Developer Diary: Adam Wagner, Americaneagle.com

Welcome to BigCommerce’s Developer Diaries, where we’re tackling what it is like to work in ecommerce, as a developer. We’re asking agency partners, in-house devs, and freelancers about they spend their week and what it takes to be successful.

This entry features Adam Wagner, Technical Manager of E-Commerce Front End Development at Americaneagle.com. As a technical manager, he’s responsible for all ecommerce front-end accountabilities, essentially working as a bridge between the sales, project management, and the front-end development team to help architect and craft ecommerce websites. Being in this role, Adam also directly leads and mentors 11 Front End Developers (FEDs) — responsible for their day-to-day functions.

Suffice to say, there’s never a dull moment in his day.

Day One

8:15 AM
After dropping my son off at school, I get into the office. As most of my other team members and peers are still trickling into the building, I typically try to get at least 40 to 45 uninterrupted minutes to code, respond to emails/messages, and plan things out for the rest of the day.

With an already half-empty travel mug of coffee in hand, I plop down on my office chair and get started for the day. This particular morning, I start by responding to a few messages and then jump right into doing several code reviews for one of our major BigCommerce projects. I’ll refer to this project as “Dunder Mifflin” instead of “major BigCommerce project” to humanize it a bit. I am the Lead FED/FED architect/source control gatekeeper on this project and there are a few outstanding Pull Requests that need to be merged into our Master branch for the project. This is of higher priority as we’ll have our sprint demo for this project later in the day — so it’s important to confirm we’re delivering high quality/functioning code.

For code reviews, I’ll review the pull request first to understand its purpose and to ensure it accomplishes its user stories success criteria. I fire up Stencil locally and then pull down the code to start with a cursory review, i.e. does it pass the eye test? Then I deep dive into the code itself asking these questions — is it functional? Legible? Maintainable? Does it pass baseline accessibility? Does it perform well? Code reviews can definitely be time consuming, but it’s tremendously rewarding as it gives something tangible for mentorship and collaboration, and, it also helps me (as the reviewer) understand the code base more intimately.

9:00 AM
I jump on an “intros/discuss next steps” call for one of our new FED hires who will be aligned to my team. Unfortunately we couldn’t meet during this time, so instead, I discuss expectations and next steps for this FED with our Director of Front End Development. I start putting together a training exercise for this FED as well as start looking into making sure the FED has access to everything applicable and has all the correct software needed.

9:20 AM
I wrap up the code reviews I started earlier in the morning and merge all the pull requests into the projects Master branch. These particular pull requests were JavaScript-heavy and involved manipulating the BigCommerce checkout shipping method logic as well as implementing an Adestra function call on the checkout for ease of multiple firings.

9:45 AM
One of the FEDs on my team comes to my office to discuss a few things including merging the aforementioned projects Master branch into both development environments since we’re running two projects simultaneously for the client. We also discuss a slew of other items including theme linting, bundling, and stencil-cli pushes.

10:30 AM
Daily standup meeting for Dunder Mifflin. The project manager mentions we won’t be doing our usual standup routine as today is the ending of the previous sprint and start of a new sprint. Instead, we spend this time reviewing the new sprints backlog and story points. We sort through this sprint and assign story points for tasks that are achievable this sprint, and punt the user stories that are not to future sprints. I personally take on 12 story points worth of user stories.

10:45 AM
After the “daily standup” call and a fresh cup of coffee, I jump on a task for another BigCommerce client. This particular client wants to re-platform their site from Magento to BigCommerce, so the Project Manager of this project tasked me to analyze the existing Magento site, review the graphics and determine what if anything we may need from our design team. I also do some preliminary work reviewing code for the client’s Product Visualization and Product Selection tools.

11:00 AM
A FED on my team pings me with a question regarding setting up Google web fonts in projects. I walk over to his desk and we discuss that the standard way of embedding is still optimal and efficient enough. We also discuss several projects on his plate and a particular pull request he did.

11:20 AM
I jump back onto the Magento to BigCommerce re-platform project to continue my analysis. Thankfully today is a little lax on meetings as it’s already been pretty non-stop. During this time, my wife calls me, as she’ll usually do after picking my son up from kindergarten so I can say “hi” to them. My wife mentions that our newborn has had an eventful morning as well (spoiler: lots of poop) — but is now sleeping soundly in the car. Hearing their voices definitely helps break up the day and gives me a nice mental break.

