I know I have been starting every post with how I can’t believe a month has gone by but it’s hard to put in words how quickly time flies here. A lot has happened since the last month. The spread of COVID-19 has affected everyone globally and transformed how things happen. Because of it, most of the people have been forced to work remotely. Almost overnight, working remotely became mainstream. Companies around the world encouraged their employees to work from home to prioritize the health and safety of their workforce and the community.
We are no different. In the second week of March, Chemishield decided to work remotely. Initially, I thought it would be a challenge, but I slowly adapted to it. I had thoughts like how will I manage my time, what if I keep getting distracted, FOMO and much more. But I got over them eventually and learnt how to properly work remotely. The best tip I can give is to mimic the office routine remotely. From waking up to finishing your day at the office, try to mimic what usually used to be the case at your workplace. It personally helped me to maintain efficiency and productivity. Also, you need a separate space where you feel you can work comfortably and are free from distractions.
Moreover, an unusual thing which helped me was my pyjamas. I’m sure a lot of people will agree with me when I say wearing PJs increases comfort and productivity!
Another thing I would like to share was the office setup we needed for working from home. The team helped me with all the stuff I needed for my home setup including the office chair which, trust me, can make a lot of difference. I’m pretty sure now that I couldn’t have worked without it. Thanks to Niall, our CTO for helping me get the chair home.
Coming to the tech side, a lot of changes took place. I said in my last post, that I might need to wait for a month or two for the SDS project but now, I guess we will have to wait for a good while before we see the end product. It has been put on hold till things get back to normal (I hope soon.) Apart from that, I and Ciarán have been learning about testing. We were taught about testing in college, but we never got a chance to work with them in-depth. At the moment, we are looking into End-to-End testing using a framework called Nightwatch.js.
Along with developing tests, we spent most of the month adding features and fixing bugs which greatly enhanced the user experience. It was a good opportunity to learn how things work in a complex software and helped me hone my skills of understanding and improving code. We also learnt some AWS stuff which would definitely help me in the long run.
I learned a lot this month both professionally and personally. We had a quarterly review meeting recently in which Me and Ciarán’s work was highly appreciated which made us extremely happy and proud. We will continue putting in hard work with the zeal to learn more and more.
This is a trying and testing time because of COVID-19. Everything seems so disconsolate, but it can be tackled with positivity. It has allowed humanity to come together as one. It’s an opportunity to work together, learn together and grow together. Compassion is medicine and this too shall pass. Take Care and Stay Safe guys.
Thanks for reading 😉