Days 25-29: Virtual human interactions
Emotions
Overall, this week was really fun! I interacted with many of my co-workers throughout the week in various different meetings and really enjoyed that virtual human interaction. That’s one piece that was definitely lacking the week before. I still had some stressful moments - random last minute work popping up here and there but overall it wasn’t too bad. My "involve me” work personality itch was more fulfilled this week and that helped to boost my mood.
Tasks
I had my first full virtual round of 1:1s this week. It was great to catch up individually with everyone on the team and make sure that they had what they needed to be successful while working from home. I also started doing some planning for our next milestone - this will be the first full milestone where I will be the lead so I’m super excited about that. The behind-the-scenes discussions about our next set of features and what the asks from partner teams are is something I’m really looking forward to.
Here’s some other stuff that I did this week:
Continued triaging bugs each day
Worked with individuals to finish filling out tracking fields in their features
Worked with a partner team to validate some changes that they are making
Completed some manager trainings
The manager trainings that I did were really great, I was able to get a lot of good information from them. I learned some general information about the manager role and I was also able to get a deeper insight into the performance review process. I know that a lot of people don’t enjoy doing training that much - it can definitely feel like “homework” at times but lately I’ve been really enjoying all the trainings that I’ve had to do.
Learnings
In this time where everyone is working from home, it’s incredibly important to stay connected to the people you’re working with. This also doesn’t mean only staying connected regarding work stuff - it also means staying connected in a more casual and informal way. My larger organization has had some super chill lunch meetings where we talk about non-work related stuff and that’s been a good way to stay connected. I’ve really enjoyed how a lot of my meetings start out with some casual conversation to emulate some of the face-to-face interactions that we had in the office. One of my recommendations at this time is to keep your meetings on your calendar and even if you don’t have an agenda, they are opportunities to stay connected to everyone.
