I’m a software engineer at a fast-growing food startup — find out what this looks like.
A day in the life of a software engineer at food startup Grain.
Hello, my name is Jum. I work as a Software Engineer at Grain - we’re a start-up online restaurant that uses data and a tech-enabled distribution network to serve food to customers. We have some real yummy food, so do check us out!
In my role, I maintain and help to build tech tools used for our services. That means improving existing tools, and fixing the buggy parts that don’t work.
Here’s what a day in my life looks like:
8 to 9am
I like to take my time to get ready in the morning. In the past, I used to take 5–10 minutes to get ready in the morning and leave for work, but that usually set me up with a rushed mindset, and I came to realise it made my mornings unpleasant and set me up for a bad day. When I give myself plenty of time in the morning to get ready, I feel more at ease when leaving for work.
I believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so I make time for breakfast every morning. I usually have toast with ham or a spread. For spreads, it’s usually Nutella and/or peanut butter. That combination is simply heavenly!
9am to 10am
It takes roughly an hour for me to commute to work. During this time, I either listen to music, or read a book.
10am to 11am
Once I get to work, I immediately tackle any urgent issues raised by my team. After that, I will look at my task list on Asana (a project management tool that we use) to see what are my tasks to do. If I’m unsure of what exactly the tasks mean, I take some time to clarify the nitty gritty details with my colleagues.
11am to 2pm
I’ll work on the tasks during this time. They may involve either building new features or resolving bugs. Sometimes, the tech team will meet to plan for the next sprint (a short timeframe, ranging from 1 week to 4 weeks, to achieve an objective).
2pm to 3pm
We have a late lunch. Once in a while, we’ll order food from our competitors to learn from them, in terms of taste and packaging. Basically, we want to see what they do well, and explore how we may be able to apply our takeaways to improve our own processes.
Sometimes, we go for donuts — randomized “blind dates” within the company where we’ll go out lunch/a coffee break in pairs or threes. We’re a growing company and this has been a great way to get to know each other — especially across different teams— better.
Other times, we’ll just head out for lunch nearby.
3pm to 7pm
I’ll continue to work on my assigned tasks. During this time, my colleagues from other teams may tell me about a new bug, and depending on my current workload, I may or may not tend to the issue. From time to time, my neighbouring colleague (who’s also a Software Engineer) will ask me about what I’m working on (and vice versa), and we’ll discuss the task. Sometimes, it provides more clarity of the task; sometimes we discover a solution; and of course, sometimes, there’s no progress on the task.
Once in a while, the Kitchen team organises food tasting sessions to gain feedback on new dishes before they’re released. 😋
7pm to 12am
After work, I usually head home and have dinner with my family or head out to eat with friends. On Wednesdays, I play badminton with some of my colleagues from 8–10pm. We typically have a late dinner/supper after that. Once a month, we also hold Movie Night where we vote on a film to screen in the office and order in food to share.
At the age of 10, I decided that I wanted to get out of the education system as early as possible, but not without enough of a qualification to find work in the real world. I aimed to get into the express stream in secondary school and subsequently to get into a polytechnic.
It was mostly because I didn’t like to study then, but I also had a strong urge for independence — therefore the earlier I could start working, the earlier I could be independent. The urge for independence may have been due to the fact that I’m the middle child, and I felt like my parents liked both my brothers more. (In hindsight, I believe they tried to be as fair as they could. I love my parents very much!)
When deciding my course for polytechnic, I chose Games Design and Development from Singapore Polytechnic (SP), simply because it was only course that sounded interesting enough to me — my second choice was Animation; I didn’t even have a desired third choice. To my luck, I managed to get in.
I wanted to be an artist after I got into my course in SP. I remember telling my lecturer that I could do programming, but if I had to do it any longer than an hour, I might go bonkers. As it turns out, I ended up doing better at programming than at art, and wound up loving the former more! I might actually be bonkers, I don’t know.
Anyway, I really consider myself to be immensely lucky, because after I graduated, there was a high demand for Software Engineers. And so… here I am!
I love my job; I love building tools that can help reduce the workload of others and allow them to be more productive; tools that can allow users to do more. I love figuring out the logic of the features implementation. It brings me great satisfaction when I am able to provide value to people’s lives.
This is part of the #Pathways series — authentic sharing by young professionals about what their careers actually look like, day to day. Our objective is to provide informal but important information that demystifies and legitimises a spectrum of professions, enabling youth (& adults!) to make better informed decisions about their future.
Praxium is a social enterprise redesigning education to make it relevant, and designs experiences for youth to explore their passions, potential, and build their own pathways. Get in touch if you’d like to be a part of what we do!
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This project gives credit to and was inspired in large part by this series.
