8.30 AM
I wake up and get ready for the day. Today I’m working from home, so thankfully I don’t have to wake up too early.
9.00 AM
I commute to work, which involves a tough thirty-second walk to my desk. My computer boots up itself on schedule during my commute because I’m all about min-maxing my time. Generally, I’ll check my emails, and Slack to see if there’s anything I need to be updated on and look at my calendar to get an idea of what my day’s going to be like and when my meetings are scheduled for the day. Then, I’ll consult the to-do list that I’ve written up the previous day because I have the memory of a goldfish. This list will include any run on tasks from the day before that haven’t been completed or a general note of where I’m up to for a particular task.
9.30 AM
Typically, I won’t have meetings until the afternoon because my team is based across Sydney and South Africa, so mornings make for a good time for uninterrupted workflow. I’ll get the majority of progress on my heavier tasks done in the morning, such as setting up a new report for our API or updating a dependency in our repo that requires a cascade of non-trivial code changes. I’m still fairly new to the repo so mornings also make for a great time to journey down rabbit holes trying to figure out how everything in our codebase fits and works together.
11.00 AM
I have a catch up with my previous people leader – they’re responsible for looking after your development as a person and are generally in your team or an adjacent team so that they have visibility of your progress. We got along really well in my previous rotation so we still catch up even though I’ve rotated out! It’s fun to still hear about what’s going on and he still gives great advice even if we’re no longer on the same project.
12.00 PM
Lunchtime! wooo food food food OD! It’s time to eat and also a good time to step away from the screen.
1.00 PM
Back to work!
2.30 PM
I have a meeting coming up at 3 with the engineering lead on my team about a ticket I’ve been working on. It involves updating the version of a dependency in our project which requires making some changes to the way our integration tests are set up. I’m as far along as I can get without additional information so I set up this meeting to see if I’m on the right track and get clarification on a couple of things – it saves time compared to constantly going back and forth on Slack! Since the meeting’s coming up, I’ll take some time to revisit what I’ve done so I can summarise it during the meeting.
3.00 PM
Meeting time! We start by running through the changes that I’ve implemented so far and working through what had me stumped. These meetings are always super useful because I get insight into their thought process and also pick up tips along the way, ranging from how they approach the problem and where they go for documentation, to what shortcuts they use in the IDE.
4.30 PM
Standup time - this is when my team gets together and we discuss what progress we’ve made since the previous day. These updates give us visibility on what everyone is working on and also a time to catch up with each other. It’s also a fantastic time to ask for reviews on a PR (pull request).
5.25 PM
Day’s nearly over, so I’ll start wrapping up what I’m working on. If I’m in the middle of something, I’ll jot down a note of what I’m doing and what I’m thinking of doing next so I can pick it up the next day. I’ll also do a quick check of my calendar to see if there’s anything I need to be prepared for the next day and write down a general to-do list.
5.30 PM
It’s the end of the day woohoo – work’s great but so is not working! Aside from the usual routine of dinner and getting ready for the night, I’ll spend my nights chilling out with mates over games – we mainly play Valorant but recently we’ve been dabbling in a Minecraft FTB server.