Ask HN: I have nothing to do at work and it's killing me

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!

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.

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.

This seems to me to be vaguely like manipulation...

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!

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

Personally, I learned most programming topics through individual effort. Pair programming can be great if the participants have a similar skill level while having nonoverlapping areas of expertise.

But pair programming with one experienced developer and someone who knows nothing is essentially tutoring.

I got my feet wet in programming in 2001 with help pairing, but there are better tutorials now. I then did my own thing for years on the side. Like build tools and sites I could use. I built a crappy site or tool for a few folks over time. Sometimes for free. Eventually, all this playing around got me to a spot where a recruiter saw me and sent me on interviews and I started becoming a real dev. You have a good opportunity to learn and practice enough to get your foot in the door at an accelerated pace. You can always pair with smarter, more experienced people when you are a "real" dev.

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.

Thanks for this.

Yes if you get good and can pass programming tests and/or have a portfolio.

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?

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.

I can't tell you if learning CS concepts will pay off. But I can guarantee you it will benefit you more than spending 3-4 hours on HN or r/dankmemes.

What is it you enjoy? Do you enjoy coding from what you’ve done so far? Is it about the algorithms for you? Or the finished product you can show off? The user experience? Making things pixel perfect? Finding that motivation is important because programming is going to be hard if the motivation is that maybe you’ll get a better job in a year or two. Enjoyment is the mind hack to properly upskill IMO, and if you do properly upskill you’ll probably be able to get a coding job (a lot of persistence is needed to get the first one though!)

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.

Wow, I really appreciate this! And I like the Tolstoy-inspired username :) Thanks for the reminder that not everyone on this site is a Paul Graham or a Torvald. Congratulations on your progress.

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.

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).

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.

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/ Also helps building "mobile first". Today consumer stuff will mostly be consumed on smartphones.

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 :)

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

You're right. Working on it.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Are they hiring?

> 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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/

> "I just want normal, boring work to do"

Such an odd statement. Automation (and programming in general) is probably not for you.

Perhaps look at other opportunities to help in the company? Surely they would be happy you have completed your duties...

You don't know what it's like to do nothing! I mean, I want some normal work to do so that I'm not wasting my time here. To learn stuff, build new skills.

I do know what it's like to do nothing. I don't know how you've lived your life until now, but I bet this situation is new to you. You'll have to learn how to fill up your time with meaningful things despite of negative thoughts overflowing your mind. You should one of this days sit down, put down the cellphone somewhere it doesn't distract you, grab some paper and a pen, and write down how you feel. You'll see that writing down your situation and feelings will help. Don't underestimate the time needed when doing this, and don't think it'll be easy to find something worth your time. And lastly, don't hesitate to try new things, unless they're drugs or alcohol.

Do you do anything with Microsoft Office, including Outlook? Virtually any routine task with it can be automated without additional software.

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.

Why not spend the current paid time learning/getting certs? When you get the new job, move up.

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.

I was bored when I started work at this big bank. So I created a parser https://sparser.io/

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

This. Buy voucher now to increase the motivation.

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

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

You need change your work, refresh yousefl