
Ask HN: I have nothing to do at work and it's killing me - TurkishPoptart
I started as a temp and I&#x27;m told I&#x27;m being hired as a &quot;full-time temp&quot; which is not only an oxymoron, but it is simply ironic, since I already work full-time (40hrs&#x2F;week). I was assigned some work &quot;to keep me busy for 2-3 months&quot; that I finished in about 6 hours.<p>I&#x27;m really running out of patience with this whole thing. I&#x27;m being paid $25&#x2F;hr to sit around and look busy. I ask my manager for work, he says things will pick up after Christmas. The other day I was too depressed about this situation and slept in, and showed up at 1pm. No one batted an eyelid or said anything. There wasn&#x27;t a single email addressed to me, I had no calendar invites, no nothing, so why should I even be here? What do I do with my time? Well, I am trying to teach myself a bit of Ruby on Rails in AWS, do some freecodecamp (I desperately want to learn to code, under the impression that it will liberate me from this, but it might just be a pipe dream).<p>My manager told me that a coworker would like my help with &quot;business continuity forms&quot; (this is healthcare IT, so this is a thing). I&#x27;ve approached her and reminded her that I&#x27;m happy to help whenever she wants but she just grumbles about not being able to find someone to walk me through the EpicCare web app things.<p>So I am really losing my motivation to keep learning important things, and find myself drifting over to Reddit memes. I spend about 3-4 hours a day on this site and the rest of the time trying to teach myself computer science stuff. But it is extremely demoralizing doing this alone and &quot;secretly&quot; while waiting for something to happen.<p>I would look for a new job but frankly, I don&#x27;t even know if this experience is transferable anywhere else. I get declined for internal job postings, so I think I just need to turn my 6 months&#x27; experience into a year to appease HR. Please advise.
======
hnthroaway1926
I know exactly how you feel and have experienced it in two different work
environments, first as an intern during college (which only lasted 3 months
but felt like eternity) and second as a senior level engineer for about a two
year period.

Like some other things in life, people that haven't gone through this are not
likely to understand the experience.

Since you care about increasing your employability I recommend that in
addition to self-learning you also do the following.

Write up 1 or 2 short paragraphs that are mostly BS about the positive
business impact that your work is having. Break this paragraph down into small
work tasks or interactions that you would have needed to have in order to
accomplish. Over the course of the next few months start mentioning those
tasks casually when talking with coworkers. It is important to do this
gradually so that people have enough time to absorb the false memories you are
seeding.

Your goal is to build up a working memory among your coworkers of the awesome
stuff you did while working there. You can then write these accomplishments
into your resume and they will be backed up by your coworkers. Your manager
especially will appreciate this as it makes them look like a great leader.

Good luck and keep yourself focused on the future!

~~~
TurkishPoptart
I appreciate the idea. You've definitely got something going there. Did you
really deal with it for two years? It's hard to imagine anyone with senior in
their title stuck with empty hands. I imagine my situation is linked with me
only being exposed to about ~1% of this whole EHR transition project I'm a
part of.

~~~
hnthroaway1926
Yes, it was just over two years. I can't share a lot of details but it is one
of those places where developers don't have admin rights and aren't allowed to
install software on their machines.

I also recommend connecting with some of the people that are more involved in
the EHR transition project because if they also want out then they will
probably be happy to get you more involved somehow.

------
Jemaclus
Other people have given advice along the lines of what I'm going to say, but
just to reiterate: take this opportunity to get on-the-job training. It's
free, and you have an opportunity to advance your career in a lot of ways.

I had a job like this, where my boss said "We need to add a button to this
form. That should keep you busy for the rest of the week, right?" and I said
".... Yes. Yes, it would." Then finished it in 2 hours, and spent the rest of
the week leveling up my skills.

Learn a little programming. Learn Python or Javascript or Go (my preferred
lang) or any other programming language that catches your fancy. Learn some
HTML and CSS. Build a website for yourself. Put whatever you want on it. Then
make it better. Then make it better. Then make it better.

