A general question that happens to be my predicament at current. I’m a general safety admin/manager that has automated most of my tasks(emails/excel sheets)
Most days I doomscroll fediverse and lurk irc/matrix channels on the work desktop but am curious about more practical or useful things I should be doing instead. It’s looking like this will be my life for a good while since job market is abysmal and promotions are hyperstagnate(have also hit a wall in improving my scripts). If anyone has any similar experiences, please share and advise, as I feel quite lost and trapped :/
- take professional development on my employer’s budget
- bring a book
- don’t be afraid to take slightly longer than usual lunches for errands or for exercise or whatevs
- if monitoring is lax enough, and there’s unmonitored guest wifi, bring your personal laptop and play some vidya
what is professional development?
money given to you to obtain certifications, for example
Courses or other training to develop your professional skills, preferably provided or funded by your employer.
Platform like LinkedIn learning, on books no matter whether it’s about programming or management (or any other field, may be you want to learn material science or Korean). Usually, these ones are pretty tolerated by HR, especially if you can find even a remote link to your work. I would add fun side projects on work data/material, that you can use to get promoted (not only I am doing my job but I am experimenting with XYZ, meaning I should be at the next puygrude)
Bring a whole laptop to play games? Get a Steam Deck! Or if you want a smaller form.factor then get a Retroid Pocket 6.
Other than this:
- Learn something (language, art, etc)
- Read something
- Listen to podcasts
- If it’s a private office then do a Costanza and sleep under your desk
- Watch TV shows or movies
- Take up knitting or crochet
First of all, DON’T TELL ANYONE.
I’d use the time to learn a new skill, though at this point I have no idea what to recommend.
Spend it all trying to look busy.
But actually, I’d take online courses in something you have interest (learn a new language?) or something you just want to know better (networking? programming?)
Or maybe I’d start developing something for myself. You know that dream app you always wanted but doesn’t exist yet? Maybe you can create it?
Or maybe I’d take a look at the currently open issues for the FOSS stuff I use and try to familiarize myself with the code base enough that I can start submitting bug fixes
Anything you build on company time, the company will claim ownership over. The FOSS stuff isba good idea.
Or try to automate the remaining 5%
You guys work 40 hours per week?!
Is this your way of saying you work more or less than 40? lol
Less. And it barely feels like work.
what do you do?
I teach machining in Scandinavia.
Lathe and mill, both manual and CNC. ISO programming, CAD drawing, etc. The studens are have 32,5 hours of school (including breaks), and I rarely give them homework. I have, in theory, 4,5 hours of preparations per week, but I don’t use it.
Students are happy. 4 gift baskets from 9 classes in the four years I’ve worked there.
My job requires 45.
You fill out your own timesheet. Mine varies from 39 to 50 hours. They dont care what it says. But if you turn in a lot of timesheets under 45 hrs and dont get your work done and people complain that youre bad to work with, you may get asked whats up. If however you always get shit done, it doesn’t matter what it says for hours.
I present myself to the office for 40 hours a week.
Do I work for 40 hours a week?
No.
You’re looking at it, bud.
This is me.
I do 30 minutes of checks in the morning, check email, and attend the standup. After that i got hours to kill.
I teach myself things.
Learned how to mine crypto.
Learned advanced bash.
Learned boto3 and started automating aws shit
Wrote 2 books on automating aws shit.
Played alot of online dungeon crawlers.
Learned how to code a dungeon crawler.
Leaned how to code a 2d scoller game
Inked alot of comic sketched from (then) deviant art.
Just to name a few
Getting paid to make personal advancement is a pretty good deal.
Sit online responding to posts on social media…
e621 and a bullet vibrator
What is e621?
Furry porn website just like r34
Yiff.
The objectively best website to ever exist
I second this
Educate yourself and learn a new skill that is useful for the job you really want, assume this doesn’t last long and that you might get fired or laid off one day. I remember a story on reddit about some guy who had outsourced his job to India. The guy only played videogames the entire day every day, after a few years the gig was up and he was fired. Dude had a hard time finding a new job since his skill set and knowledge base was several years behind of where his field had advanced to. Don’t waste this opportunity, sure play some games, fiddle around now and then but use most of the free time to improve yourself.
If I was in your situation I would just learn how to make videogames and then eventually try to release one on Steam made entirely during the boss’ time.
