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I work remotely as a software engineering contractor.

I believe, and have been told, that I made valuable contributions during my time with the company.

However my work for the past three months has been sitting in unapproved, unmerged pull requests and therefore not used in the product despite the fact that it's supposed to fix some IMO important flaws or bugs.

I brought this up in meetings and in emails, but so far nothing has been done about it.

I also asked for guidance from the higher ups whether I should be focusing on something else, rather than continuing to deliver apparently useless code, but my emails have been ignored and I have received no answer.

My impression based on snippets I gathered (such as being asked to suggest new features) is that they may have started working on a brand new version of the product, without involving me in the new work. Again, I have no official confirmation for this as they haven't responded to any of my questions.

For the past two weeks the only work I have performed is to address a few technical questions about some features of the product. I haven't actually done any new development, which was my decision, hoping that would get their attention and elicit a response, unsuccessfully so far.

I find this lack of feedback and interest in my recent work puzzling given that the company continued paying me for code they haven't used, and professionally very unrewarding, and so I have decided to resign effective immediately.

But I'd like to hear others' views on this before I make the move.

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  • 1
    Did the company make any guarantees that all of your code would be used in the product?
    – sf02
    May 29, 2020 at 18:36
  • 2
    Don't resign. Get them on the phone first.
    – Stephan Branczyk
    May 29, 2020 at 18:38
  • 3
    Have they been paying you?
    – Matthew Gaiser
    May 29, 2020 at 18:43
  • No, they didn't make any guarantees they would use my code.
    – Ady
    May 29, 2020 at 18:50
  • 1
    Yes, they have been paying me for the work done, used or not.
    – Ady
    May 29, 2020 at 18:50

3 Answers 3

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You are a contractor. As a contractor you do the job and send the company huge bills. The only thing that makes you stop doing your job is when your bills don’t get paid.

Deciding not to do new development puts you into a very bad position.

And quitting over this, especially at this point in time, means you are as stupid as the company. Take their money for as long as you can.

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    This. If they want to pay you to write code they don’t use, that’s on them. If you want ownership in the product, then don’t be a hired gun.
    – Ernest Friedman-Hill
    Jun 1, 2020 at 3:30
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It is easier to get a job when employed

I don't know why you would resign immediately. Go back to doing some development and use the rest of the time to apply for other jobs. Make sure that you can actually get another job before ditching this one.

Don't get fixated on the why

I've seen senior Java backend engineers hired to do React and CSS. I've seen developers work on a platform for months only to be told to throw it out and redo it in a different language. I've had friends paid to do nothing but show up at meetings or punished for automating SQL queries by some manager who thinks they are hacking by compacting them into a single program. In my organization, I theoretically should have had at least two performance reviews by now. I have never had one.

Plenty of things just get dropped, forgotten, or never attended to.

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It sounds like that they are trying to part ways with you. Agreeing with @Matthew to look for a new job first before quitting. Especially with COVID-19 I would be cautious for quitting. It could also be unrelated, maybe they are just discussing the future path forward and once they know that you will get work again. And if you decide to quit, don't burn bridges.

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  • I agree that there is no specific question in my post, and that may be a negative. However, the underlying issue is that I invest myself fully in my work, and this unexplained behavior on the part of the company is very unsettling to me - is it related to the quality of my work, or some other reason? That makes it a more personal issue, and I was hoping to get some more objective feedback from the community, to allow me to get a better perspective on things.
    – Ady
    May 29, 2020 at 19:23
  • @Ady Quitting immediately just results in you having no pay and doesn't change the fact that you still have no work to fully invest yourself into.
    – DKNguyen
    May 31, 2020 at 7:26

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