Find some small projects that you can build. The best things to do for
learning are to build things where you only really have to think about the
code and not the business logic. For example, you know how a To Do list app
works, because you've used them forever. You add a new item and you mark it
complete. Maybe you can edit or delete. That's the easy part. Now pick a
language and make it! You'll spend a lot less time wondering "what does this
app need to do?" And more time on "how do I make the code do this?"

Keep doing the tasks you're assigned, but if you aren't assigned anything,
you're free and clear to do what you can.

One controversial idea is to automate all the things you do at work. The
downside is that you might be morally/ethically obligated to report that to
your employer. They might get pissed off if you automated the work and sat
there doing nothing instead. But on the other hand... more free time.

Personally, I'd do the work assigned and then spend my free time learning.
It's "professional development", which only makes you more valuable to the
company. Over time, you can level up your skills enough to leap to another
full-time job elsewhere making more than $25/hr.

Good luck!

~~~
TurkishPoptart
That's a great example, and you're absolutely right.

I will keep learning on my own (as well as taking a 201 course next Jan, it
looks like) and try to dig myself out of this. I appreciate your response.

------
franga2000
I've been in a similar situation. I worked in a museum ticket office for
almost 3 years as a student. We got maybe 3 visitors a day on average (most
days it was 0). By the end, I had re-watched all of Stargate and probably
spent a week's worth of time just on Reddit.

It's amazing just how badly sitting in a small, tall room with only
incandescent light will fuck you up. After a particularly stressful day,
having to "work" for the rest of it completely broke me and I spent an hour
crying (without anyone noticing).

After that, I knew I had to get my shit together, so I saved up for a decent
laptop and started doing web development again. By the time I quit, I was
making decent money by freelancing and had gotten some valuable references.

Even the people around me told me I looked happier and "more alive".
Ironically enough, doing nothing was the most exhausting thing I've ever done.
Web dev in Django was what got my motivation back, but I see no reason why
Rails wouldn't work. Good luck!

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Amazing story! I'm learning Python, too. Do you have any preferred Django
tutorials or courses you might recommend? Congrats on leveling up!

~~~
franga2000
Thanks! I'm not a fan of video tutorials so I don't know what to recommend
there, but in terms of written ones, the official getting started guide is
hard to beat. I learned most of what I needed from there, as well as by
reading the source of some other open source projects, but I did have some
prior knowledge of databases when I got started, so YMMV.

------
saluki
Well sounds like a great opportunity to do some on the job training at work
until you get tasks assigned or things pick up.

I would sign up for an online training course Rails is a good choices or
Laravel (Laracasts.com) or Wes Boss's javascript courses. Both of those have
some free courses.

Get learning and enjoy a laid back position while you can.

Learn and look busy, enjoy the holidays, good luck.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Is there any hope that trying to learn this stuff on my own will help me get
real work to do / a real job? Granted, I have a ton of academic accolades that
I've never been able to get a potential employer to even glance at, so maybe
the skills will help. I just doubt I'll learn anything well enough on my
own...the best devs learn in pairs it seems. I wish I had a mentor here or
something.

~~~
saluki
y, you can become employable if you learn HTML/CSS, then javascript and a
framework like Rails/Laravel you can get a real job developing web
applications. It will take time and some work though to build up the skills.
Once you have the basics down offer to setup websites for family and friends,
maybe a local small business that needs a website. Build a web application for
yourself, maybe one to track a collection of yours, one to send messages in
real time between you and a friend or maybe compile fantasy football stats and
make projections. Pick something you are interested in and that isn't a step
by step tutorial. If you have a knack for programming you'll just keep
advancing getting more skilled.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Thanks for this.

------
anotheryou
Use the time to learn to code, you can totally get in to the industry starting
that way.

Also once you got the basics try to think of a simple project. I'd even help
you find one, just comment below. (depends a lot on what you want to learn). A
project is really the best way to learn things beyond the very basics,
learning without a clear goal is quickly demotivating. As a bonus you have
something to show afterwards.

I learned web stuff while I was in school and became a front-end developer
afterwards. Now I dipped in to AI and got an AI related job (not as a dev, but
having _some_ experience helps to propel you in the direction you want to go).

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Yes! I certainly am trying! And it's true, I have a number of project ideas
floating in the back of my head, but I rarely realize them, which is a
problem.

Here's what I want to make: recipe-based website/app, in which user can choose
one of four seasons, with perhaps a slider for {Vegetarian} or {Instant Pot}
(or something), and it spits out some recipes. The ingredients <div> will
default to serving for 1, but user can choose servings for 2, or 4, and the
app re-calculates (1 cup -> 4 cups, etc.)

I personally want to learn (and am more interested in) the backend stuff to
make it work. And I am worried that even if I get it work, I will get lost in
the CSS mess of trying to prettify and arrange things. But I should just focus
on learning to and making a working skeleton app first, I suppose.

Thanks for your comment.

