Frozen Time

The First Day (Chapter 15)

Alex's P.O.V.

8 am – Wakeup

First cup of tea of the day, and the start of many...;-)

9.30 am – Head to work

A software engineer needs to come in late or leave early, so they can start the day pretty much when they like. They can also work remotely from home if we need to. So, depending on the traveling time, reach office in a bus, car or train.

10.00 am – Arrive at work

Grab a cup of tea and head to the desk. If it's Friday; then it's just the tea and an impatient wait for some celebration cakes to arrive. No wasting valuable cake space with healthy food on a Friday.

Then, switch on the PC, log in and then check if any urgent emails need dealing with. For this profession, it's important to stay on top of technical happenings and news, so engineers usually catch up on a few RSS feeds that they subscribe to during this time too. There is always a new or better way to do something in software development.

10.30 am – Start work for the dayGet together with the product manager and go through the list of tasks that are to be completed on that particular the day.The team leader calls for a last-minute meeting.Return to the desk and work. Intermittently open Gmail, Facebook, Twitter. (companies generally don't allow it, but why forget those smartphones?)1 pm – Lunch

Lots of food options are available for IT companies. So, an engineer may either eat in the cafeteria or get together with colleagues and go out for lunch, especially if someone new has started or there is a birthday to celebrate. It's good to get away from your computer when you are struggling with a programming issue.

Read about super foods that boost your brainpower.

2 pm – Back to work

Back to more of the same – cup of tea and writing code to accomplish the task or perhaps fixing bugs. Deal with day-to-day support queries from the clients. Time goes really quickly when you're writing software as you're so engrossed in what you are doing.

Quite often software engineers work alongside the designers. They create the HTML code (which gives the website its look) and then they connect it up to the back-end code, the bit that makes the site work.

4:30 pm – Developer meeting

Every couple of weeks all the developers get together to talk about what developments are going on, any interesting future work coming up or someone will give a talk on something they've learned which might benefit the rest of the team.

5:30 pm – Snack break

Go for a quick walk with colleagues or munch on some snacks from the cafeteria.

6 pm – Return to the deskFind the onsite guy's mail in which he/she has blamed the offshore team for everything.Panic session; immediate conference call to the client with various misfires; finally one code gets through.

The team listens in silence as the onsite guy plays the blame game.Mudslinging match starts as anyone and everyone does their utmost to defend themselves.Pin drop silence as the client doesn't mince his words and raises doubts over extending the contract. The team lead and project manager promise to complete the work.9 pm – Hometime

Done for today. Check e-mails one last time before unfolding the scooter and heading back home. Take a bus/auto to reach home. If you are privileged, drive back home.

10 – 10.30 pm – Dinner Time

Eat a wholesome meal with Ben. He tries to hug me and say and say goodnight. I push him away and leave.

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLO Everyone. Nice to see you. If you liked the chapter plz vote. Anyways. Stay Frosty My Huskies.