Need advice about my current job situation

[krazyq]

I work in IT and 70% is downtime with not a single thing to do.. I cant even find anything to do! so like Sub I just study and learnt new troubleshooting solutions and learning Linux.. I weighed up my options but again like Sub said, getting paid and learning what you want is the best balance. ofc your manager will need to be fine with it.

Also speak to your manager, I spoke to mine when I felt I wasn't learning anything new and he allowed me to set up my own rigs, servers and test new tech things out which is great!

The problem here is that I do not work in an IT department.
I'm working with the Marketing team, there's not much that interests me over here.
What's funny is that about a month or two ago someone has issues setting up her monitor, my co worker gave up and asked her to call help desk...I was like ummm I have to figure this out and I did and man it felt great, at that moment I was like, this is what I know I'm good at and I enjoy it, it brings me pleasure fixing something that's broken or setting stuff up.
SharePoint is boooring, making InfoPath forms is even worse.
I've been getting a bunch of calls already, it's tough answering to all of them, going to interviews will be tricky

 

[1etherer]

The problem here is that I do not work in an IT department.
I'm working with the Marketing team, there's not much that interests me over here.
What's funny is that about a month or two ago someone has issues setting up her monitor, my co worker gave up and asked her to call help desk...I was like ummm I have to figure this out and I did and man it felt great, at that moment I was like, this is what I know I'm good at and I enjoy it, it brings me pleasure fixing something that's broken or setting stuff up.
SharePoint is boooring, making InfoPath forms is even worse.
I've been getting a bunch of calls already, it's tough answering to all of them, going to interviews will be tricky

I'd say get a new job tbh, if your job atm is not IT, your never going to be happy. In terms of interviews, if your pretty sure you got a good shot at a job, either take half day leave or pull a sicky, otherwise your never going to make that jump into IT.

 

[Lexluethar]

Jesus where do you people work? I have way too much to do and would love a little downtime here and there

Seriously though, depending on the company and job depends on the downtime. When i worked at a service desk down time was when there were no calls which was hit and miss. Now in my current role it's heavy project work with break-fix here and there. So when there is downtime it's generally spent reading up on newer / different configurations we could use in our environment.

 

[krazyq]

At Cargill it was pretty busy when I was building machines and working with Break fix tickets, once I got moved to the Software Distribution team things changed, I had a lot of down time, My desk never changed so I still worked with the Help Desk guys, they weren't happy about it, they always felt like I was slacking off but the work style was just different.
I had a lot of work to do but I could do it any time I wanted, I didn't have to call people and fix things.
Here at BBY, we're both bored running out of things to do.

 

[1etherer]

We work so differently in my company. We dont use a ticket system, the CEO wants the company to stay social and engaging etc..
So we just get phone calls directly to us or we walk around the office to help out, even with our offices abroad we just chat with them and fix issues as they come, other than a few (touch wood) major network issues, I'm just building and testing new set-ups and software's, reading new tech etc.

So my job is very flexible and get alot of downtime which I like =]

 

[carnageX]

That sounds horrible honestly lol.

Especially if you want to keep track of trends or just keep track of issues in general.

 

[krazyq]

Funny thing
I get an email from my recruiter yesterday,
Hi Qasim,

Noticed you updated the resume on Monster over the weekend. You just keeping that current or are you thinking about starting to look around again?

Just wanted to check in so there weren't any surprises.

Thanks!
lol busted...haha
Well my manager comes up to me and my teammate and asks if we know how to assign a .dat file to open with excel (i'm like ummm that's kinda easy and explained what to do)
He's like since you know how to do it, I'll have you(the other guy) do it.
UGH!!!
This is why I feel so useless over here.

 

[Lexluethar]

Horrible idea to not have a ticketing system or some tracking system. ITIL standards are widely recognized across the IT industry and is the foundation in most service setups.

Just because you track an issue with a ticket does not mean you can't go to the users desk - it does not mean you can't be socially engaged with the user. Just my two cents.

 

[carnageX]

Just because you track an issue with a ticket does not mean you can't go to the users desk - it does not mean you can't be socially engaged with the user. Just my two cents.

This.

Having a ticket system has nothing to do with how you interact with people - it gives a better way of managing issues that arise.

 

[krazyq]

This.

Having a ticket system has nothing to do with how you interact with people - it gives a better way of managing issues that arise.

I use to keep track of all my tickets even though we had a ticketing system.
I logged the ticket no. date of issue, users name number, issue and resolution.

Sometimes you would remember the user when they called back or if someone was dealing with the same user or same issue , you'd be like wait a minute...this sounds familiar. And Cntrl F would do the trick!