Dealing with a bore-out

[Vinc2612]

Hi everyone! Here is a bit of context:

I started to work as an IT consultant four months ago. I work in the quality team, which means I am supposed to test the software other teams are developping then validate that everything works correctly.

It has been three months now that I have nothing to do. I spent the first month discovering and learning everything about the project, good for me, but the different development teams are all late, and nothing ever seems to be ready for the tests. Three months that I've browsed the web looking for entertainment. Three months that I've visited part of Smogon Forums I didn't even knew about their existence. My boss knows about my situation, but he can't help outside of telling me "don't worry, you'll have something to do soon". But at the same time, "soon" never comes, and I'm still forced to act as if I was working because the customer we work for is paying, and could catch me procrastinating.

I used to study chemistry, I made the conversion last spring because I couldn't find either a PhD or a job in my research fields of interest. I am not saying I am not interested in what I do now, but that chemistry background brings two more issues: it means that I couldn't even help my coworkers since I have no idea about what Java is (outside of the island). And I can't even quit, there is a specific clause in my contract that says that I should pay for my conversion if I quit before the end of my first mission.

I used to work too much when I was in a lab, crazy schedules, weekends, even most holidays. But this is worse than I could have expected, worse than I endured. At least working too much was a choice. But in this case, I'm exhausted everyday, often feeling sick at the end of the day. It basically drains my energy for free. And I'm starting to be bored of everything, even building for the Smogon Grand Slam lost its appeal at this point.

So here comes the question (yeah, that was just the "bit" of context): did something similar already happened to you? how did you deal with it? how could I deal with it?

 

[Pyritie]

And I can't even quit, there is a specific clause in my contract that says that I should pay for my conversion if I quit before the end of my first mission.

What is a "mission" in this context and how long until you finish one? Signing a contract that says "you can't leave" sounds seedy. Is it legal in your country?

it means that I couldn't even help my coworkers since I have no idea about what Java is (outside of the island).

Maybe you could use all this free time to learn what java is?

 

[Vinc2612]

I'm a consultant, the mission is finishing the job for that specific customer. The company that hires me paid for teachers and equipments, and they make their return on investment during that first mission. If I quit by choice today, I must pay about 4500€, unless for some specific cases.

I guess I could learn a bit of java, but if people who do that for a living struggle in this project, how could I make any use of javafornoobsdotcom?


Edit: also I wouldn't quit yet even if I could. It's more like "it won't be an option whatever the evolution of my situation". I need the job, and I'll get some needed experience as soon as it will really start. I just don't know what to do with my days, and it has become a real issue

 

[Kink]

Tough love: (1) quit the job, pay your penalty and find something new, or (2) stick through it for the final year, get paid to do nothing, and use this time to prepare for your next step.

Either or, your next venture will make you happier... The question is how soon are you willing to make it happen? Never sacrifice your happiness or your mental stability, ever.

Unless you have financial obligations (I mean serious ones like feeding your kids), you need to seriously consider walking away today. And if you choose to stay, you have to realize you're making a choice and that your emotional state will be directly related to that choice. Personally, I would not have the patience to go through what you're enduring. Which is why I quit my collections job and pursued something better even though it did harm my professional relationships with certain individuals, including my friend that got me the job.

Tough choices are not meant to have a shortcut, and it's how you deal with your choice that will truly exemplify the kind of adult you are.

 

[Relados]

maybe i'm a lazy bastard, but getting paid to do nothing sounds like you have the best job in the universe. i'd just keep on keeping on.

if you really feel like you need to be doing something, learning java can't hurt at all. you can at least now offer help to your coworkers and learn something that is useful in almost any job, even if your help won't solve the specific issue.

 

[Vinc2612]

Again, I won't make the choice to walk away. I'm just looking for tips to keep myself entertained or at least busy. Or looking for similar stories, that would be a great read both as tips and keeping myself entertained. But I won't start from scratch again, not out of boredom.

maybe i'm a lazy bastard, but getting paid to do nothing sounds like you have the best job in the universe. i'd just keep on keeping on.

I'd have said that as well four months ago. If only I knew.

All in all, I can only agree that learning something new (java) is probably my best option in term of doing something useful and having something to say if I need to justify what I've done the past months.

 

[Pyritie]

Again, I won't make the choice to walk away. I'm just looking for tips to keep myself entertained or at least busy. Or looking for similar stories, that would be a great read both as tips and keeping myself entertained. But I won't start from scratch again, not out of boredom.



I'd have said that as well four months ago. If only I knew.

All in all, I can only agree that learning something new (java) is probably my best option in term of doing something useful and having something to say if I need to justify what I've done the past months.

