Yes, the dude below is me and that’s my daily office setup for the last 3 weeks or so. Well, precisely, I mean my home office setup. You got it, me when I’m #WorkingFromHome. These are hard times for everybody, and with the increasing spread of CoViD-19 all over Europe, Denmark took actively part in the joint effort to help minimize the risk of infection. Several companies, including Microsoft, started immediately enforcing remote working to comply with the mandatory social distancing policies. So here we are, pretty much isolated and locked down, even though it’s not really forbidden here to step outside, but there’s not much you can do anyway. Reason why you’d better build a comfortable and enjoyable setup at home, where you’re going to spend most of the time of your day, if not all.
Software Engineers and social distancing
Microsoft Development Copenhagen has launched the #WorkingFromHome series, to collect and share feedback from some employees that are involved in this situation and figure out how they’re dealing with it. I have to confess, while working from home may sound easy and chill, it is not, and lots of interesting challenging have come up especially the first days. Lately, I’ve kind of adopted a nice and fixed routine, but it still has its downsides. You may think that being a software engineer wouldn’t ideally require lots of human interaction, but I only realized these past weeks how wrong this statement is! We’re still human beings and need social interaction, probably less than other workers whose job requires constant interaction with customers, for instance, yet even in our small world we often have to deal with discussions and meetings. Keeping up your productivity as if you were in the office is also not easy: getting tired due to intense focus doesn’t take long, and distractions are way more accessible. Finding that balance may become another challenge.
Want to know more?
If this short summary has somehow inspired you and you want to read more, you may find these and more thoughts/feelings in the Facebook post below that features my story, I hope you will enjoy the reading!