What do you all do when you literally have nothing to do at work? I get ultra bored and start reading manga but I feel bad and scared that my boss might consider me useless. Just want to know if this is somewhat normal behaviour sometimes?

Get a Switch Lite and play TecmoBowl under your desk.

So, when my guys have downtime, I provide them with growth and study opportunities that are designed to get them ahead of the game. Your manager should be doing this, but since he isn't, it's in your best interest to identify things that can benefit you and spend the time doing that since the environment is conducive to study..

If you can't think of anything, go the audiobook route. Plenty of bosses get triggered by slacking, even if it's their fault.

@intromatt yep totally won’t get fired XD should consider getting a switch tho that’s true

@SortOfTested thanks for that, my company gives access to pluralsight that has some courses so I see them in my spare time at work but not sure if that’s alright either, my boss seems rather chill and would probably tell me if he thinks I’m slacking off but he hasn’t so far per say so no idea

We go to Cafeteria and chit chat office politics

Heh, nothing to do?!

Between the boss, sales guys and customers who unfortunately email me directly, we have enough work on our Jira backlog to keep me busy for the next 6 months...

If you're genuinely in a position where there's nothing to do, pick a tech, start to learn it. That way you gain experience & skills, and the boss can't argue that you're doing something completely irrelevant.

@asgs I don’t even go to the cafeteria because I don’t think any of my fellow grads on the company really like me >.> I’m pretty garbage socially, trying to improve though

@AlmondSauce hmm fair enough, and damn gl man with that level of work

Learning vim, practicing touch-typing, writing a tool that will make my workload even lower, reading devRant, refactoring random shit.

@AmbientTea Did a lot of the refactoring random shit

Order stuff, write stuff... delete stuff...

Personal projects or grab ask my boss if he needs me to handle anything. If not i go home.

@c3r38r170 I do that but it’s sooo booring :(

@arcsector Don’t think he’ll be happy with me leaving early just because I have no work

@pandasama learn Go

@pandasama I have such a mess I do have fun while doing it haha but yeah, when I run out of mess I don't know what I would do.

@arcsector ty

@c3r38r170 exactly

I guess it depends how invested you are in the job and how much you want there to be change but I like to spend my downtime doing research/testing into possible new ways of doing thing or tech we could use.

It feels like procrastination but it also develops skills that otherwise wouldn't be developed and gives you good opportunities to promote yourself higher up.

@cmarshall10450 good point

i used to listen to podcasts all the time while working. so when there was nothing to do, I would just close my eyes to let them rest, and continue listening.

@Midnight-shcode i think I’d open my eyes to see unemployment if I did that XD

@Midnight-shcode were you able to pay attention to the podcast and your work at the same time? I find that as soon as I have to think about anything I stop listening, which sucks because I would love to work on my giant podcast backlog.

@lidiko not really, but that isn't the point. the point is:

1. how it changes your soundspace, localizes it into your head, since you've got headphones, it makes you hear your thoughts more clearly.

2. it's podcasts of voices that are familiar and pleasant to me, and topics don't really matter, and it's... something that my brain can kinda tune out with no problem, while still recieving kinda the benefits of the niceness it gives me to hear those voices. it's easier to tune out than actual outside sounds.

3. it makes for time to flow at a nicer pace.

4. it signals to the outside world that i'm trying to concentrate, of course.

funny thing, most people listen to music, I am usually unable to work (or think) while listening to music, because the music fills my whole brain and it just automatically spends 100% of capacity analyzing it, playing around with it, anticipating it, adding to it, etc etc =D

@pandasama well, i had 50:50 employers who either understood how programming worked and flowed, so they knew those kinds of breaks for like 10-30 minutes are useful, or the other half of employers were big bloated corporations where kind of when you weren't like stupidly overt about it, nobody noticed (or maybe cared), if you had all your work done, plus something extra you came up with along the way...

the few companies that had issues with it were actually, funnily, the most WTFy / devrant-worthy of them all, totally disorganized and ineffective... i might have mentioned them in my previous rants... so when they had issues with my way of working, i just left (or... let them fire me, which, in hindsight, wasn't too smart).

@Midnight-shcode ah fair enough, my company does seem to be understanding which is good, thanks for letting me know