Fellas,
Shed some lights on this! What is the best way to kill time whenever we ran out of official work at office.
I Always Find Very Difficult to Kill Time When No Work Is Being Assigned to Me at Office!
Sowny on 13/12/2016 - 15:04
Last edited 13/12/2016 - 15:06 by 1 other user
Last edited 13/12/2016 - 15:06 by 1 other user
Comments
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Hi Misu P … Want a job??? ;)
Wish my devs would (all) have your drive …I am on number 9 right now :), starting a new job after the new year.
I'll pay more.
What's number 9?
You are a dream developer that a company wants. Most devs don't even know how to code what is given…..
Or sit around thinking "I have no work" like OP does.
That you're free to do all these things says you haven't worked in a bureaucratic environment. Some of us don't get to check in code willy nilly like that. New code coverage tests that aren't approved either can't be checked in or if they are you'll be asked to get them authorized or remove them.
Refactoring requires a complete regression test with both automated and manual testing by a dedicated team. I won't go into what I code, but this is a good thing.
That said self-improvement and training are always possible.
I bet my bureaucratic environment beats your bureaucratic environment, unless you also work for the government in that case lets call it a tie.
I have the same restrictions that you mention. I put my tests / fixes for anything I find into branches, when the next big round of changes comes I am bundle-ing them in. The team of testers will still test almost everything anyway (I gave up trying to convince them about automatic testing) and the code changes still go to the normal peer review process (and the accompanying stack of documentation that needs to be done).
If you cannot check in code into branches… then you win…
Can't create branches without approval either. Each change has to be approved and tested by the test team. Can't just lump in a bunch of changes. If the business haven't asked for it I have to fight to get it in, and ensure I describe it well enough to the test team for them to test it, then justify that cost and time. I have been able to refactor from time to time, but have to spend 20x as long justifying why the change should be allowed to various levels of management as I do actually writing the code. I won't comment on govt vs not except to say it's not that clear cut.
@syousef: damn that is harsh. I can see the product (the other devs) of such environment and it is not quite ok, take care mate.
I agree with what others have said. It is most appropriate to learn or improve skills related to your work via online tutorials and such.
In your field it shouldn't be too hard to find skills you can invest time in. But i might list some ideas for others reading.
I recently invested some time in learning some more advanced excel features and got into visual basic in excel. This can be a helpful skill for nearly any professional working in an office environment.
Additionally I have spent time getting familiar with standards that I work with or may need to reference in the future. This just makes it easier to find what you need next time you reference the standard.
Finally, when things are slow and my work doesn't require 100% of my focus, I have listened to ebooks while I work.
I want to find some educational ebooks or ones that might help a professional career along the lines of 'how to win friends and influence people'.
Listen to some of Tim Ferriss' Podcast and get into their book / source recommendations. I feel like that's great input.
Don't take this the wrong way but you sound a little bit immature in your mindset. I assume you are still quite young.
There is always stuff to do, unless you are waiting to be spoon fed with projects by your boss. Basically what I am saying is take the initiative.
As others have said, you could actually talk to your boss about the situation.
Perhaps you could take on a part of another role or support someone else in their position.
look at costs associated in your position, perhaps break them down and see how you can help the company make savings. I.e engage other suppliers or contractors for pricing quotes , present these to the boss. Show you are being proactive.
update any software, databases, etc you use may use to make it more user friendly and efficient for your team.
Develop yourself by learning about other areas of the business.
Help develop others by doing a lunch and learn a couple of times a month. Teaching others about what your role encompasses, or how you interface with their department.
Take the lead on it and don't wait for someone else to develop you. You'll do much better in you career if you are proactive and keen.
Lastly, if you feel this organisation isn't challenging you, get another job that does, to improve your future career prospects.
Ah! I think what suits me best and move on. Cheers!
learn something new, educate yourself, study uni online
quit
get a better paying jobor
take up smoking, and 2 hours lunches
An hour coffee run in the morning and afternoon, 2 hours lunches, lots of toilet breaks, walk around with a piece of paper and talk with work colleagues on your way walking around, hang out in the office kitchen, etc.
Work related activities: think about improvement that you want or can make for your current work processes, create procedure/s for your processes, ask your colleagues if they need any help, update your work plan, etc.
Look for bargains and comps to post on Ozbargain.
Spend time buying stuff you see on Ozbargain.