~~~
anotheryou
That sounds like a great first project. I recommend to break it down in to
sub-steps where it's your choice if you want to start front to back (paste a
recipe, make it pretty, than add calculations, than put a DB behind it etc) or
the other way around.

I have a slight preference for starting from the front so the UI does not get
skewed in the direction the technology leads you. Going front to back in
ideally also leaves you with presentable stuff before everything is done: A
pretty website with your fav recipe, A pretty website with your fav recipe and
an ingredient calculator, ...

About CSS: I guess it makes sense to learn it a bit, but as you want to dive
in to the back-end anyways, maybe also check out frameworks like bootstrap
with a nice material design theme¹. I'm not sure if it teaches you some bad
practices though, so take it with a grain of salt. For my taste the html
becomes to ugly, I prefer to keep most of the design part in my CSS.

Oh and if you need help the guys on the freenode IRC are very friendly. Just
make it as easy as possible to help them: isolate and reproduce your problem,
for front-end stuff make a "fiddle" at jsfiddle.net.

¹ e.g. [https://ayroui.com/](https://ayroui.com/) Also helps building "mobile
first". Today consumer stuff will mostly be consumed on smartphones.

~~~
anotheryou
Maybe you wan even find a design student who wants to do the front-end. If you
show that level of collaboration and have something even prettier to show
that's a win win :)

------
elicash
If you desperately want to learn to code, how can you possibly be upset by
having no work responsibilities? This is the opportunity of a lifetime to
learn it. If not now, when?

~~~
TurkishPoptart
I spend a few hours a day at work and at home on it. I just don't have any
confidence that it will actually pay off.

~~~
natalyarostova
Learning hard things is very demoralizing, because learning hard things is
fucking hard. It makes you feel stupid. Learning to code sucks. It seems like
everyone on HN is a gifted natural coding form age 8, while you're just stuck
trying to make your stupid loop not give you a syntax error. But that's not
true. Only 1% or so of people on HN are like that (approximate guess). The
rest of us all learned the same way. Getting stuck on some bullshit trivial
syntax error for years, while feeling like an idiot.

That's just what coding is. Please don't lose motivation. I know it's hard and
demoralizing, but I strongly encourage you to not give up hope.

Even now I'm learning a new language (clojure) and despite 'knowing how to
code' and working in this field for 3+ years, I still spent all day setting up
a development environment and learning to loop through a list. That's just how
it goes.

I still feel like the same idiot I was on day 1. Except now younger people at
work look up to me, as though I actually can code or know what I'm doing. How
this happened I do not know. All I know is that I kept at it every day for
years, starting from that first day when I tried to understand what a
difference between a list and a dictionary is.

~~~
mc3
I coded from 8, but more down to luck of being bored and having a computer
than being some kinda prodigy.

At 8 I was indeed "just stuck trying to make your stupid loop not give you a
syntax error". Probably lack of an ego at such a young age you just get on
with it and not care much.

Adult learning to code is going to be like adult learning foreign language or
adult learning to swim. Just like a child but the ego getting in the way
getting stressed that it is hard.

