A Day in the Life of a Web Developer.

Hello, world! My name is Tiago Prior, 26 years old and I’m currently working with react native here at LOAD!

08:30

My day starts by snoozing the alarm three to four times, depending on how long I stayed up rewatching Rick and Morty last night. When I finally get up I drink a big glass of water and realize that I’m late for work, which I am already used to by now **laughing nervously**
The timer starts ticking…

In five minutes I have to get dressed, prepare something to eat with my morning coffee, brush my teeth, and be on my way. If the targeted time was met, I should only be 5 to 10 minutes late (but always 🤥 on time for our daily meeting), or if my calculations are wrong and I am really late, I know I can stay and work from home. Personally, I prefer to work in the office. The good humor and co-working spirit are what convince me.

09:10

As I said, my days at LOAD start with the daily stand-up meeting at 9:10 am. There we share with the team our goals/appointments for the day. Afterward, some of us head downstairs for an espresso at a nearby pastry store (including me).

09:45

By 9:45 we are all “caffeinated” and ready to tackle the day.

The first thing I do is check my email inbox. Most of the new emails are related to Jira and Bitbucket actions and notifications, so I do not spend much time here. I want to get my hands dirty! Every Monday morning is dedicated to self-learning. Four hours to improve myself in some technical aspects. But today is Thursday, so I am going straight to my current assignment, especially since I have a sprint review (SR) at 11 am and need to get a thing or two done before then.

11:05

The time has come. I’m seated in the bigger meeting room (called Stephen Hawking), with my project manager(PM) and fellow project team members.
The SR goes smoothly showing our PM the work done this week and talking about what’s next. In more or less an hour we’re done, and after a collective hug and a team shout and we leave the meeting room together.

13:10

The rest of the morning flies by as I pretend to work (hey boss, if you’re reading this, you know I’m just trying to be funny ) and chat with colleagues, and without me realizing it, it’s already time for lunch! The team gathers near the ping pong table to eat. Usually, we go outside right after, but since it’s raining now, our “after-launch coffee” takes place in the office. But today was special: our first Mario Kart office matchup!

14:03

After losing a few games and winning the last one, it’s time to get back to work. As planned on today’s SR, I should start a trip history screen and a list of collapsible cards with various details about each trip. But before I start, I should do some code review. We use Bitbucket as our main repository, so I open the pull request for review and leave some comments if the company conventions are not followed or if I think the code can be optimized in some way.

14:45

After 40 minutes of code review, I need a break to reset my mind. If I sit in front of the screen too long, I’ll see duplicate code, and we can not have that, can we? So I call one of my colleagues for a ping pong match. Our job is very sedentary because we spend most of our time sitting. I try to make sure I do not forget to stretch every once in a while.

15:05

Back at the usual place. I have a meeting with a customer and my PM in 25 minutes because, among other things, we need to discuss a problem found by the customer testers. Crashes were occurring on a particular screen of the application that had not occurred before. After a quick troubleshooting session yesterday, we found that a field that was mandatory was not being received by the company’s API. We finally decided in the meeting to make this field optional.

16:20

Now I’ve some time to work through the list I explained above. There’s nothing like turning on a great playlist in the office to get you in the mood! Here’s a good playlist I use. After two meetings I feel productive, and I’m sure we can at least finish the layout of the cards.

(Not posing at all)

18:30

I can’t show you where I left off (I am sure you understand why), but either way, my work is done for today! At least on the keyboard… 😏

André, Martins, Patacão, and I head to a padel court nearby. LOAD offers a weekly padel session for the team, and there’s nothing like a good team activity after work. So now we are fully equipped and ready to hit the ground running!

One of the biggest benefits, in my opinion, of working at a mid-sized tech company is that we can really bond with everyone, and that’s really priceless.
So cheers to that!

That’s all folks! Now off to chill with my family and get ready for tomorrow. See you soon!