My Day as a Software Engineer
I have been inspired lately on youtube by engineers who talk about an average work day for them, I felt to share mine as well through this post. Let me start by saying I work as a software engineer and have been doing so for over 4 years as of the time of writing this.
I will kick off with a short description of what I do — I build android mobile apps and have had the pleasure of working with some big name brands like Laundrapp, O2, Tottenham Hotspurs and The Telegraph. Working with android I know both Java and Kotlin and enjoy working on both. I help companies deliver android apps, coming in to help either from the beginning of a project, midway or even towards the delivery date.
Morning
My alarm goes off at 5:15 am, I wake up early as it allows me to make time to go to the gym, very early yes but after a while you get used to it. Also, I really cannot motivate myself to go in the evening and this has been working well for me so far. At around 8 I leave my house and begin my commute to work. I like to read books when commuting, I recently finished reading “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi which is an amazing afro Sci-fi book, but currently I am re-reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
I usually get in for 9:30am and one of the first things I do is set my desk up.
Set-Up
Macbook pro 15-inch 2018 i7
Apple Magic Mouse 2
Apple Magic Keyboard
A USB-C adapter (with USB B ports and HDMI port)
Once I’m done with setting up my desk I check my emails, mainly looking for build errors from jenkins that might have happened from the previous nights late pull requests, and also for any production crashes from Crashlytics. Like most engineers who work in agile, I normally have stand up meetings in the morning with my team, which is an opportunity to discuss what I did yesterday, my plan for today and if anything is blocking me from completing a task I am currently working on.
After the stand-up is done I get down to the real fun. I open up android studio, iterm and connect my phone to start some debugging. I will either pick up work from where I left off the night before or pick up a new task. I do take mini breaks while working unless there is a time constraint, one of the things I like to do is catch up on medium articles related to android development or what is going on in the mobile scene. Android Authority, Android Police and Reddit are some of my best procrastinating tool.
Afternoon
I have my lunch around 1pm, most likely with my colleagues but if that is not the case I will sit at my desk and listen to some of my favourite podcasts or youtube shows. Some of the podcasts I listen to related to my career are Fragmented Podcast and Android Developer Podcast. These two podcasts have helped my career in not only the material but inspiration in furthering my career. Youtube channels I watch during lunch include MKBHD, XDA developer, BBC click and TechCrunch, which are more related to tech but again a good source of information and inspiration.
After lunch
Some days I will have sprint reviews, where we discuss how we feel the current sprint is going and if we are on track to meet our sprint target, or retrospectives where we discuss what went well and what didn’t go well during the sprint and if we have any ideas to help improve the sprint or teams morale. If there are no meetings planned in the afternoon, I will continue to work on my task from the morning or blast through tickets on the Jira board. One of the great things about my job is that it is diverse and no two days are the same, due to the nature of technology evolving you are always learning something new.
Another thing I like about my job is that I get to work with both senior and junior developers and collaborate to solve problems. This is a great way for me to learn from others regardless of their level of experience. We can discuss ideas and the best solution to solve a problem, plus it gives me a break from my desk and get to know my team. I also like to sit with iOS developers to see how they will tackle similar issues we face on android and it is not surprising when we share the same logic to solve a problem.
I normally leave the office around 5:30/6 pm and begin my commute home, and similarly to the morning I will read a book on my journey.
Evening
I normally get back at home around 7pm. I like to work on my personal projects in the evening for a few hours, mainly to study and improve my skills but also in hope I build the next big app. If I’m not coding, then I am planning my next blog posts which normally will requires some in depth research and studying. If I feel unmotivated to do anything or just want to rest, I will usually relax playing on my PS4 or watching Netflix.
This blog post was to show a typical day for me in my job. This is a very high level and not quite the full picture as there are days I have to stay late debugging or fixing production issues or even days just full of meetings but this is still as accurate a day for a software developer.