However, after speaking to them — back to my analysis.

11:50 AM
After a few quick pleasantries with a couple of peers, I perform an ‘emergency’ code review. I sit with the FED to go over this pull request — it’s a patch to distinguish the two dev environments mentioned earlier. The patch uses theme settings, handlebars, and JS if statements. I approve and merge the PR into the Master branch. Deploying code so close to sprint demos is always a gamble, but this one needed to be added in.

12:00 PM
I answer a couple of questions from a peer regarding how a sitemap of product attributes is built on one of our proprietary platforms and then continue working on the analysis until lunchtime.

1:30 PM
After lunch, I attend the sprint feature demo meeting for Dunder Mifflin. As our project manager describes, these demos are essentially “agile theater”. The purpose of these is to demo the completed backlog items from the sprint to all of the project stakeholders on the client’s side. Since I was out on paternity leave for most of the previous sprint — I am personally not demoing anything today and am more of an observer.

With that, the rest of the dev team demos user stories mostly centered around GEO location to determine a customer’s zip code and if the customer is allowed to add certain products to their cart, pickup in store if shipping delivery is not available, and adding channel partner pricing.

1:50 PM
After an abnormally short sprint demo, I get my third cup of coffee (don’t judge me) with two FEDs from my team and we discuss the successful sprint demo as well as some of our upcoming work.

2:30 PM
I have a UX/UI touch-base meeting with the client’s design team from Dunder Mifflin. In this meeting, we discuss what to display in the results list sort order dropdown on product listing pages and how we’re at their search provider’s mercy as it’s controlled by them. We also discuss some deviations on the PDP page — what’s in the design vs. what’s currently on BigCommerce and the plan to remedy these deviations. Finally, we discuss what devices and browsers we’re testing our work in. The client mentions utilizing Browserstack for some mobile testing, but we all agree that Browserstack can be “glitchy” when testing some Android devices. Physical devices are still the best way to cross-browser test.

3:00 PM
Our VP of Strategic Alliances forwards an email to the BigCommerce team detailing the importance of upgrading our clients to Cornerstone 4.0. The email contains a link to the BigCommerce Dev Blog posting regarding updating to 4.0 — which I had missed since I was out on paternity when it was published. I immediately read the article and the full release notes on Github. I take some notes and future talking points, seeing as we’ve recently had an influx of clients who want to upgrade their Cornerstone version to 4.0. The srcset attribute is such an awesome addition, because majority of the time it’s these non-optimized images made for print that really drag down performance and page speed.

3:15 PM
Free from “formal” meetings — I _finally_ throw my headphones on and fire up Spotify. I need to concentrate on finally finishing that analysis before the project manager kills me. Music has played such an integral role in my career. What mood I’m in or what pace I need to have, usually dictates what I listen to. When I hear a song, or a particular set of songs in a playlist, I can usually pinpoint where I was in not only my career, but life as well. Music really is the universal language for your conscience. Right now, I’m jamming to a lot of pop rock — make that of what you will.

4:00 PM
I drop concentration of my analysis to discuss phase 2 of the Dunder Mifflin project. The thought is to make phase 2 more deliverable oriented where epics will include stories for all integration, design, development, testing, etc. instead of catch-all type user stories. Our current proposed architecture for phase 2 involves a true headless solution where Drupal is hitting the BigCommerce APIs directly instead of the Drupal plug-in having a cached version of everything.

4:20 PM
I sit down with a project manager to review interior page graphic designs of a project that is currently in the design phase. Senior FEDs review all graphic designs to identify any front end functionality that we’d recommend changing prior to presenting the design to our client. Reasons for altering could include usability and efficiency reasons or simply scope/budget concerns. This particular project is an industrial b2b client. The designs are clean and minimal, so no real major red flags beyond how we’d serve up some of the data tables in mobile.

4:35 PM
Okay, back to my analysis…

5:00 PM
I deliver my analysis. The client wants to improve some areas for better usability — so my analysis is basically a “you can do X, Y, and Z to improve usability”. Some of the areas of concern are mobile which has a tight layout which the client believes hinders conversations. They also want to improve some of the flow from Homepage to Checkout. Unfortunately, we can’t lift and shift from Magento directly, so my recommendation is that we recreate all of the elements in Cornerstone 4.0 to deliver much better performance metrics.

