How much downtime do you get in work?

Pseudonym

Obviously we all get peaks and troughs, but I have a huge amount of downtime in work that allows me to study. I'm curious to see how commonplace this is across the industry. Ideally, when I decide to move I'd like to find a job that keeps me busier, but also does allow some downtime for study.

So what's your job title? What kind of company do you work for? And how many hours a week/percentage of your week is downtime?

soccarplayer29

I think it depends on the position but it seems to me that helpdesk roles have some of those peaks/valleys where you'll get some downtime.

Personally: Most months 0 hours of downtime. I had a few days of downtime last year which I used to CPEs/certs but I haven't have any downtime this year for studying.

Ismaeljrp

No downtime, work in a NOC. There is always something to do. Not only that but we currently have no true Sysadmin and we share sys admin duties aside from our actual NOC role.

Welly_59

Network engineer for an msp. Honestly get a good few hours spare a day to study

alias454

It depends, I have more "free time" as a Unix admin than I ever did doing Windows but that is only because we don't have any large projects going on at the moment. With that said, I fill my "spare time" with implementing nice-to-haves. I use the downtime to work on things that take a back seat when more important work has to be done.

redsteel

I'm an IT Manager and I have nothing but down time. I was busy the first 6 months, but I'm two years in and there haven't been any recent developments in the company requiring technology. I was going out of mind until I started studying for the CISSP. I'm not sure if I will hang out here a while or what. They would probably let me but I feel like I'm losing my skillset and have no one to sharpen myself against.

odysseyelite

During the last reorganization I got moved from engineering to operations. I'm losing my mind with all the down time. The hard part is I can't concentrate to read or watch training videos in the environment.

blatini

Occasional downtime. Not a lot though.

Daneil3144

4+ Hours a day at least....expected to walk around and look for problems.

100k

About the same as Daneil3144. Looking for a more challenging role right now.

labscloud

Daneil3144 wrote: »

4+ Hours a day at least....expected to walk around and look for problems.

I get 4 + also, although I'm not expected to walk around and find problems, THANK GOD!! I would've been gone a long time ago if that was the case, instead I use my downtime studying(currently CCNA). I think going forward I'll make sure that studying during downtime is ok before I accept a job offer now that I know how useful it is because I struggle putting in 2-3 more hours in when I get home from being at work all day.

MyCompSucks

At MSP now, so don't really have much downtime. I probably get a solid hour a week for planned studying. It's awesome if I can get a few hours, but that rarely ever happens. Got a new gig in a week, so may have more than I know what to do with, mostly project based so I expect that I'll have time to study for certs. Never had a job where I get paid for a full day with tons downtime, will let you know how it is, but really look forward to the extra free time.

TechGromit

Depends on the week, but generally Fridays are slow days, gives me lots of time to study if I feel like it.

Nisseki

It depends on the day and how busy it is but in my previous workplace regardless if there was no work, we had to find work to do such as doing other colleague's support tickets. We were worked like robots.

dontstop

Work for an MSP at the moment. Magically I'm expected to fit more time in the day then there are hours. I struggle most days to get lunch (30 min) without feeling guilty for being behind.

DatabaseHead

dontstop wrote: »

Work for an MSP at the moment. Magically I'm expected to fit more time in the day then there are hours. I struggle most days to get lunch (30 min) without feeling guilty for being behind.

But where are your billable hours?

DatabaseHead

It really depends, usually an hour a day. I usually try to post and do some studying in the morning then it's to the grind.

Danielh22185

Right now I encounter a decent amount of downtime because my boss limits the number of changes I can make in a week which creates a backlog effect for me. I hit a spot where I cannot progress certain items because of the natural back logging created by my boss. So I typically try to utilize that time on something productive like studying, reading up on trends in IT, researching or teaching myself something new like Python, etc.

My role is a "Senior Network Engineer" for a medium sized market research company. I am 1 of 2 total guys responsible for all aspects of the network. I probably get 5hrs+ downtime per week.

