[xyzzy4747]

One of my points is, nobody has to officially be a product owner to figure out things to do. Everyone should care about the product and can use their imagination to come up with tasks, or like I said, can just ask others.

If he can’t figure out how to be useful, that is also a sign of immaturity (at least in the workforce context), and also points to communication issues and incompetency.

[anon2020dot00]

He is 6 months on the job. He doesn't know the proper context of the business and it is normal and expected to be handheld at the start. If he was already at some length in the company, then it would be normal and expected that he would be able to come-up with his own initiatives and ideas on how to improve the product beyond the directions that the superiors give-out.

At this point, he is being frozen-out by his teammates or maybe it is just normal ebb and flow like usually newcomers take some time to be integrated in a big company but it depends.

[xyzzy4747]

6 months is a fairly long time in my opinion, plus he can use his spare time to learn more about the business. I will just stand by my opinion that he probably has incentive issues, communication issues, and/or various types of incompetencies or lack of experience, or maybe even a lack of vision of what he wants to do with his life (e.g. doesn’t care about or focus on making super cool/useful stuff). I highly doubt others are “freezing” him out.

[anon2020dot00]

There's no sign that he is lacking in incentive/incompetent/lack of experience, in fact, he mentions that he is actively making it known to his teammates that he has spare time and is not loaded during meetings.

He hasn't mentioned any struggles to deliver or challenges with his past tasks; it just comes across that he is much less busy than his peers and he is wondering why. Maybe he is not liked and that's why I mention freezing him out, I guess one can classify that as a "communication issue" or the other possibility is that it just takes time to be integrated in a big company like other commentators have said.

By freezing-out, I don't mean that his teammates are actively hostile against him but just that maybe they don't trust him yet to give more tasks, just like how any newcomer is treated with some unfamiliarity at the start. I guess that counts as a "communication issue".

You seem to like to point the blame at the employee only while others have mentioned that it just takes time to build trust and to be given tasks and others have mentioned that he might have already lost the trust of his teammates which I guess does point to a failing in his part if so.

In a big company, there is also usually more room to coast and that is another possibility in that the manager is just not pushing that much and that is normal for a new-hire. I think there are just more possibilities than the fact that the employee is incompetent which seems to be your immediate conclusion without sufficient evidence.

[jfrbfbreudh]

6 months is an eternity at an early stage startup and barely touching the surface at a tech giant.

[0x445442]

How to be useful means many things to many people. It’s not uncommon to spend time performing useful work that’s not viewed as such by the right people. Back when engineers actually interfaced with stake holders these types of issues were less prevalent.