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It's been 8 months that I'm hired, I'm backfill of a promoted guy who is supposed to mentor me.

I have more than 10 years experience but when they were interviewing me I told them that I'm new to the applications they use and they were okay with that. My supervisor (who is another guy) recently told me he was satisfied with how fast I learned everything with their system; according to my mentor's comments and another guy's who sometimes mentor me as well.

The problem is that my main mentor doesn't assign me serious tasks and whenever I ask him for it he just tries to keep me busy with ridiculous, unnecessary, and sometimes fake tasks.

I have talked to my supervisor a few times that I'm idle most of the time and need to be assigned more tasks to be able to learn more and get experienced and he has always asked me to coordinate with those two guys but nothing has changed so far.

I don't know how to resolve this issue since neither talking to my mentor nor my supervisor has helped so far. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

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    How does your team decide on the list of tasks to work on? Do you have a bugtracker, or something of that sort?
    – Masked Man
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 16:49

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This could be a secret test of character where they are waiting for you to take the initiative and find things to work on.

Look around, talk to the people you are supposed to coordinate. If they still produce nothing to give you, dig around on the systems, see if is anything you can start to work on just to learn, then do it, so that the next time you approach your boss or supervisor you can say. "Well, I still don't have much to do, but I've found this with our XYZ system and have been looking into it."

Take the initiative, don't wait to get assigned something, find things to do on your own

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  • If your not busy, tell your manager you need more work to do.
    – Neo
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 16:55
  • Actually, I've done so. (to answer the previous reply as well)we have a bug tracker available to everyone. I always hunt whatever is, but I can rarely find anything. some of them are related to their authority that they never assign me those. And the rest, if any, I show the willingness to do them but my mentor leads me to something worthless. I'm fed up with keep asking them to assign me something. And recently I've talked to my supervisor about that again as well.
    – Ms improving
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 16:58
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Do you think there is a way to turn in those fake, unnecessary and ridiculous task into something useful? Get what you can from your mentor's plate and look for something that you can improve on. Find ways to showcase your skills. Perhaps a solution they never thought of. Possibly automate something they do manual. I know it's not the ideal end goal but it's a start no matter how trivial it is.

Doesn't sound like you guys have a daily review of projects or a transparent view of all projects going on where you can jump in, get your feet wet and be productive. Due to your team culture, you have 2 task; take the initiative for other things as @Richard U said AND improve on those projects that you get.

I'm sure in time, you'll get something to work on that's meaningful.

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