It’s been about a month since I started working (and yes, I cheated on the previous post’s date, fucking sue me), and I’d like to share my thoughts on different aspects of my experience so far, ranging from routine, work itself and the new people I met. I’ll separate them by sections so I don’t end up with a 5000 word essay where people fall asleep after 3 lines, this isn’t the English criminal law book.

The routine

I have to say that I definitely did not expect my routine to actually improve with my new work. Before I would wake up at 1PM, struggle harder than Guts to get anything productive done for more than 15 minutes, reach 5PM mentally exhausted even though I didn’t do anything, and waddle around the internet till 4AM, because I wasn’t physically tired enough to actually fall asleep.

With my new job though? I wake up way earlier, shower, breakfast, coffee… Hell, I was even able to re-incorporate exercise and reading back into my day-to-day life. And none of that came at the cost of time for my hobbies, personal projects and things I enjoy, which is the best part of it all. I also realized that, not only I really need structure, I also need an external entity to somewhat enforce it and hold me accountable. I don’t naturally default to being productive, so if I were left to myself, I’d be so much of a leech that I’d be cast for the Parasite movie, surely.

There are still some things that I need to figure out. I haven’t found a definite time box to fit daily work on my thesis, and if I don’t, it will derail the planned delivery time. That’s something I’d like to avoid.

The meetings

I didn’t expect so many meetings. Daily meetings, every two weeks meetings, meetings to discuss meetings… Any more meetings and this would be the work version of Tinder or OkCupid.

There is also the particularity that we are in quarantine times, consequently every meeting is via web. What struck me the hardest was how deprived of information we become when we only interact digitally. The access to information like body language, small movements, posture, eye contact and micro sounds is null, and makes it harder to read or access the other person. Things voice tone, pitch, pace and melody become much more important in the conversation (and of course, the words actually being said). Nonetheless, the information that I needed was transmitted to me without issues. And oh dear Lord was there a ton of it.

Labels, dates, naming conventions, coding practices, sprints, backlogs, user stories, story points… So many little details to learn, so overwhelming, it was almost like an avalanche rolling down the Everest mountain. This was the time I really valued having previous work experience, so this scenario was not news to me. I knew there was no need for me to memorize every little thing, all I needed to know was that those things exist, so I could gravitate towards them when I actually need to use them.

On the other hand, I can definitely see someone fresh out of university crumble under this mountain of details. If someone out there reading this is going through a similar process, relax, you really don’t need to memorize that version numbers are separated with dots and not underscores. Just remember that when the time comes that you need to name a version, read the appropriate documentation before doing it.

I still have some more things to share, but if I kept them here it would make the post way too big. I’ve decided to make a new post as a part 2 for this one.