JoJoCal19

In my position (Information Security Risk Management Sr Manager) I have tons of downtime. My job is deliverable based so when I'm not performing, overseeing, or responding to risk assessments or audits, or other governance and compliance stuff, I'm studying. Management doesn't care when, where or how I work as long as deliverables are met. I love that nature of this type of job. It does have it's times where I'm working late into the evening, or at night, or having to wake up at 6am to work with colleagues overseas, but that's the exception and not the norm.

labscloud

JoJoCal19 wrote: »

In my position (Information Security Risk Management Sr Manager) I have tons of downtime. My job is deliverable based so when I'm not performing, overseeing, or responding to risk assessments or audits, or other governance and compliance stuff, I'm studying. Management doesn't care when, where or how I work as long as deliverables are met. I love that nature of this type of job. It does have it's times where I'm working late into the evening, or at night, or having to wake up at 6am to work with colleagues overseas, but that's the exception and not the norm.

This sounds like a beautiful gig man! That's the kind of arrangement I'm going to look for at my next stop, hopefully around January.

Fulcrum45

I might get an hour or so a day of downtime but that's made up in the evenings with the mail migration I'm currently doing. A lot of it cannot commence till 5pm so that last hour I'm just waiting to get started. Prior to this I was twiddling my thumbs all day waiting for somebody to have an issue. Thank God that's over.

srocky26

A lot.

We aren't allowed to have multiple projects or things to do. When we are waiting through change control or development to complete something on their end, we have a ton of free time. Just recently I had about four weeks of downtime...

ITSpectre

Fulcrum45 wrote: »

Prior to this I was twiddling my thumbs all day waiting for somebody to have an issue. Thank God that's over.

shoot....You could have banged out some study time and worked on a new cert with all that free time. I would not have minded having that much free time.... downtime is study time. OR Reading about destiny 2

E Double U

It varies daily, but I always make sure to use the time to study. I work in a SOC.

ccnpninja

My only downtime is going to the WC.
Due to my job role, I get sollicited all the time, either by email, by phone, by my team members,...And when I try not to answer phone calls, people come to my office.

beads

Work in a consistently busy shop where downtime is generally frowned upon. Best advice given around here is that if YOU want something from my team you had better stand right there and wait for it to be done. We have extra chairs around for this purpose as well. Otherwise there are shallow lulls when reports are generated or meetings cancelled creating unexpected downtime, such as today.

Just depends on the shop and the overall workload. I do almost all my studying at night or very small snippets here at work.

Expect to devote some of your evenings, if not most, to studying in these fields.

- b/eads

E Double U

ccnpninja wrote: »

My only downtime is going to the WC..

Hopefully you use that time wisely

kohr-ah

None. If there is free time it is frowned upon as you should be doing something more productive.
I try to read over lunch or in the evenings if I can.

EANx

Downtime? At work? There's at least one weekday per week where I'm logged in at home working and maybe one weekend day per month I do the same. If someone who works for me has downtime, I don't mind browsing the news for 15 minutes to clear their head but if they have blocks of 2-3 hrs, they need to tell me. I'll get them info an online class or something.

johnIT

redsteel wrote: »

I'm an IT Manager and I have nothing but down time. I was busy the first 6 months, but I'm two years in and there haven't been any recent developments in the company requiring technology. I was going out of mind until I started studying for the CISSP. I'm not sure if I will hang out here a while or what. They would probably let me but I feel like I'm losing my skillset and have no one to sharpen myself against.

That's my situation. I'm not an IT manager, but I was last week while my boss was on vacation. And often times I feel like the IT Manager, because my boss is kind of an idiot who refuses to learn new technologies or even study Windows 10 on his own downtime. I have the opposite scenario of you though, they don't want me to leave but I will as soon as I get a better paying gig. I work at a non-profit and sometimes I get whole days when I get maybe two calls, but we've done a lot of network infrastructure updates to get to this level.

f16jetman

I am the sole person in the IT department. I have 6+ hours of downtime every day. My old boss, the IT Manager, left the company because he was so bored. When he was hired he had about 6 months of being crazy busy, but after that, he had very little to do for 3 years. I have used my downtime to finish my WGU degree. I am going to obtain some AWS certs before I leave my current job. If it wasn't for WGU and certs, I would be banging my head against a wall at work. Even Youtube, Reddit and TE get old after a few hours.