March 12, 2022 Update

With all the new employee tasks done, I spent this week focusing my full attention back on software development. My daily schedule right now starts with remote team meetings for daily planning and updates. I then break for some coffee and prepare for 1-2 hours of peer-programming via screen-sharing. After that, I start more traditional single-person programming with regular stretch breaks and occasional meetings interspersed through-out the rest of the work day.

The peer-programming sessions have been great opportunities for me to share my tips and tricks I’ve gathered over 20+ years of programming. Previously, I had been spending many hours writing up long guides and tutorials for junior developers to use as reference in their assigned tasks. I think covering that same information in a peer-programming session is a much more efficient use of time. If questions come up multiple times, then I can record that in a document. I’m very glad that my program manager suggested that we try daily peer-programming sessions.

Now that I am more settled in at work, I will try to schedule a little bit of time each day or every other day for side projects. The first thing I will do is update my project management boards for the side projects so that I can be efficient with planning and tasks. I’ll post links to those planning boards once they are set up. Once that’s done, hopefully I’ll be able to quickly jump in and out of tasks for side projects without wasting too much time trying to remember what I was doing. Fingers-crossed!