After delivering my analysis, I quickly call my wife to check in on dinner and see how everyone is doing.

5:15 PM
I check in on some managerial items before circling back to getting the new FEDs all of the information they need to begin working tomorrow. I start drafting up some materials and minor exercises they can proactively do in anticipation of more formal training tomorrow.

5:40 PM
I hit send on that email and go clean my coffee mugs before heading out for the day. I usually check-in on things most evenings, but, with the Chicago Bears playing tonight + trying to get sleep with a newborn, that’s likely not happening. Bear down.

Day Two

8:20 AM
Instead of my typical uninterrupted 45 minutes, I have a meeting at 8:30am this morning, so I use the first ten minutes of my day to respond to emails, messages, review some managerial type stuff, and finish a (now cold) cup of coffee I made almost two hours ago. My day is booked with a decent number of meetings, so any free time I get I have to use efficiently.

8:30 AM
Our Director of Front End Development and I are finally able to connect with the new FED hire that is aligned to my team. We chat about training, expectations, and next steps. I have some action items that come out of this meeting, including working with our IT department to get the new FEDs the right access and software as well as scheduling a training session with the FEDs tomorrow at 8:30 am.

9:00 AM
After chatting with the new hire, I immediately jump on a scrum call for one of our internal projects. Having various project accountabilities — I participate in a lot of different scrum meetings. We review the backlog for the internal project and all the outstanding tasks. The discussion for this meeting mostly centers on a bug where all JavaScript in the dreaded IE11 is broken. This seems to be due to something wrong with the ‘Recaptcha’ on the page so the team and I discuss how we want to approach addressing this issue.

9:30 AM
I get a fresh cup of coffee with a couple of my FEDs and then try to use this time to go through more emails and do some minor managerial stuff. The ‘wearing multiple hats a day’ aspect of my role is what excites me and something I really love to do. Honestly, every day there’s always something new and my days fly by almost to an extent where I need more time in the day.

10:00 AM
I attend an informational training and overview session with our partner, SiteImprove. A few representatives from SiteImprove are in our office and present to a group of us. We get a deeper look at their Accessibility product as well as their other suite of products including SEO, Quality Assurance, and the new Performance product. We’re also shown custom rulesets with their Policy tool. SiteImprove is such an awesome tool for content governance and accessibility, so I was excited to see how else we could use this product to help our clients.

Our Director of Front End Development is also the head of all of our Accessibility initiatives, so a lot of the onus for compliance and implementing a proper accessible experience is on our Front End Development team. Consequently, SiteImprove is a very important product for us to understand and be able to use efficiently.

11:00 AM
A meeting I had originally scheduled for this time was canceled, so I get 30 minutes of my day back. During this hour I do a lot of odds and ends and catch up on some items I may have missed from earlier in the day. I discuss a new site audit task that just came through as well as other FED priorities with the BigCommerce Department Manager. We also discuss an issue with billable hours on a task.

An Account Manager also sends me a message during this time checking in on a ticket where they need me to look into an issue regarding a 3rd party site search that may be effecting conversion rates on one of our BigCommerce clients’ site. I promise them I would look at the ticket today, especially since it sounds like an interesting troubleshooting type ticket.

One of the newer FEDs who was recently aligned to my team also stops by my office to discuss tomorrow’s training session as well as getting setup. I mention I will coordinate with our IT department to make sure he’s all setup for tomorrow.

1:00 PM
Immediately after lunch, I attend an ecommerce project risk meeting. In this meeting, the ecommerce Project Managers, senior ecommerce Back-end Devs, a couple of Directors, and I chat and review potential project risks and ensure everyone is allocated properly to projects. I leave the meeting with a couple of actionable takeaways, including staffing a time and materials project that’ll need a dedicated FED resource starting in October.

1:30 PM
In a pleasant turn of events, the rest of my afternoon meetings are either canceled or rescheduled. After picking up a couple of office supplies from our operations auditor, I needed new dry erase markers for my whiteboard, I return to my office and throw my headphones on so I can focus and get some of the outstanding items on my plate out the door. First up is to review and assign out some of the lingering live site tickets that have built up.

