How often do you find yourself with no work due to poor planning?
I've been a software engineer for 12 years, I am pretty good at finding work for myself when there is downtime. But my current company definitely has a pattern with our features:
We need to get this done as soon as possible, can we do it RIGHT NOW??
We scramble to get to work, then realize everything is extremely vague, and send it back for better requirements gathering
Multiple weeks can sometimes go by where we hear nothing. Several different features in varying states of readiness, leaving us to just do basic testing or come up with work on our own while we wait
Suddenly after weeks of silence, the product people realize the release date is in a week and they haven't given us requirements, they scramble to put it together, and then we have to finish everything in a week.
Sometimes it's better than this, but as of right now I have 3 things I'm working on, and all of them are waiting on other people. I have tech debt I can tackle, but making up my own work, knowing it could be interrupted at any moment by a "crisis" is frustrating.