the startup world where product managers have less well defined boundaries on what their role entails. At bigcorp© it’s generally frowned upon to go rogue and start working on stuff at random.
There is a difference between going rogue and taking initiative though! Talk to your manager or set up some 1:1s with people on your team, just saying "I have bandwidth" during standup isn't really the best time.
While talking with your teammates try to ask what projects or tasks they would like to see done but don't have the time. Flaky integration tests? Implement a ticket flow for incoming bug reports? Improve team wiki and system documentation? There's got to be lots of things to do.
And like a previous comment said, waiting around for work is a junior mindset. Take a look around and try to improve the pain points for your team.
Depends on the culture. After working in startups, I joined a bigger company. I burned through the work they gave me & convinced myself that I’d get fired for not having stuff to work on. I started proposing stuff to work on, but the problem was I couldn’t get access to any of the systems. I couldn’t push containers to the container registry. I couldn’t access GitLab admin settings. I couldn’t commit to repos with our Chef recipes. Everything I wanted to improve was in someone else’s sphere of influence, and I had to justify extracurricular commits on my team’s projects because every change had to be review by our understaffed QA team. I finally realized that the expectations of me were really low and that I needed to accept being underutilized or I’d go crazy.
Perhaps you mean to say don't be a bull in a china shop? That could be a problem. I've worked in large companies and taking initiative is the way to get recognition and build rapport. Company size is irrelevant to people recognizing that you take initiative. Taking on new things doesn't have to involve disrupting others, stepping on people's toes or otherwise doing things that are harmful to other teams. In fact, the larger the company, the more there is to do. People get deep in the complexity and there isn't anyone to repair duct taped stuff that that makes the giant machine run.
When I had not much to do, I'd sharpen up my own skills by building tools for others. I quickly become the guy to go to for tools. Instant credibilty in a Fortune 50 company. Making others' life easier is a quick way to win them over and be your advocate for life. If you do this enough, it compounds and pays dividends in your career.
It's moving away from "I have nothing to do. Give me something to do," and towards, "I have nothing to do. Here's what I would like to do..."
It's why there's daily stand ups too, so the entire team can approve or reject.
I think it's a balance. I worked at a large company for years and never felt weird picking up coding tasks that weren't strictly in my task list or even immediate responsibility area if I felt they needed to be done, or if I just had an interest in learning more about that thing. To an extent it's probably about having a good overview of what kinds of tasks are "up for the taking" and being able to find the right people to communicate with if unsure.
This. At bigcorp the last thing you want to be doing is showing initiative.