I'm currently in an internship at the BLS in Washington DC. I'm doing a webpage of sorts. Now the work is pretty tame and what not. Not bad at all just very solitary...locked up in a room for 8 hours trying to extend my work artificially by taking the longest route possible and what not while waiting for updates to be approved. Overall it's a pretty cushy job. Little supervision and I'm sort of my own boss. But this solitary thing is killing me. I'm the only IT specialist in the department so it gets rather lonely I guess.... I guess what I"m trying to say is are most "office" IT positions like this? I was always under the impression that there was either way more work or just a bit more socialization.... I really don't think I could handle working on things like this for the rest of my life.... I mean a work enviorment such as this.

You didn't say what BLS stands for, but I'm betting it's not a game company.
In this forum, read the thread "What is job like in game industry"
And in "The Business and Law" forum, read the thread "Disconnected Teams"
And in this forum's FAQs, read FAQ 15.
AFTER you've read those, you should have a better idea of what it's usually like at a game company (as opposed to the BLS, which you should never imagine being anything like a game company).

Is that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics? Sounds like a blast =P

Is that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics? Sounds like a blast =P

Yep that's what it is.... thanks for the heads up BTW I'll read that now then.

You get a room all to yourself?

I would have killed for that while I was in the games industry.

Hell, I'd kill for it now. Or at least maim.

It's different everywhere. My first job was 6+ foot high wall cubicles, you would go the whole day not seeing anyone else, nobody was really friendly or talked to each other. My current job we have half walls everywhere but sit in groups of 4(computers are in 4 corners of a square basically), everyone talks with each other and we all get along great. It is really hit and miss, but I don't think that is specific to our(tech) industry.

It's different everywhere. My first job was 6+ foot high wall cubicles, you would go the whole day not seeing anyone else, nobody was really friendly or talked to each other. My current job we have half walls everywhere but sit in groups of 4(computers are in 4 corners of a square basically), everyone talks with each other and we all get along great. It is really hit and miss, but I don't think that is specific to our(tech) industry.

your right, it's the same at my job, and i don't work in the IT area.

Do you have a laptop?

You could move to a location where there's more people milling about.

Instead of dragging things out maybe create a list of things to learn (that is still relevant to your job) and then tell your boss that you need to seek out other technical people to ask them questions... even if they're in another building across town. Or join some key mailing lists.

I've never worked at a place where I was the only technical employee though so it must be frustrating not having others to bounce ideas off or learn about the latest new tech.

I've worked in corporate/business and in games, and the environment was quite a bit different. In business, even if you put in the effort to get out of your cube, a large number of people seemed not to care about getting to know their colleagues and just wanted to get out of there at 5pm.
In games, I'm usually on a team of about a dozen or two, and on a quiet day I'll still have to interact with at least two or three of them. Most days there's a brief meeting with most of the team. Also, at the games places I've worked, a larger number of people seem to care about having lunch together and doing after-work activities (or at least drinking in the office).