The tickets I review for assignment vary wildly. One is for implementing a prop 65 compliance message, another is for fixing mobile main navigation issues, another is for a 3rd party chat button being misplaced. I review all of these requests, quote, and assign out accordingly.

2:30 PM
After getting all of the live site tickets squared away, I have a brief conversation with our Director of Front End Development about the need for staffing a FED full-time on the above-mentioned time & materials project starting in October. We both agree that we’re in a good place to pivot and train one of the newer FEDs on this upcoming project. I immediately go tell the FED who will be on this project about the shift in training, in anticipation of this project, and also alert the project managers as to what the plan is for everything. As one of my heroes “Hannibal” Smith always said: “I love it when a plan comes together.”

3:00 PM
I use this hour to start progress on some of the user stories for this sprint assigned to me on Dunder Mifflin. I focus on one in particular that their design team submitted. It’s basically to “cut and code” the Product Details Page. Their design team sent over final desktop and mobile graphic designs, and I start implementing it based on said designs. I’ve been in the industry professionally since 2005 and was forever used to cutting assets and extracting styles directly out of Photoshop. Which suffice to say, was always super time-consuming. However, with the more recent introduction of Adobe XD (and Sketch for that matter), our lives as Front End Developers are easier now in terms of cutting assets and getting all specs out of graphic designs. I hardly ever have a need to have Photoshop open. Different times indeed…

4:00 PM
I discuss a ticket with one of my FEDs. This ticket is for a BigCommerce project that is going into code freeze next week, so we’re in a bit of a time crunch to get everything wrapped up. We discuss that for this particular ticket, the checkout on the dev environment is all out of whack as it’s missing a custom address field for PO Box. She mentions that this field looks to be controlled by Addrexx, whom we’re working with on this project, so we determine we should confirm with them as to not write competing JS.

4:30 PM
I start digging into the ticket with the 3rd party site search/conversion rate issue. The issue seems to be that search engine results pages (SERPs) do not always seem to be rendering. The issue seems to be random, so, I have to dig deeper into this one to see what might be the root cause of the issue. There are several JS errors scattered about, so I try to discern if they are the root issue or not. I also confirm with the Account Manager and original Project Manager that we haven’t deployed any code changes recently.

5:00 PM
In need of a mental break, I call my wife to say “hi” and see how everyone at home is doing. We talk about my son’s day at school and several other items. I choose to finish my day by doing some code reviews for Dunder Mifflin. I won’t be able to finish them all today, but, I wanted to make some progress on them nonetheless. The Pull Requests I review are for an invalid shipping address user story as well as more stuff for GeoLocation.

5:45 PM
The work whistle mentally blows in my head. Yabba-dabba-do. I clean my coffee mugs, per usual, and leave the office for the day. I figure I’d follow up on some items later this evening.

7:45 PM
I check in on a few items, respond to a couple of emails/messages, and metaphorically clock out for the day so I can help get my son ready for bed and help my wife with our newborn daughter. Previously, I was able to work into the night as needed, but now pure exhaustion sets in about 8pm. That’s probably when all of the caffeine in my system wears off. I’d be lying if I said having an IV of caffeine injected into my veins was a bad idea.

Day Three

8:15 AM
Second day in a row where I won’t be getting my 45 uninterrupted minutes in as I have another 8:30am meeting/training session. When I get into my office, I quickly sip my cup of coffee and prep for the meeting.

8:30 AM
I spend the next hour training two new Front End Developers on one of our proprietary ecommerce systems. Me being absent-minded, since I had recently gotten a new computer, I totally forgot all of my previous setups were wiped. As Bill O’Reilly once popularized, “F-it, we’ll do it live!” So I had to set up the system in real-time and thankfully this allowed me to troubleshoot real-world setup/system quirks ad hoc. The system requires local database creation via Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio as well .NET Core 2.1, Node, and SQL Server Express. I am able to successfully seed the database to my local and showcase the system properly. I also discuss with them what extensions might be of benefit for Visual Studio Code. In terms of code editors, I was never overly loyal to one over the other albeit true IDE’s like Visual Studio and Webstorm were always a bit much for me. So, I bounced around between Sublime, Komodo, Notepad++, and Brackets over the past few years (in my early career I used TextPad and Dreamweaver — which probably really dates me) until arriving on VS Code. No other code editor really compares to it, for me at least, nowadays.

