Does Netsuite has some sort of sleep for server side scripts?

no.

I hope the loop that wastes time is not common 🙂. Another solution here is to write a separate (scheduled/mr) script for the polling portion

Here's the loop that wastes time: https://ursuscode.com/netsuite-tips/snippet-to-create-a-delay-in-a-server-side-script/

I cry a little when I see something like that.

uncommon workaround is making slow http requests using something like http://slowwly.robertomurray.co.uk. You should have your own endpoint if you are doing this seriously

I just ran a test and on a Suitelet I was able to run the time waster function for 3 minutes without issues

suitelets dont time out easily

I'm amazed one wouldn't hit the instruction limit governance in < 3 minutes

Unfortunately I am implementing a plugin where I can’t “outsource” or split this

@fkrauthan Try a different approach, there should be a better way to do what you need, coding wise or design wise.

well given that the plugin callback tells me what data it needs and expects them returned right away there is not much of a choice. Probably gonna change the server endpoint to be blocking

if you can, that's great. fundamentally suitescript is synchronous, so if you have an API designed for async usage it's not going to be pretty in the scenario you describe.

@fkrauthan That is when design and architecture comes into place, but without knowing more details it will be hard for anyone here to give you a different idea.