A day in the life of a developer

#watercooler #career #writing #codenewbie

Subscribe to my newsletter to stay up to date on all of my upcoming articles. In the future, I plan to do some giveaways and share some more cool exclusives 😉

Work experience 💼

Over the years I have worked for various companies. I have experienced what it's like to work in different environments and with different clients. This includes work which is permanent, contract, freelance, office and even remote work. Each one of these offers a unique experience and gives you an insight into what it's like to work as a developer in the industry. And how these different opportunities can be defining moments in your career.

At the moment I am working full-time as a Software Developer and fully remote. Each day provides a new experience and new challenges which keep me busy and focused. If you have worked for a company before then you are no doubt used to your work process and routine. However, if you are a new or aspiring developer then you probably have no idea what it's like working for a company. I aim to give you some insight into my experience.

How my day starts 🌞

My day always starts with a daily standup meeting at around 9:15 am because my team is using agile methodologies in this project. Sometimes I have breakfast before the daily standup or sometimes I choose to have it afterwards. These daily stand-ups happen every single day at the same time unless the scrum master is unavailable. In those cases, it usually falls on another team member to lead the standup.

These standups are fairly structured and happen over video chat we just go around the team and everybody has a chance to speak. The usual process is that we tell everyone what we did last and what we plan on doing today and if there are any blockers. Essentially we answer 3 questions:

What we did yesterday
What we plan on doing today
Are there any blockers

After the standup meeting, we get to work. In this project, we are using Jira so we take a look inside Jira and see what tickets there are to work on and what tickets have been assigned to us.

What I do in the afternoon 🌻

I tend to take my lunch break between 12:00 pm and 1:30 pm it all depends on how busy I am and if we have any meetings on that day. Obviously, the lunch break is only for 1 hour so I try to find a good time in between those hours. If it's on a day of ceremonies (lots of agile meetings) then I choose to take an earlier lunch break pretty much around 12:00 pm because the day is always busy.

On my lunch break, I like to eat at my desk but if the weather is good and I have time to spare I like to go out and get food so I get some exercise and a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather as well. If I'm at my desk it gives me the opportunity to check social media, chat with friends, and watch some anime or an episode of a series that I am watching.

After lunch, I get back to work and continue working on my Jira ticket. We use Microsoft Teams for communication so I can talk with the other developers on the team too if there are other tasks that need to be worked on or if I have a query or some blockers.

Evening routine 🌕

The work hours are 9:00 am - 5:30 pm. When I am done working I like to relax and catch up with friends, social media and the news for the day. It is pretty hard to be super active during the day as a content creator when you are working full time so the evening gives me the best chance to have a more in-depth look at what's happening because it can only be done sparingly throughout the day on breaks.

During the week is quite busy but the weekends are far more relaxing. I can find the time to do content creation, studying, hobbies and so much more. One thing which I have realised is that you start to appreciate weekends a lot more when you are working in a full-time role. When you are doing personal freelance work every day can feel like a weekend if you are not working very hard. Alternatively, every day can feel like a weekday if you have a lot of clients and personal work to do. Finding an optimal work-life balance is the key to having a good Digital nomad lifestyle.

Thanks for your time 🕐

Words hold so much power and can change your perception of reality. Writing is an incredible medium for sharing thoughts, knowledge and learning which is why I enjoy doing it so much. Connecting and networking is a fantastic way to grow your social network and this can lead to so many doors opening with both personal and career opportunities that can come your way.

I appreciate you taking the time to read my content and I hope it helps you grow and accomplish all of your life dreams. Let's connect and make the future brighter you can find all of my main profiles on Limey.

Top comments (7)

Osahenru • Sep 12 '22

Great write-up... unashamedly please what's a ticket?😁
Could have googled it, but I want to hear you explain it. Thanks

Andrew Baisden • Sep 14 '22 • Edited

A Jira Ticket is any event that needs to be looked into or a task that needs to be completed. Other service desk platforms like Trello, Asana, Monday and Notion have a similar process. Basically, it's just a brief for something that needs to be done. It can be a feature request like building a form for a page.

Or it could be a brief that describes a bug that needs to be fixed. Similarly, it could be a brief for a defect which is software that does not adhere to user expectations or software requirements and is said to have bugs. Essentially a defect means finding the discrepancies between what is intended and what is actually produced.