9:30 AM
With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, I use the next hour to do some managerial type stuff as well as respond to any outstanding emails/messages.

10:30 AM
Time for the daily standup meeting for Dunder Mifflin. I give my update, listen for any necessary tidbits of information, and then focus on finishing up the code reviews I had started yesterday afternoon. I do so and merge into our Master Branch just in time for another training session…

11:00 AM
A Front End Developer from another team has some bandwidth opening up and will be helping out my team by taking on some tasks and tickets. He’s unfamiliar with the platform setup, so we spend the next 40 minutes going over setups, builds, and everything in between. This particular codebase also uses Require.JS, so we discuss the caveats of using the file and module loader. I show him the back end of the platform and how to work with the various data models.

11:40 AM
Before lunch, I jump back onto my Product Details Page user story to make additional progress on it. It has an interesting feature on it from a coding perspective as once you get below the fold, some of the product details become affixed at the top of the page, including product name, price, add to cart call to action, and content jump links. I go back and forth on the approach as I would like to use CSS scroll snapping with fallbacks — instead of bloating the page with heavy JS modules. I just don’t think there’s enough support, even with fallbacks, to utilize this approach.

1:00 PM
Immediately after lunch, an Account Manager comes to my office to discuss a BigCommerce theme upgrade project our team has been working on. It’s in a bit of a time crunch now as the client wants to launch the new theme early next week so we just need to get the last few items finished and hand off the theme by the end of the day. We formulate a plan to get these changes completed in a timely fashion and go from there. The plan is to have a Senior FED jump on this as the original FED is bogged down by some other project work.

1:45 PM
I help a FED troubleshoot his access to the dev docs for the platform he’s training in, but we determine that he’ll need to contact our IT department for access. I also review and assign out a task to our newest BigCommerce FED. Seeing this is his first real-world task, I make sure he has the correct information and knows whom to go to discuss the requirements. The task is to code parts inventory pages.

2:00 PM
I head up to our BigCommerce Business Analyst’s office to discuss architecture on a project that is currently in the planning phase. This project will operate two different BigCommerce Storefronts, one functioning as the Retail Site, the other operating as an Acquisitions Site. While the data objects will be similar between the two as relates to integration, the configuration of the sites, as well as the front end display, will vary. Thus we need to architect accordingly.

2:30 PM
I have to slip away from the architecture talk to hop on a UX/UI touch-base meeting with the client’s design team from Dunder Mifflin. This is a quick call as it mostly centers on how we want to handle testing the Product Details Page.

2:45 PM
After the brief UX/UI touch-base call, the BigCommerce theme upgrade project from earlier is back with a vengeance. The Senior FED I penciled in to help get this through the door is having issues with local setup. It seems that on his machine, this particular version of Cornerstone (3.5.1) fails at ‘npm install’. This seems to be due to the traceur dependency install and rooted in npm version issues. I troubleshoot on my machine and verify the issue — so we have to resort to plan b. We have an impromptu meeting as I call in the Account Manager, original FED, and original Senior FED to my office to discuss logistics. I whiteboard the logistics of moving code from one theme to another and taking the client’s current live theme into account with the new changes. Everyone seems to be on the same page finally as we break and work on delivering this before the end of the business day.

4:15 PM
I briefly discuss a multi-currency solution with our BigCommerce Business Analyst for the project with two different storefronts before taking a coffee break with one of my FEDs. After a quick coffee break, I owe another Project Manager a graphic review so she can show the client ASAP. The graphics look really good, but I do raise a few red flags as I’m seeing a lot of imagery on the Homepage which could affect performance, as well as some woodgrain-type backgrounds used in the design, would be hard to repeat properly on extra-large screens.

4:40 PM
A few Pull Requests have built up on Dunder Mifflin. I buckle my bootstraps and start reviewing them. These PRs are about updating the output layout among other various items.

5:05 PM
I check back in with the FED team working on completing the theme upgrade. Everything is chugging along smoothly and I discuss future theme upgrades and how we can improve our efficiency with them.

