Ask HN: How do you deal with being well paid while having nothing to do at work?
It has happened to me multiple times that I came to work and if I simply read a book the whole time, nobody would notice. So, I'd desperately try to find some work for me in each of my positions. Paradoxically, that would make me stand out, because I'd be extremely receptive to PR reviews and collaborative processes, which would be a huge factor in the promotion process. At the same time, I dislike this feeling of 'all jiras done, what now?', and so the fact that a position had prolonged periods of it was the major, deciding factor in me abandoning it.
I thought, until recently, that this was mainly a 'me' thing, i.e. I'm too green to actively look for work even when none is given. You know, these people that always have a ton of ideas, and the only thing you have to do is manage their priority. I'm not that, and so I've been kind of hard on myself for not being creative enough to see what needs to be done without being explicitly told.
That said, my wife recently joined a new company, and was complaining at home that she had 0 things to do. They hired her, and now, she's sitting there re-reading documentation, managers scrambling to give her some tasks. She's also at a fortune 500 company. She also mentioned that her fellow new hires said the same thing.
I'm now beginning to wonder, is this a common thing? How do you deal with these periods? What is the correct, productive way to deal with it?
For me, these are mostly 'time to train' and 'is there really nothing that could use my attention' kind of periods, but I can't do that for a long time and not feel down about it.