A day in the life of software engineer

A day in the life of software engineer

Well, TBH, I think all software engineers need a solid alarm to wake up in the morning. They just can't wake up early in the morning. There may be rare exceptions. A software engineer has a life of more or less like a robot. At a particular time in a day he may be seen doing the same activity.

In next few lines I would like to narrate a typical day in the life of software engineer. No

prizes for guessing that I am also a software engineer and that is why I know this from my

experience of several years. I hope you like that. It goes like below:

1. The alarm will start ringing at around 7:00 am. But nobody wakes up at the first alarm. He has to set recurring alarms otherwise he can be sure of getting late to office. At around 7:10

-7:15 he will get up.

2. The first activity that he will do is asking his roomies to wake up. If they don’t, he will not hesitate to use some cool words to wake them up. He will expect some return comments as well.

3. Now starts the fight to get ready. Most of the times, 4-5 people will be sharing the same facilities. So it wills a noisy morning for all of them.

4. They will be having a "bai" (housemaid) who will be taking care of the breakfast and rest of the

times they will have breakfast in office.

5. By 8:00am he has a catch a bus to the office. He may have several options that the last bus he can catch will come at 08:10-08:15. In most cases, he will catch the last bus. Obviously he has his roomies to blame for this.

6. He will reach office at around 09:00am. Clears the security check and enters his cubicle. He will wish the people who are already in. FYI, A cubicle is a place where a software engineer works. It’s kind of a cube which is cut into half with entry from one side.

7. He starts his laptop/desktop and as the first thing he checks his mails. He will have to attend a call to his onsite counterpart for the daily update. In this call he will also get an idea of the day's work. He should complete all this by 09:30 unless coordination among the attendees doesn’t take much time.

8. He will start pinging/sms-ing his friends/colleagues for the breakfast max by 09:30. And they will leave for the breakfast. It is a short break of around 30-45 minutes. The topics discussed in that meeting will be same most of the times. But they still do it.

9. Its 10:00. Some of them will make calls now. Those who had already finished their calls will start listing their day's work. It will take around 1 hr or so.

10. At around 11:00am, he needs to take a break for tea/coffee. The past one hour will make his head to ache. He needs a break of 15-20 minutes. It’s sutta (smoking) time as well.

11. It is the time to start with work. If it's regular work he will finish almost 40% in next 1-2 hours. But if it is little different, to figure out how to do the different part, he needs googling for 2 hours.

12. Around 1:00 pm, his friends will call him for lunch. He will not be able to figure out where the time went. Nevertheless, he will enjoy the lunch and then go for a short walk.  It will be 2:00 by then.

13. Between 2:00pm-2:45pm he will feel sleepy. Because he had a lunch which can make anybody sleep. He is still awake, that’s an achievement. But somehow he will manage to do some work as well.

14. It’s time for a break at 3:00pm. If he doesn't take this break be sure that he will sleep.

He might have taken few nips in between as well. He will go for a sutta as well.

15. At 3:15 he will start again and this time he will work really fast. Before starting again at this time, he might be thinking that he will be late for home today. But this work-break will be highly efficient. He will finish his work by 5:00pm. If there is any meeting then by 5:45 he will be free.  By meetings I mean somebody might be leaving for all or for onsite so a break deserves.

16. By 5:00pm he will start thinking about the pack up. They will start managing all things that they have done in the day. By 5:45 they will be ready to leave the office. Those who are on bench will leave by 5:00.

17. Its 5:45 now, he has to catch the bus at 6:00. He will rush towards the bus stop as he might not get a seat if he is late. Some of them might have other plans like gym, table tennis, etc. Those on bench will enjoy these in the daytime as well.

18. He will reach home by 7:00-7:15pm. It’s time to start gupshup (chitchat) about the hot topics in office. In the mean time they will get ready for the dinner.

19. After dinner, they might have different plans. Some of them will play computer games, some will chat over internet, and some will watch movies. In the days of appraisals all these activities will die and replaced by rigorous discussions. Company switch plans are generally made in these hours.

20. Around 11-12 most will try to go to bed. There is no time for guaranteed success. But with success it ends a typical day in IT engineer's life.

There are few things that are day specific like:

- On Mondays breakfast breaks are longer as they have memories of two days to discuss.

- On Monday night he might sleep early as he didn’t get chance to sleep enough over the weekend.

- Thursdays and Fridays are quite busy as they have to make plans for the weekend.

- Many of them will go for movies on Friday as they are busy on weekends.

- Friday will be the best time for him to go to pub or enjoy drinks at home.

If you want to distinguish between a developer and a support engineer, I have a trick to tell.

In any public meeting (like breakfast, lunch, sutta, etc), whoever is in rush is a support engineer. Developers nearing their go-live dates may well be exceptions.

There are hundreds of other activities as well. But I would leave some for others to add (as comments).

P.S. The purpose of this blog is only fun and humour. There is no intention to hurt any professional. Thanks for reading this post.