5:50 PM
After an unexpected eventful afternoon, I am exhausted. I do my usual routine of cleaning my coffee mug before heading out for the night.

Day Four

8:15 AM
Finally getting a bit more time this morning, I do some housekeeping. I’ve had to fast for 12 hours as I have a health evaluation this morning, so no coffee for me. “No coffee and no sleep make Adam something something”.

I groggily respond to a plethora of emails/messages that built up yesterday afternoon while my attention was focused on the theme upgrade. In addition to general managerial items, I respond to one of our human resources reps that I’d love to participate in a 2-day workshop on management and leadership techniques my company is offering in October. We’ve had a couple of manager-focused workshops in the past and I can’t speak highly enough of them. I am definitely looking forward to this one.

I also have to respond to some FED staffing concerns regarding a couple of newly sold projects. Finally, I close out any lingering Pull Requests/deployments for Dunder Mifflin.

9:45 AM
I have my company-sponsored health evaluation appointment. My appointment is in the new event space in our building — so I was excited to finally have something to do there. It’s a fantastic space. Based on my health results, it seems I will live to code another day.

10:00 AM
After getting my blood drawn and blood pressure taken, I head back to my office for a meeting to discuss the theme upgrade. Our team kicked butt and delivered the theme last night — but they did want to have a call with the client to educate them on some best practices and getting the most out of the newer features from Cornerstone. We agree to set up a call with the client later in the day.

10:30 AM
I sneak a fresh cup of coffee and jump on our daily standup meeting for Dunder Mifflin.

10:45 AM
After the standup, I return to my Product Details Page user story to make some additional progress on it until lunch.

1:00 PM
After lunch, I close my office door and focus on writing up my troubleshooting analysis of the 3rd party search/conversion rate issue I had started looking into two days ago. It’s extremely difficult to pinpoint a direct issue here — but seeing as these issues started after a recent bulk data import, my assumption was that something is out of whack. I make the recommendation of either removing the 3rd party search from the live site temporarily so we can take a deeper dive to make sure it works, or simply removing the customizations we made to this code to see if it helps. I emphasize the former is probably the better long term solution.

2:00 PM
Time for our weekly Design/UX pulse meeting with Dunder Mifflin’s creative team. This meeting we mostly discuss timing and approach for usability testing.

2:30 PM
I touch base with the Account Manager and Senior FED that worked on the project with the 3rd party search/conversion rate issue. I reiterate to the AM what I feel is the best course of action and go over all of my notes. I also confirm with the Senior FED as to what exact customizations were made to the 3rd party search code.

3:00 PM
I head upstairs to meet with the BigCommerce Department Manager and BigCommerce Business Analyst to discuss the project that is currently in planning phase that requires a retail and acquisitions site. We architect a solution where “orders” on the acquisition site can still be an order, but would be handled 100% within the customer’s retail management software after the transaction is submitted.

3:30 PM
I jump on a client call to discuss the Magento to BigCommerce re-platform project I had assessed earlier in the week. The call goes swimmingly well as we discuss recreating most items from their current Magento site onto Cornerstone 4.0. I demo some out of the box BigCommerce functionality as well as some of the latest Cornerstone 4.0 niceties. We also discuss mobile, cart, and checkout improvements among other items. The client seems satisfied with the direction and gives verbal approval for us to begin building this out in BigCommerce.

4:00 PM
After the call is over, I grab a fresh cup of coffee and then make my rounds to the office area where most of the FEDs sit to check in on various items with them. One of my FEDs is in need of a new computer, as she has been using her personal laptop for some time now. Ironically the head of our IT department is a few cubes down setting up some hardware, so I harass him to get her a new computer for next week. I’ve been really good at pestering our IT team lately — but they always come through for me as my unsung heroes.

4:30 PM
The Account Manager, Senior FED, and FED for the theme upgrade project come to my office and we call the client to discuss where everything is at with the upgrade as well as to educate and discuss how they can potentially get the most out of their theme upgrade. The call goes well as the client is pleased with the progress and only has a minimal set of changes needed to be made. They mention they plan on launching the upgrade the following Tuesday, and we commit to helping them achieve this goal.