------
el_dev_hell
I have so much empathy for your situation because I was there about 3 years
ago. I had a job with a fortune 500 company and would have everything finished
by 9AM everyday (with one task at 4PM that was laughable).

I wasted most of my time and regret it.

It's not that easy to sit there and learn something with the stress of having
a manager walk over and "catch" you doing nothing. In the last 6 months on the
job I stopped caring if I got fired and spend all my time developing a few
small C projects (I set up a complete developer environment). No one ever
noticed or cared. In big companies, they want people in chairs.

Anyway, good luck!

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Thanks for your comment. Yeah, my manager "caught" me tinkering with an AWS
thing and some tutorial open, but probably assumed it was important. It's even
weirder because my old manager person went away on parental leave, so my new
person doesn't really know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I have some
freedom and I'm going to try to use it productively.

~~~
godot
This sounds similar to a part time job I had while in college (15+ years ago).
Caveat: I was already a programmer (studied computer science in college). I
was hired as a part time student programmer at this place. The hiring manager
that gave me the offer either transferred to another department or was on
leave (can't remember which now), either way, I basically hadn't seen him
during the entire 7 months or so I worked there. His subordinate was the only
person who had any idea I was even there and could give me any work. He would
give me some simple task of writing up some documentation or code some simple
demos using some libraries, every once in a while. Everything I did over those
7 months amount to about 1 week of work for me. Every time he gave me a task,
I would finish within a few hours, and there wouldn't be anything else for me
to do for the next couple of weeks. I was a student at the time so I was able
to spend most of my work hours doing homework or programming assignments for
classes. If it was a full time job I would definitely do what you do, tinker
with AWS, code up projects, etc.

------
gtirloni
I've been in this situation before and it's depressing.

If you're a problem solver and need problems to keep you motivated, my advice
is to try and help people on StackOverflow, forums, lists, etc. Research their
problem and provide solutions. Maybe blog post about something interesting.
That way you're learning, solving problems and have something to show.

You could also start contributing to some open source project with tech
support, docs and other administrative work while you learn Rails too.

------
bernierocks
You will not get this opportunity again. Almost nobody will pay you $25/hour
for many months, to essentially learn anything at your own pace until work
picks up.

Most companies are not busy between the end of November and the end of January
due to everyone taking vacations, so you probably won't be getting much work
until after the holidays.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
You're right. Working on it.

------
runninganyways
Ha, omg I've so been there. I was doing automated testing for a company for a
good five months and they seriously did not care at all.

Like they have nothing for you to do and you feel guilty for not doing
anything because you're getting paid. Then you gravitate towards laziness and
when you finally do get some non-task you know it's of zero value to anyone
and your time would probably be better spent recycling old files on your
desktop. So then you feel scared talking to anyone because you feel like you
don't belong and are getting paid for not doing any work.

Either go full on Costanza, quit, or get used to feeling weak. ...I spent much
of my time filling out job applications.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
I love the Costanza reference![0] Will definitely work on job applications.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kafq7yrKAOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kafq7yrKAOQ)

------
eanthy
Don't assume that being a programmer is any different. It's all up to the
project/company you work in. I've had this same situation in 2 jobs as a
software engineer. The worst is you could do self-learning but then you have
to say what you've done in stand-up and if you say self-learn you have to make
it seem like it's relevant to business, but if it's some language the company
doesn't use it's not even relevant. So you end up doing some meaningless task
and spread it over long period of time cause you know you won't get more any
time soon.

My suggestion is try to work from home, sounds like your company is flexible.
Use your home time for self-learning and applying to other jobs/going
interviews.

------
cliffy
I've been in this situation in that our team had a stated goal, but it became
obvious our manager was doing jack shit to enable us to accomplish the goal,
and no one gave a fuck if I or the team was doing anything. In fact, the
organization we found ourselves in seemed to be actively opposed to what we
were trying to achieve. It's extremely toxic to your mental health and
detrimental to your career long-term if you stay put.

I treated it as a paid job-search opportunity and put in my two weeks as soon
as I got a good offer.

If you don't have that option, try to find _anything_ you can build that would
improve the lives of your coworkers and get them to use it. Put it on your
resume and start looking.

------
deliriousferret
I've been in this situation and also wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. I did
Michael Hartl's tutorial and then built my own side project. This side project
was never completely finished and never had any user but it helped me learn
and get my next job as a Ruby on rails developer. Learning things on your own
is a great way to start but the best way to improve is to work in a team with
people you can learn from, on a real live project. So in my opinion, learn as
much as you can now, build things that you can mention on your CV, and move
ASAP to a better job where you can improve.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
I'm doing the same ruby on rails tutorial! I finished chapter 3 today and it
was pretty fun, and satisfying to run the test and fix the simple bugs. I'm
curious, did you or did you not use your side project/portfolio to get your
job? How did you demonstrate your skill and technical prowess sufficiently to
get a job doing it? Thanks.

------
perl4ever
What kind of a temp doesn't have to account for their hours? Usually I would
think both for the temp agency and for the customer. Every post-bachelor's job
I've had has required me to account for my time, often two or three times
over.

I briefly worked for a healthcare subsidiary of a public university, and it
was a very...relaxed pace. But we had to clock in and out every day, a minimum
of 8 hours. And new employees were specifically warned that we could be fired
if we fell asleep at our desks...

------
masonic
Are they hiring?

------
dragonwriter
> I don't even know if this experience is transferable anywhere else

It's not (doing nothing productive and pretending to look busy when your boss
knows you have no real work isn't experience that's going to open any doors
elsewhere), and the more of it you have the worse off you are. So you should
be looking for something else, if you can't make it something else.