Crazy. As someone whose job it is to automate, automating my job means getting more work. That’s kind of the definition of being more productive: by focusing on automation one person could do work that formerly took multiple people
If your employers are willing to pay you more for the extra work you’re getting done through automation, go for it. If your employers are going to fire your colleagues, make you do their work, then pocket the profit - keep your improvements to yourself and read a book
Tired that. Still got more work. Eventually I had a 3 day process down to half an hour, since the actual process was super inefficient. The company was restructuring and my coworkers were trying to avoid having their jobs automated. It all resolved by outsourcing, which was funny because the tasks only required 5-6 people, had 18 originally, and was called a win for being ‘global’.
I’m somewhat confused by your comment. I automated my tasks because I got tired of typos and having to remember the processes of things. if I just fully script the process, I don’t have to remember or do anything XD
When you automate your tasks, do you not get more tasks?
Quite the opposite. My higher ups enjoy their manual admin work as it’s the only peaceful part of their day. They do joke about making me do it, but when I insist they allow me to so I can improve and automate it they are quite quick to silently go back to their office XD
I have to do 40/w but don’t have enough work. So I spend about 70% of that time reading manga online. I’ve also read up on a bunch of wiki articles.
Contribute to opensource you use! Honestly I ping pong back and forth between swamped and bored , with contributing back as a good way to get ahead of future issues and involved in future work
Where can I find a job like this?
Office work. For years, I was afraid of working in an office because of films showing people how boring it is and it’ll make you want to kill yourself.
But yeah, spend a year or two actually doing your job, then automate it.
I very annoyingly have yet to see this suggestion - go talk to your fucking coworkers!! If everyone is showing up every day, then you have a whole office full of work friends to make! Make a habit of hanging out at the coffee maker or water cooler or whatever and shoot the shit. Ask people how their weekend was. Introduce yourself to people you haven’t met before. Just chat with people for 15 min or so at a time, and then go back to your desk and do something fun/for personal development/for professional development. Then you have things to talk about - and then just always have some job related task on the backburner that you can keep working on, so when people ask about what you are doing at work, you can say “oh yeah, I’m working on X, which will have Y benefit.”
THIS IS HOW YOU PROGRESS IN YOUR CAREER. Yeah, working on your skills is super valuable. But the people who go far, the people who are never short on job offers or pay raises, are the people who have lots of friends.
Unfortunately, this will not help when working with people who are only interested in sports. I was asked which team i followed for the World Championship in football, to which i responded “I don’t watch football”.
Response: “Then what sports do you watch?”
“I don’t watch sports.”
His eyes widened while he stood there thinking for a second. “Then what do you do in your spare time?” He asked, flabbergasted. I told him there are other things in life than watching sports.
It’s like this for everyone I work with. They’re all hillbillies. I need to get out.
Have you tried… watching sports? I’m kidding. However, with something like the World Cup coming up it’s pretty easy to feign a passing interest. Even my mother seems in to it, and she usually couldn’t tell a football from a pinecone.
I have tried. Just not my thing lol. Like, at all. I love playing sports, I just don’t see the fun in watching someone else play.
And don’t get me started on the people who’s complaining about what someone on their team did wrong; they wouldn’t be able to do what the athlete do if they got 1000 tries!
You need BLUFFBALL. A Bit from a TV show that somebody made kinda real.
Holy shit, that’s awesome!!! Also, I haven’t watched IT Crowd this year, so thanks for reminding me!
I’ve had good luck sharing my own interests instead. A few years ago I got super into watching SpaceX’s rocket launches because it’s honestly spectacular and they know how to do a really good livestream, plus watching the booster come back from orbit and softly touchdown is pretty incredible (I’ve had a hard time enjoying the live streams since Musk’s involvement with Trump of course)
But popping over to a coworker and going “hey there’s a rocket launch in 2 minutes, wanna take 8 minutes and watch it with me?” is a brilliant ice breaker
Trust me, my coworkers would not care about anything as exciting as a space launch! I’ve tried sharing my own interests with them, but they’re not interested. The only thing I can talk with them about is my dog (because he’s allowed in the office, and they love him).
I mean, yeah, get out. But in the meantime I would suggest trying your best to find some way to relate. In 2 years maybe one of those guys will hear about a good job opportunity and pass it along to you “because he’s a nice guy who gets his work done - even if he’s a bit screwy to not watch sports”
The people I’m referring to are warehouse packers and repair technicians, while I create the automations for the warehouse. I highly doubt they’ll be able to recommend me in the future.
Talk to people?! That’s insane. Far better to deep dive into arcane coding disciplines and submerge oneself in niche strategy/fantasy roleplay. Fucking norm.
If your profession has a professional society or industry has a trade association, look into webinars, certification classes, or other events they might have. They often have opportunities to get involved with the organization as well, which could look good on paper to management when promotion opportunities arise
