1

How do you look productive when you’ve got nothing to do?

When I took this job, they told me there’s probably not enough work for a full time job. They weren’t kidding. I have a ridiculous amount of free time each day, although I’m not complaining. What do you do in your spare moments so people don’t think you’re bludging (slacking off)?

Mind you, even when I’m working, I’m often just sitting at my desk, typing at my keyboard. I doubt anyone else in the company (except the IT manager who works at a different site) realises (or cares) what’s involved in my job. I get the odd ‘what do you do around here?’ or ‘you’re just bludging’ comment, which I find offensive. Not my fault there’s not much to do. I try to be proactive, keeping servers up to date, managing backups, clearing caches, etc, but once you’ve set up your scripts and scheduled tasks, there’s only so much to do. Everyone’s very friendly, so maybe they’re only trying to stir me up and I’m just being overly sensitive.

Anyone else have to put up with these sorts of comments or is it just an Australian thing?

12 Spice ups
2

Open up a couple of terminal windows and have things like top running. When people see lots of text on a dark background they just switch to dummy mode and assume you’re doing something important.

8 Spice ups
3

Don’t forget to keep Spiceworks open as well.

4

I get those comments as well, maybe it is an Australian thing!

My Spiceworks tickets are backed up though and I am busy. I don’t know what people expect, most of the guys around me are sales, and I’m the “IT guy” who just sites tapping away at my keyboard while they’re all busy on phones.

As long as you’re keeping on top of requests and being as pro-active as you can, you’re doing you job.

Is there something else in the business you’re interested in? If you’re really that stuck for things to do, maybe there is another area you can stick your fingers in?

Or, you can do the Answer a Question bit in Spiceworks. If you’ve got nothing to do you can research a problem, help someone and learn something new!

1 Spice up
5

Yup. Things like Spiceworks and server-monitoring gear can really help. I’ve taken to keeping Spiceworks open in a window on my screen, so that if someone walks past during the split-second I’ve closed out of a program and before I switch to something else, they can’t accuse me of malingering because they caught a glimpse of desktop. Besides, having a screenful of tickets with my name next to them gets the point across that yes, I am actually busy even if I’m not typing at 100wpm every second of the day. It’s the electronic equivalent of the stereotypical big “projects in progress” whiteboard.

One place I had a lot of free time at I used to learn their new mainframe macro language and write some timesaving programs for people I liked. I also cleared up some administrative processing backlogs, defragged their physical file stacks, ran equipment diagnostics and audits, and generally went looking for things which might be a cause of issues in the next twelve months or so. In spare moments, I set up a mailing list which IT folk at the other employer offices in the state could use to swap best-practice anecdotes and generally get to know each other better (given that we rarely or never actually saw one another).

6

This freeware version of Spotlight might be something to add to your arsenal. Lots of visuals and it is actually really helpful.

1 Spice up
7

Thanks guys! Some good suggestions here. In my situation, nobody can see my screen, but I always have a couple of terminal windows and Spiceworks running anyway.

I just get the impression people think I’m slacking off because I’m always at my desk, unless I’m fixing something. Most of the time I can fix things remotely, but I try to get up and go the users desks just so I look more productive. When I’m really busy, I tend to do things remotely and often spend the whole day behind my desk, but I can get heaps more done that way. I worry that it doesn’t look good, though.

8

I’d like to throw out a couple of serious ideas out there, as funny as the other answers have been.

  1. In my job as Network Admin, I believe that one of my major roles is to improve the business process wherever and however I can. As IT, we make the blinking lights keep working. That’s not enough. Make them work better, and easier, and faster, and more reliably. There has to be areas where you can improve how something is being done, so you won’t be twiddling your thumbs. Anybody can keep a business running, in theory, with a Windows 98 environment running Quickbooks from 1992. But there’s a reason why businesses don’t do that anymore, and frankly IT is the best department sometimes to point out new and better ways. (Or stop new and bad ways from being put in place.)

  2. As a corollary to all that, I believe that the job of IT is to make ourselves unnecessary. And at the same time, our job is to find new ways in which we can be helpful and needed. Network’s running great? Awesome, get involved with DBA work and improve data cleanliness and reduce double entry or something. Database is perfect? No such thing but assuming that, throw yourself into software support. Basically, make your old role need less time and make more work for yourself. If you’re a one-man-shop, you should be wearing TWO DOZEN HATS OF IT AWESOMENESS AND TECHNICAL GODHOOD.

  3. Be visible, and be open about the value you bring to the company. Toot your horn, and frankly let people know that they can’t get their work done without the magic you do. Earn their respect.

And their fear - I’m a big believer in IT Fear. See previous reference to technical godhood. :smiley:

4 Spice ups
9

If you think being deskbound is causing perception issues, find reasons to get up and be seen in other areas. Take a clipboard (and, depending on the site, thirty feet of Cat-5 slung over your shoulder and a toolbelt). Audit the copiers and WAPs in person. Run off test pages. Wave a WiFi detector around. Talk to people. Ask if there’s anything they need fixed or improved. If there are phone switch stacks or server rooms on other floors, be seen going to and fro from them.

If you want to be doing something actually useful at the same time, you could run connectivity and maintenance tests, map out the corporate WiFi hotspots and weak points (and any points where other wireless systems spill over onto your turf), make maps of the building(s) and floors with teams, printers, user names, and other equipment and items located on it. Take a reasonably high-pixel camera and photograph the infrastructural equipment front and back, including any identifying numbers, location in racks, what cables are plugged in fore and aft, and so on. (It’s very useful for creating extensive documentation for new IT staff.) Make notes of room numbers, labels on wall-mounted network ports, and identifying marks (text, stickers, nearby environment) on printers and copiers so you’ll know what a caller means when they say “The printer with the green sticker near the rec room on the sixth floor,” or “The one that Harriet in Sales put the teddy bear next to.” At the very least, you’ll be able to describe each piece of equipment in excruciating detail when telling someone on the phone to look for it.