Enter every competition on Ozbargain.
Fellas? Acknowledging the existence of another gender might be a good start champ.
Save your politically correct circlejerking for Tumblr.
i only have around 2 hours of work to do most days. also they added an additional headcount to my team even though we were already overstaffed. at first i thought they were getting rid of me by making me redundant, but now I just think management has no idea whats going on. I wish the office wasn't so open plan so I didn't have to hide my extra browser windows with ozbargain etc open.
I strongly believe that, its a common issue with some big companies around the world!
I comment on news site articles. I don't really like to but if i don't tell people how wrong they are, how will they know?
Three things-
1.Learn more about your company ( go through the corporate knowledge management tool)
2. Ask for more work.
3. Upskill yourself by doing online free courses.was happening to me last couple of days. so i started looking for things to do.
Reminds me of the guy they couldn't fire from Silicon Valley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66I7Mhkkl64).
Whatever you do don't draw attention to yourself until you're ready to leave the job. A lot of people at your work are probably in the same boat.
Clean the bosses car Polish his shoes etc
How about you spend time on a start up, maybe the next ozbargain?
thats a cool idea but don't like it.
Scotty wont like that and will send his army of OZbers wearing OZB t-shirts to wreck any start-up.
Could call the new one: Nia grab zo. That's not such a bad idea……
In order…
ozbargain.com.au
news.com.au
asx.com.au
commsec.com.au
codewars.com
stackoverflow.comif all failed, then seek.com.au :)
ha ha …classic
Jar of vaseline, a roll of paper towel and a quiet bathroom…
slither.io
Ah! I'm bored of it mate. I played a lot.
i sat in a job for 2 years doing nothing after a takeover by a company in another state, I even told them i had nothing to do, and they said to sit tight till projects got approved.
everything i did/suggested got ignored by the office interstate.
I passed the time by betting on the dogs, taking monster lunch breaks, joined ahm and blasted the sh*t out of free massages one a day for a month straight then closed it, went home to sleep, swim, poo, watch sport etc, i knew youtube off by heart, ozbargained galore, new every real estate listing in perth, printed stuff out just to get exercise.
then out of the blue i got put on a project and 2 months in got made redundant and handed a monster cheque. makes no sense what big companies do, but my only downfall is i learnt nothing new,
dont let your skills fall behind, learn new things.
Find another job
This. You're gonna need it sooner than you think OP.
Between your own mediocre attitude and the glaringly obvious systemic HR/PM problems within your organisation, you're looking at a pending professional train wreck…
Create your own YouTube channel and broadcast from your office chair, there's a lot of money in reviewing fast food and unboxing useless junk and it's all tax deductible.
Uhm, I could try introducing a new website where we can collate all the ideas we discussed here ;)
- Ask for more work, or exposure to other parts of the company. I've done this in every role I've ever been in and it's the #1 reason I've moved up so quickly.
- Be proactive. My team and I have 20+ potential ideas / projects on our "to do" list at any given time. Often these "to do" items will be something like "Build a preliminary project plan for a product launch in Japan". We might not need it for 12 months, but when the opportunity arises we're already prepared for it.
- Give (or receive) training. You can't move up if without the skills to do so, or someone to replace you. Start mentoring someone to take on your role one day, and seek out a mentor to help you work your own way up.
Interesting. Really interesting!! I will definitely keep this in mind but, I feel it requires impeccable concentration and totally depends on the interest towards the work you do.
What's your nature of wok?
I work in a computer security related field, helping people that have gone through identity theft, malware infection, being hacked etc (among other things).. But those rules have served me in every role I've had since high school.
See if u can start a second job like selling on eBay?
Since you work in a large company some legitimate stuff you can do in your down time is use their intranet.
A list of reading material on most company intranet: Mission statement, company goals, projects, descriptions of other systems, description of other sections, OH&S, fire evacuation plan, salary packaging, superannuation, suggestion box/feedback, legal stuff (anti-discrimination, anti-bully, unfair dismissal, appeal processes, early termination), information on performance reviews, information on 360 review process, free online training, leadership courses, monthly news letters, social club activities, charity events, internal classifieds, etc.
If you're the impatient and hard working type then you're problem is that you don't have a competent supervisor (else they'd be handing you more work). Be brave and improve your communication skills with team mates. Occassionally chat with others in your team, offer assistance on team projects/activities. Chat and get to know other team leaders working in parallel projects/sections. Develop your social networking skills and future job prospects.
