Time flies, I’ve been at my company for three years. Sentiments from my previous reflection haven’t really changed, but I do want to touch upon some things that have changed since. So let’s get to it, I guess 🙂
Now that the majority of the population here in Vancouver have been vaccinated against COVID-19, our company has fully reopened our office to all vaccinated employees. While we aren’t required to show up to the office every day of the week, our team leads encouraged us to go back on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For the most part, I’ve been sticking to this (some weeks going in more and some weeks less), and I think it’s kind of nice to have this change of pace. I have had various impromptu discussions with my managers and peers on things, from “Hey, how did you think that open forum discussion went this morning?” to “Hey, about bug XXX, I’m kind of thinking of going in this direction, what are your thoughts on it?”. It’s honestly been pretty refreshing just to see people and have these face-to-face conversations. I believe that having a place to foster these types of discussions, even when teams are scattered around at other locations, is still important and can help us build inter-personal connections in the workplace.
To encourage people to come back into the office, the company has recently been sponsoring lunches once a week. This was a surprise to see, given that in the pre-pandemic days, we used to do a small end-of-the-week “snack bash” to end off the work week and socialize with others. To be honest, I think this will probably end in the new year, given how many people have started coming into the office, but it’s still a nice perk to have.
Speaking of people coming into the office, one of my coworkers recently moved from Edmonton to Vancouver, and he sits behind me. We’ve been working on the same team for the last two and a half years, and more recently on the same project. From remote to in person, it’s been really great having someone in the office to bounce ideas off of each other, no matter how silly they might are. Yeah, some of them were kind of dumb, but some of them were really good, and we help unblock each other when we get stuck. Although we both have things to get done independently, knowing that there’s someone else that has my back (and vice versa) is one that I think is easier built in person rather than online. That being said, I’ve built other interactions relationships through DMs, too, so it’s not to say it’s not possible. It also most certainly helps when you have other ways to connect to your coworkers. In this case, it was anime. It’s actually pretty awesome having someone else you work with also openly bring anime-related merch and similarly deck out their desk. I’ve had one other coworker come up to us and troll, calling our area the “weeb wall” (we share a whiteboard), to which we joked around and laughed 🙂
Now that we’re able to go back to the office, in-office hackathons were also back. I didn’t really do too much this past hackathon other than work on some backlogged tasks, but hey, staying late in the office means we can take breaks and watch some anime in the conference rooms.
But yeah, I’ve been here for a little more than three years now. Work from home has been great for getting work done, not to mention the savings on commute time and transportation cost; however, the office has been nice to visit to collaborate and reconnect with coworkers. I’m definitely getting more comfortable with our codebase and have “many more cents” to give in regards to it. There’s still many things I want to do here, with opportunities to continue learning and growing, so here’s to another year of learning and hopefully some balanced stress that comes along with that.
Anyways, that’s all I got this time around. Until next time!
~Lui
