8am
Some may say working from home has given them an extra hour of sleep, while for others not much has changed and they’ve continued their usual early-morning starts. I’d definitely say I fall into the ‘sleep-in’ category. I’ve recently moved from Perth back to Sydney so my morning routine is still a work in progress, especially working from the comfort of my own home.
9am
I open up my laptop, check my emails and see what my day’s going to look like. I go through my task list from the night before and see if I have any pressing questions to address at our team huddle at 9:30am. It’s the perfect opportunity for anyone to bring up any updates on what they’re working on, how they’re progressing and discuss any hurdles that might be stopping them from moving to the next step. We work in sprints in engineering, which is essentially a period of time where specific work must be completed surrounding a project.
The open culture in our team is great because these huddles are done daily and help with keeping our team on track with the sprint goals that were discussed during planning. A lot of the work is fairly new to me, so being in a comfortable environment where I can ask questions really helps.
10am
After our team huddle, I pair myself with one of the four developers in our team, discuss the task requirements and the development approach. Depending on the complexity of a task and the developer’s availability, I usually catch up with them virtually several times in a day. Once I’ve had my morning 1:1 with the developer and have an understanding of the next steps, it’s time for some individual analysis and coding!
A bonus to working from home is that I can have my favourite playlist on in the back ground while I code – I can sing out loud, have a snack and code at the same time!
12:30pm
Lunch time! It’ll most likely be leftovers. But we’ve got a virtual team lunch happening where it’s a 'no work talk' rule, with fun conversations and some virtual games going on instead. When we don’t have a virtual team lunch, I try and steer away from screen time but somehow I always end up scrolling on my phone.
1:30pm
Back to playing around with coding. I pick up from where I left off before lunch. My team is super collaborative and ready to help if I get stuck. If I can’t get in touch with the developer I was working with in the morning, I reach out to others in our team chat and most of the time have a response within minutes.
3pm
Afternoon snack time and a dose of fresh air. Because we’re mostly working virtually, I try to stay as connected as I can with others by booking regular virtual catch-ups. Generally these are with other grads or different people from across my team.
Coming into CommBank as a grad, I think it’s vital to take the opportunities where I can to broaden my network and get to know people in different areas of the bank.
4pm
I finish off the day coding. If all my changes are going through approvals and I’m waiting for the green light, I reach out to my team to see if anyone needs any support and possibly pick up a small testing task. It’s the perfect opportunity to deep-dive into something that’s out of my daily business as usual.
5pm
It’s time to log off! The beauty of working from home is not worrying about how long my commute will take and what time I’ll reach home. Once I’m logged off, I like to relax and unwind, do some cooking (my most recent passion), catch up on some shows, talk to family back in Perth, maybe try and even get a workout in and keep it a chill night. Anything that I can to get re-energised for another big day tomorrow!