Heck if you are talented it doesn't take long for people to recognise. Outside teams will start considering you as a spokes person/conduit for your team. Or your supervisor and team mates will start offloading their tasks onto you. The best way I found to keep busy is to do your bosses tasks. You'd be surprised how busy and invaluable you become.
Start and run an eBay shop. With the profits you can afford mountains of bangood flashlights and eneloop batteries.
Do some filing
Tidy up your desk
Read a book (work/profession related)
Set up a (non official) work meeting with your friends at work
Arrive late, go home early and have a long lunchWhatever you do don't complain about lack of work or ask for more work if none is available. You will be the first to be redundant for that same reason.
Screen capture desktop of a work colleagues computer. Then delete all icons on desktop and set capture image as desktop background.
…or get a carpenter to build a sleepy spot under your desk.Holy shit. I barely have a second to scratch my arse :( I hate my life and am on call 24/7. I'm willing to give up my role for a more sedate one OP. PM me if interested and have strong IT skills (fook the IT industry, we're the sub-peasant tier plumbers of the world that live horrible lives so that normal people can live arrogant stupid ones).
Similar feelings! :)
So you need to be assigned task otherwise you just ask advice on OzBargain. Just ask your supervisor or better still think something that can benefit your organisation, help your colleagues.
swap the keys on your colleagues keyboard.
Depends on your job, if you a required to know technical knowledge for your office's services, read up on things to get a better understanding of it. For example, I recently started working as a project manager, if I don't have any pending tasks I read technical specifications on how tasks should be executed on site.
You could also do cheap/free online courses on work related subjects.
Start investing into the stock market.
That's the bad idea. I tried and end up losing couple of hundreds!
spend time on this site
Some very good (and poor) ideas here. I always ask for more work as I know there's stacks, but have to balance with rest of the team. Overachieving will make the rest of the team look bad and hate you, while if underachieving you're the first to get the boot. It's a balancing act.
I've explored the "do some of the boss' work" in a couple of companies, sometimes it works and pays off (you become the team champion without the negs plus brownie points from the boss), sometimes you end up with powerpoint/excel shoved up yours you wish you never brought it up.
More work (if there is any), read up on work related stuff and help colleagues (this is really good if you can tell they are swamped) but make sure it's mentioned that you helped out, otherwise stuff 'em. I'm lucky I'm in a small team currently and we're all friends, but it can get real bad in larger teams as there usually is at least one bad apple in the cart.
Avoid getting passive, been there done that, it's no good in the long run and then you'll have trouble settling into a more hectic role.
Good luck.
Befriend all of your co-workers and slowly turn them against each other. They may not see the funny side straight away but in time they will thank you for it.
http://mashable.com/2014/08/27/microsoft-excel-games/
Number 3 you can play with other bored colleagues.
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Sorry but in IT you always have something to do.
What is your automatic code coverage? Get it higher, after you get it higher start refactoring some of the spagetti code that you have. Surely you had a deadline sometime and have some things that you know how to do better now.
I can say that I have downtime too, but I seldom get bored.
Here is what I have done:
1) wrote automatic tests for everything, right now my code coverage is over 90% for most projects. The requirement at my company is 0.
2) put everything in a CI server, we had a bamboo server that was not used, everything including the automatic tests are in there.
3) I automated deployment to the DEV and SysTest servers, press a bamboo button and the application gets deployed in 10+ places.
4) Made a POC of automatic testing using BrowserStack (web developer here) on different devices. I made scripts for taking pictures of each test result (I had fun scrolling and taking another picture). I probably can still merge the pictures together to get 1 big picture for others to see how my application looks.
5) After you have automatic tests you can refactor old applications, move common code in common repositories, etc.
6) learn a new language or a new framework in your language. Study somebody else's code to improve. On popular github repositories you usually find something interesting.
7) Udemy has a lot of courses, take some of them. Get some certifications (AWS, Linux, MS, whatever).
8) See what in your organisation can be improved. At 1 point I saw that some things was taking too long to do. I created an application for it, but other work got in the way. Some months later my boss's boss's boss decided to improve that exact process. I looked very good that in the same day they wanted it I was showing them all how it works while having in there features that they did not even think they needed (but they did).
9) get a new job if the current one is not challenging you.