If you don't want to leave now then I would definitely recommend leaving as soon as you have the opportunity to. Working at a place that is so badly organized that it gives you nothing to do for months is not a place you want to get stuck in.

 

[Jellicent]

Learning how to do other people's jobs is always handy, as it can lead to promotions or more varied / interesting work. Most companies will value a jack of all trades, and having the ability and openness to adapt is always nice for job security and getting recommendations when you leave. Coming from a different educational background than the programmers is a good thing, too. You might be able to look at problems from a useful perspective that they lack. That's the main theory behind being a generalist.

It sounds like you have the free time to study all sorts of things, though. If programming's not particularly interesting to you, maybe there's something else that you've always been curious about but never really delved into. You could pick up a new language, read literature and philosophy, practice graphic design, try your hand at creative writing, etc. You'll become more knowledgeable and well-rounded, plus get paid while you do it~

Also, if you already have other skills, you might be able to put them to use for extra money. I'll sometimes do freelance writing or editing during downtime at work, for instance. There are always sites and companies that need art, social media marketing, translations, web design, advertising, etc., which you might be able to assist with while still on the clock for this job :P

 

[Pyritie]

There are always sites and companies that need art, social media marketing, translations, web design, advertising, etc., which you might be able to assist with while still on the clock for this job :P

Careful with that though -- "don't work for other companies while we're paying you" is a common thing on a lot of contracts, and doing it can easily get you fired

 

[Andy Snype]

I totally relate Vinc2612 , due to some organizational bs, I recently had to wait and accommodate the schedule of one of the more senior-level guys since I had to wait for his approval because he is the only one that knew the structure of the thing I was tasked to do, so I had to sit around for a few hours while there was basically nothing else to do. It also didn't help that he went on vacation for about a week so this was delayed and I had to come up with new things to do.

If you want to justify your time spent here then in your free time, contribute to a major open-source project. I don't recommend doing websites because that will just attract you to more contractor gigs, which with your work experience as a consultant, will generally speaking, have more of these hangups where you can't do anything because of organizational red tape and process. Contribute to open source project because it forces you to write shit that other people can tolerate, which is a big deal since everything is a collaborative effort. If you don't really have anything to do, go talk to your supervisors at lunch or something. This doesn't look like you'll stay but leave a good, personable impression on someone that may recommend you for a future job.

That being said, this doesn't sound like your job isn't that bad. It's not like you have extremely anal rules about time punching or lunch breaks.


I don't like talking or thinking about work outside of work to the point where I avoid the question if someone asks me. That's why I go run and go to Meetups. Keep in touch with your uni friends; I do and occasionally meet up with them if they're in the area. Most friendships are easily done through contact, which happens naturally in school, but once you're out of it, you gotta make the effort to maintain it otherwise it'll just fizzle out. Stay off IRC and if you're having trouble having fun with Mons, quit. Those two can be quite the timesinks.

video games

As far as what I do to kill the time, I play games that are easy to get into for minimal time cost: Hearthstone and Overwatch. Though some people are probably going to disagree about Hearthstone, don't play it for prolonged amounts and just play for the daily quests, which honestly speaking shouldn't take much more than a half-hour to an hour. If you don't immediately spend your gold and just play with classics for a while to experiment with the cards, you can save up enough after a week for a wing of any adventure, which includes not just unlockable cards but also some new solo games vs AI with some twists. Overwatch games aren't too long and the queues for it are pretty short as well. They keep me plenty entertained. If I don't feel like staying inside and don't have much cleaning to do to make me feel productive, I go outside and go on a jog and if I'm still bored, I just let myself get distracted by Pokemon Go. You might run into other strangers still playing it and if it helps with your mons street cred go brag about Smogon :P. The main thing about all of these games that I would recommend: don't get into them competitively. That's far too much of a time investment and the reward you get from playing those just doesn't add up (not even just for monetary prizes, but even for enjoyment because playing to improve/get good competitively =/= playing for enjoyment).

I still do some GPing when I'm bored for a bit but don't let that be a good example on what to do

Go do some stupid fun things too (don't get arrested). You're probably in your 20s (I'm assuming). You're in EU too, go visit another country or something for a weekend. Generally speaking, your opportunities for spontaneity go down as you age. I believe that generally speaking, if you're bored with life, it's on you to fix it. Go find a hobby to get into.


also not knowing about java reminded me of this

Hide

 

[Ununhexium]

If you have Netflix try starting a new show to pass the time

 

[Bughouse]

This is the life of a consultant who deals with coding/data/etc at SOME point pretty much guaranteed. Some members of a team will always be assigned to (and paid for) some role that's not working out right and so they have nothing to do. I've had stretches at my job where I have very little to do each day. Then I have stretches where I have too much to do each day. It's just how the workflow goes. If you don't like it, find a new industry.

