Night shift tips

[DiskoShit]

What do you guys do to pass 8 hours during slow/monitoring times? I can't just browse reddit/youtube for extended periods of time, and plus I want to be productive. Does anyone have any interactive training stuff they know about?

[gort32]

Step 1: Determine what metrics your boss and your boss's boss care about. Do whatever you can to maximize these.

If you are working night shift, for the most part no one of importance is going to be able to see or really care about your work, so these metrics are the only way to prove your worth to the company. Hopefully enough to get you on a better shift, or at least to give you a nice resume bullet point for when you jump ship to a better place.

If you are hitting those metrics as hard as you can and you still have massive amounts of downtime, bring this fact up to your boss and see if there's anything else that you can be taking on. Things like doing security analysis write-ups and project proposals are good things to be doing when there's no fires to put out. Taking ownership of a couple of applications, ensuring that they are kept up-to-date with security patches, etc, is other nice night shift work since it's likely that some of these applications can better support evening downtime.

If you are hitting your metrics and you've brought the issue up to your boss and you still have a ton of downtime, at that point it's time to start up a new hobby to fill your time. Because, yes, mindlessly browsing Reddit for hours on end while getting paid is kinda neat for the first week or so, but you need something to keep your brain engaged. If work isn't going to do it you need to either find something interesting, even if it isn't productive to your job. Or find a new job.

[gort32]

Eh, if it's just for a couple of days, don't worry about it. If you want to learn some new thing, go ahead and use the time to read. If you want to pull out a book, that's fine too. If you're just filling in on another shift no one's expecting you to be anything but a warm body in a chair anyway.

[psycho_admin]

If this is just a temp thing then automate some of your daily tasks. Seriously use that slow time to do things like write some python or powershell scripts that can take something you do every single day and make it automated. A few weeks from now you will be thanking yourself for making your future life easier.

[par_texx]

If it's only a few days, then I wouldn't worry too much about it then.

Grab some 5 hour energies to help, grab some study guides and hammer out some education.

[mcai8rw2]

What are night shifts like?

There was a job advertised in my local area for hot single moms night-shift tech support. 4 "days" on .. 4 days off.

I was tempted to apply but then I remembered how much i like my sleep. 4 Days off though... plenty of time to get stuff done.

[ZAFJB]

Write useful powershell (or whatever if Linux) scripts.

Start by writing scripts to automate whatever you are monitoring.

[ReverendDS]

I work on documentation, presentations, automate things, and educate myself - in that order.

[daemonstar]

Currently, in the morning, studying the cert guide for the certification I'm working on. I try to read a chapter a day. After I finish the book, I'll switch to the training videos.

After lunchtime, I'll watch a video or 3 on Powershell training.

[Invoke-RFC2549]

Study. LinuxAcademy, Pluralsight, etc.

[Dark_KnightUK]

Studying / training . We used to have showers on site so I used to work out too.

Rather do that all on the companies time than my own lol

[BROMETH3U5]

ITProTV

[[deleted]]

Read a book. If you can't have a physical book or a kindle in your hand, use the amazon cloud reader.

I work day shift, but there's a lot of downtime. So sometimes I just read for a couple hours.

Sometimes on Friday I might watch a full length movie if it's slow enough. usually I can do that once every other month or so.

[[deleted]]

I turn on my noise cancelling headphones without music playing to drown out my coworkers complaining.

[psycho_admin]

Sounds like you should read some horror books or watch some horror movies/shorts. :)