~~~
perl4ever
I mean, consider the alternative of being unemployed. How many people out of
work would be infinitely better off with a do nothing job while they search.

It's possible to sell yourself when you've been unemployed, so surely it's got
to be easier when you have a job no matter how meaningless.

------
middlechild9
Pick up python and start automating stuff at work. Use the tools as the basis
for a SaaS. Profit.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
I don't have anything to do at work that requires automation. Fair idea
though.

~~~
cliffy
Find someone that looks like they do repetitive work a lot and sell them on
reducing their workload through automation.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Why would I want to do that? I don't want to bother anyone. And I don't know
how to automate shit, either. I just want normal, boring work to do.

~~~
cliffy
You seem to be exhibiting signs of learned helplessness. You can absolutely
learn how to automate something, if you try.

If you want normal, boring work to do why are you complaining about having
nothing to do? The most normal, boring work of all.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Yes I am. I feel as though I have little to no control over my condition. I'm
sure I could learn to automate something. I just have no direction as where to
begin.

I am complaining about having nothing to do because I want work to do, to
contribute to a team, to work with other people and befriend them, but it's
hard when I feel so arbitrary.

~~~
cliffy
Apparently the original experimenters who identified learned helplessness seem
to now think they got it backwards: Learned helplessness is actually the
default behavior of mammals, and we need to learn how to overcome the default
state.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4920136/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4920136/)

------
austincheney
I was bored when I started work at this big bank. So I created a parser
[https://sparser.io/](https://sparser.io/)

------
imtringued
If you genuinely have nothing to do then you're a prime target for layoffs.
Move on and get a new job or your company will force you to move on when you
are least prepared.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
On the contrary :) They are converting me into a quasi permanent staff (until
Nov 2020) with full benefits, so not too bad. Things will pick up in January.
I should clarify that this is a healthy state bureaucracy I'm a part of, so
I'm not worried about losing my job. I'm just worried about losing my time;
waking up 5 years later in the same position terrifies the shit out of me.

------
theklub
Find a cert you want to go for and start studying.

~~~
imhoguy
This. Buy voucher now to increase the motivation.

------
highprofittrade
Good opportunity to start a business just do it you learn more than you can
ever imagine

------
buboard
Ask to work remotely, so you can work on side projects

------
kunmyt
You need change your work, refresh yousefl