The stretches where I have nothing to do are the worst. I get the problem. Anyone who says "who cares, they're paying you" is just wrong.

My solution is to just always always always be asking for more work, no matter how tedious. And when I do get work, doing it efficiently, even though I have all the time in the world to get it done. Making yourself valuable is the best way to ensure that you do get given something eventually. If your company is involved in making proposals to new clients for work, ask to be involved writing those proposals.

And if they can't give you real work, then yes spend as much time as you can bear each day on learning some job-related skill. It sounds like that's java for you. If you want to pick up other easy technical skills, become a wizard with excel and learn basic/intermediate HTML. Those are the 2 most generally applicable things I can think of.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

maybe i'm a lazy bastard, but getting paid to do nothing sounds like you have the best job in the universe. i'd just keep on keeping on.

It's not. I can't speak for everyone but in my experience doing nothing has put a massive level of stress on me. All I was able to do all day on some jobs was sit around and and act like I was working because there was nothing to do. I need to be challenged by stuff. It's not like I could whip out my 3ds; in fact talking with people on smogon really kept me sane.

Vinc2612 I would say if you're not happy with your job, then you have to consider doing something else. Fooling yourself into thinking that things will improve never work. But whatever you decide to do, you'll know if it was the right decision no matter what.

 

[Oglemi]

Working at the liquor store adjacent to the grocery store last year got pretty boring at times, there were some stretches where for weeks we wouldn't have any customers before 3 pm in the store, but we had to be there by 9 am, and then throughout the day only have a handful of customers. So you'd get everything that needed to be done finished within the first hour, and then there was literally nothing else to do besides dust, which after a while you were only pretending to dust, or stand behind the register pretending to find something to do, since we weren't allowed to do anything that wasn't "work" (ie. we couldn't read any books, have our phone on our person, no Internet cuz registers, nothing, cuz we had to be ready to help customers at all times).

In that situation to fight boredom I had to beg my boss for projects to do, or come up with ideas for stuff to do, since I wasn't allowed to just do projects on my own. But after the first month there wasn't anything left to really do organizationally or otherwise, so I just got really good at dusting really slowly to make it look like I was doing something until customers actually showed up.

In your situation it sounds like you're able to do things that aren't strictly work, or at least get away with it, so I would either really hammer your boss to give you things to do, come up with projects for yourself to work on, or ask your boss for leaves of absence to take classes or something until work comes through. If you're able to find something that's "learn on the job" like if you can teach yourself Java, go with that.

You could also use this time to network with people, haven't delved too deeply into it myself but apparently LinkedIn is great for that. Get to know your coworkers. Get to know your customers. Try to make yourself a hub of information in some way.

 

[Vinc2612]

Thank you all for your imputs. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one (well, no one is ever the only one, but it is still easier to relate to smogon users rather than people I've never heard or cared of).

I think I'll talk more seriously to my boss, and take the "learn java" route if he doesn't suggest anything better. Even if I probably won't learn fast enough to help the developers in this mission, it's something that will never be lost in my new field, and something that no one will blame me for.

 

[Ash Borer]

I had a job where there was literally nothing to do most of the time before. I would either read a book, or stay up really late the night before, make it into work on barely any sleep and then sleep at my desk.

 

[Kawaii Kyouko]

Well, I've had weeks where there's been a blackout at my line of work. Basically, I work in construction, and during these blackouts it is illegal to even the construction site due to potential dangers, which meant we were stuck in the barracks. Basically, during these weeks I had to bring my phone charger in an attempt to not bore myself to death.

I still did though, I quickly learned that having nothing to do is literally the worst thing ever. But its not like I can do much about it.

 

[tml]

Study the bible

 

[Mizuhime]

I mean I have a few options you could do with all that time. You could learn another language, learn another programming language, learn other jobs watch some anime, watch some real shows if anime doesn't tickle your fancy, do something you've always wanted to do. I don't really want to be that person that says there's always something to do, but if you have access to the internet and are allowed to do whatever, you have endless options. Personally i'd take the time to learn another language or two but whatever floats your boat

 

[Shinryu]

Wish I'd get paid to do nothing. Instead a coworker is transferring and I'll literally be the only one in my section again for the umpteenth time in 4 years, which means extra work and no overtime since it very rarely gets authorized, meaning I fall a bit behind each day >.>