I won't say I haven't worked for most of my career. I would say I've worked maybe about 1/3rd of my 10 years in tech. But about 2/3 of that time I've been on p

I won't say I haven't worked for most of my career. I would say I've worked maybe about 1/3rd of my 10 years in tech. But about 2/3 of that time I've been on projects that involved little or no work. It's prevalent at banks, hospitals, and certain types of consulting work where you get brought in to failing projects but the projects are always failing because of organizational dysfunction, not because they needed more engineers, so there's nothing you can really do. This can vary in extent from - Here's 3- 10 hours of work. I need it by the end of the month. You can literally tell the boss that. They'll just say don't worry, just get it done - This project will be getting new requirements handed down to us in a month. 5 months later, the requirements never came. I rewrote the whole legacy Java app in rails and fixed all the issues because this was pre remote work so I was sitting in a cubicle and very bored. Never told anyone, just threw it away when I left. I would have surely been punished for making people look bad if I told them I had fixed their entire app because I was bored in this kind of environment. - The funniest ones: When the bosses constantly need to show you they are tough by demanding that you "get stuff done" but when you ask for details they say "we'll go over it in the next meeting". They are bullshitting but somehow feel that they need to act out being a boss so they constantly act annoyed that you aren't getting stuff done even though when you press them, they have no work for you. This can go for years. - Once had a pre remote job at a major bank where they just threw like 50 consultants in a room and rarely gave anyone any instructions. I just stopped showing up and would answer chat if anyone chatted me. After about 3 weeks they figured out I wasn't showing up. I told them I wouldn't come back in unless they gave me work. They got back to me two weeks later and just told me I needed to start coming back in again but couldn't promise they could give me work. Ended up just walking away.