Or take on a project that needs a bit of walking back and forth. Install webcams in the server room or (with management permission) out at the front desk. Measure up the rooms at the employer’s and take 360-degree photos to construct a 3D representation of the offices you can use as a map for showing where various things are. Do proactive floorwalking where you walk a beat through the whole place one day a week (or more), asking people if anything needs looking at.

Extra bonus if you’re carrying a wireless and location-tracking interface to the ticketing system, which can tell you what tickets have previously been entered for everything nearby. (Location co-ordinates → check against mapped locations for devices, ports, and people in the area → Filter tags for ticket display.) Come to think of it, it’d be pretty spiffy to be able to have Spiceworks tickets logged by a wireless device include the co-ordinates it was logged from, particularly if it could then search/sort by horizontal or 3D distance from co-ordinates XYZ.

1 Spice up
10

what planet are you on? I’d love to get a job there ;p

but seriously…no matter what you do…IT will always be seen as slacking off…most users can’t tell when you are short of 10 hands…even when you are way up to your eye balls in work…so don’t sweat it…

but if you have to convince them you are doing something other than just sit around and bludging…take all the advice above…

and another thing…don’t look/dress so smartly…some days I go into work with messy hair and pull my shirt out abit…thats when I get the look “oh he must be really busy today…don’t disturb him unless it’s a real issue” look…and when they do need to ask something…they do it in a very courteous manner…

1 Spice up
11

Read the Spiceworks forums in nonfullscreen windows with images and toolbars turned off and the text set to green on black Courier New. Intersperse with some similarly-formatted windows containing Unix man pages. :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
12

… and most important … :slight_smile:

Excel… everyone loves Excel and it looks good…

http://hardlywork.in/ (currently down and seems not to come back)

You could spend hours in front of it and do something “useful”.

Ok and back to work.

13

Think bigger, perhaps look for areas of improvement, not even just in IT, or ways n which IT may further the objectives of other departments within the organization. YOu may not have the power to implement these things but you can put together proposals and do research. Worse case scenario you learn something to add to your knowledge and or skillset, best case scenario is they see your initiative and give you more responsibility. Plus you keep busy, when you don’t want to slag off, we all like to slag off a little during the day.

2 Spice ups
14

DOCUMENTATION! Make sure all of your documentation is up to date. I have rarely seen an environment where the documentation is accurate…not even anywhere close to accurate.

That’s what I do when I have some “downtime”…which isn’t alot.

Chris

2 Spice ups
15

I use any downtime I have to learn… I’ve probably watched more webinars and read more white papers over the last 9 months at this job than I did in 10 years of contract IT. If you’ve got some spare cash you can sign up for some new certs and study while at work.

If that doesn’t do it than just open up a few terminal sessions with perfmon and ping tests running. People are amazed by moving graphs and scrolling text. After all, that’s what ALL movies portray IT to be.

16

Houston LITS wrote:

DOCUMENTATION! Make sure all of your documentation is up to date. I have rarely seen an environment where the documentation is accurate…not even anywhere close to accurate.

This goes for both systems documentation and user docs. Simply throwing together some step-by-step how-tos with embeded screenshots for basic tasks can make you seem godlike, particularly if you hand them out as part of the new-staff introduction package.

17

awesome i am learning so much !! as an intern, sometimes there is no task to do, and now i know what to do!!

18

Just open up a few CMD windows, type “tree” in one and just run a ping -t on a website on the other and make sure other employees can see. Trust me this works :smiley:

19

Andrew7048 wrote:

I’d like to throw out a couple of serious ideas out there, as funny as the other answers have been.

  1. In my job as Network Admin, I believe that one of my major roles is to improve the business process wherever and however I can. As IT, we make the blinking lights keep working. That’s not enough. Make them work better, and easier, and faster, and more reliably. There has to be areas where you can improve how something is being done, so you won’t be twiddling your thumbs. Anybody can keep a business running, in theory, with a Windows 98 environment running Quickbooks from 1992. But there’s a reason why businesses don’t do that anymore, and frankly IT is the best department sometimes to point out new and better ways. (Or stop new and bad ways from being put in place.)

  2. As a corollary to all that, I believe that the job of IT is to make ourselves unnecessary. And at the same time, our job is to find new ways in which we can be helpful and needed. Network’s running great? Awesome, get involved with DBA work and improve data cleanliness and reduce double entry or something. Database is perfect? No such thing but assuming that, throw yourself into software support. Basically, make your old role need less time and make more work for yourself. If you’re a one-man-shop, you should be wearing TWO DOZEN HATS OF IT AWESOMENESS AND TECHNICAL GODHOOD.

  3. Be visible, and be open about the value you bring to the company. Toot your horn, and frankly let people know that they can’t get their work done without the magic you do. Earn their respect.

And their fear - I’m a big believer in IT Fear. See previous reference to technical godhood. :smiley:

I fully agree and have followed these ideals my whole career in IT.

20

When people ask me stuff like that I usually come back with something like:

“So what you are telling me is that I need to bring your computer down for some maintenance?”

“Actually, I was just about to pull an internet usage report, I think your name just came to the top of the list. Hmm, or I could just keep working on what I was working on, do you have a preference?”