5:20 PM
After the call and some internal discussions with the team about next steps, I spend the rest of my day responding to some emails and messages as well as following up on some managerial type items.

5:50 PM
Closing time — Time for you to go out go out into the world. Closing time — Turn the lights up over every boy and every girl. Ugh, flashbacks to the end of every high school dance I had went to. Sorry, that was just my lame attempt of making my end of day routine of cleaning coffee mugs sound more glamorous than it is.

Day Five

8:15 AM
I make it into the office after dropping my son off at school just in time as a deluge of rain hits our area. Coffee in hand, I start by addressing some lingering emails and following up on some administrative items. One of my FEDs was recently moved to a new cubicle, but now it seems his internet access is down, so we reach out to IT to see what can be done.

9:00 AM
The BigCommerce Department Manager comes to my office to discuss his upcoming onsite visit to Austin, TX for the BigCommerce Partner Summit. We discuss what we’re looking to get out of his visit. During our chat, one of my FEDs comes to my office to ask about a navigation user story he’s working on for Dunder Mifflin. This project always has to take priority, so I mention I’ll follow up with the BC Department Manager in a few minutes during our sprint planning meeting. The FED and I then discuss the potential of hard coding one of the navigation dropdown elements seeing as it has a unique content setup.

9:30 AM
I jump on our weekly BigCommerce Team sprint planning meeting. We use this time to plan out dev work for the upcoming week. A few of our projects are still in flux, but we’re confident we’ll be able to keep all devs allocated 100% next week.

10:00 AM
Some Pull Requests have built up for Dunder Mifflin and I jump into code reviewing them.

10:30 AM
I call into the daily standup meeting for Dunder Mifflin. I give my update and then concentrate on merging the approved code reviews/pull requests.

11:00 AM
Since I surprisingly have a couple of hours of free time, I decide to take an early lunch and offer to pick up my son from school. Since its still pouring rain, I’d rather not have my wife take our newborn out if I have a little flexibility this afternoon. I head out of the office to pick my son up and take him home. His school is 10 minutes from our office, and our house is 10 minutes from his school — so I stay in a nice convenient little bubble. Go me for planning logistics accordingly? Either way, it was nice getting to spend a few minutes with my son during the day which is an anomaly. I will forever cherish and never trivialize my son proclaiming he wants real-life Dr. Octopus robotic tentacles.

12:30 PM
After lunch, I discuss phase 2 of Dunder Mifflin as well as some of the projects latest revelations with our BigCommerce Business Analyst. Some of our team members are going onsite to the client’s headquarters next week to discuss phase 2, and we just want to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row.

1:30 PM
I visit our Human Resource Manager’s office to discuss a few managerial items and to address and follow-up on some items. Afterwards, I head back to my office and call my wife to discuss our plans for the evening (spoilers: we’re prisoners to our newborn warden). Afterwards, I spend some time reviewing emails and messages, including following up on whom some FED work will be assigned to for a project that’s been idle for a little while. I also have a few pleasantries with the head of IT that he should wear his WWE Ron Simmon’s “Damn” t-shirt to work.

3:15 PM
One of my FEDs comes to my office and we spend some time discussing potential training plans to help improve our overall coding and knowledge. We discuss potentially creating exercises for us to work on and mentor the other FEDs. The Front-end space is always evolving and constantly changing, so we need to keep up with hands-on learning. As a Technical Manager, I also will always be on the front lines, so I personally need to keep learning new tools and new skills to keep myself engaged.

4:30 PM
I spend the next half hour answering a surplus of questions pertaining to our various projects including the theme upgrade one, the one with the 3rd party search issues, and also discussing whom to send some of our retainer tickets to next week.

5:00 PM
I spend the last hour of this week touching base with our Director of Front End Development. We discuss my week, some managerial items, and next steps on some action items.

6:00 PM
With that, I’ve survived week two of being back in the office with a newborn at home. I deem that it was a very successful week, albeit mired in some unexpected managerial randomness here and there. But, what’s new right? I thrive in this environment. I close up shop and head home to enjoy the weekend (Bear Down!) with my family before doing this all again next week.

We’d like to thank Adam for sharing his week with us. If you have a question for BigCommerce, or want to learn more about our platform reach out in the comments below or tweet us at @BigCommerceDevs.