It's a Sunday.
I don't particularly like Sundays, and me unexpectedly waking up at 7am did not make it better. It's not like I have an unusually terrifying relationship with Sundays, but Sundays are always filled with the energy of doing nothing and watching time pass and before anything really happens the day is over and everyone starts another 5 days of work. It's just not a very pleasant feeling in overall. But, it is what it is. Okay, moving on...
First thing I did after getting out of bed, is to do a quick Covid-19 self-test. It's not because that I previously met someone positive, but it's the SOP for my office. Before going back to work for the week, you have to do a self-test, and you are only allowed entry if your result is negative. It's quite a nice policy and it helps to keep everyone safe. No complains, except that I sometimes forgot that I need to do it.
It's negative, great. Well, I hadn't talked to anyone outside of this house within the past two weeks or so anyway...
We had been working from home for so long that it feels a little weird thinking that I will soon need to start working from office. The experienced for me started from last year when the cases in Malaysia rose very aggressively while I was having my internship. We had like a few weeks of working from office, and after that the entire RnD team started working from home, since almost the entirety of our job can be done from anywhere with a laptop and internet connection. So, while the support team had to take turns returning to office for their jobs, we just stayed at home and dealt with our code, just like how we did in office.
Although the job is the same, the experience is vastly different. With the working hours starting from 9am, I just need to wake up at 830am, brush my teeth, have a quick bath, eat my breakfast, and I'll be ready for work before I check in on the phone just before 9am. Having breakfast while staring at the code after 9am is also a choice - just that I don't do that since I like to keep food away from any computer I use. Working hours are also very flexible when working from home, and it goes both ways. There are just too many times in which I continued coding after working hours just to figure out that one bug before I end the day for good. Not so often for the opposite, but it's sure an option as well. And it feels less guilty doing it at home, even if it's also not wrong doing it at work when you are given the green light.
Looking for help for work-related stuff while working from home is also very different. Normally, I'll just walk over to the senior's desk and we'll figure something out, but when working from home we all talk through WhatsApp. It's not bad, but obviously for these cases, direct help is easier and better. Not a very big issue for someone like me who is fine working independently, though. Although, sometimes, when dealing with those non-existent documentation and obscure software where Google can't help, it doesn't really matter if you're independent or not. That's where the difference really comes in. Not too often, but at times we really hope that we can point at each other's screen in real life, instead of having to communicate through voice calls where sound gets compressed, slightly distorted, and with existence partially removed... I don't know, do you feel the same when having lots of calls in a day?
Time flies, and I never stepped back to the office until the end of my internship, where I visited the place again to return the laptop. I kind of miss that place, though. I haven't really experienced the sofa at the lobby yet, and I had to move on to my final year project and say goodbye to it. I also went for a job at another company after I completed my courses in university, so I didn't went back to the office ever since. Maybe I'll pay it a visit someday in the future.
At this new job, it's roughly the same - online interview, visited the office on the first day to pick up my stuff, then I continued working from home until the management decided that it is okay to allow us to take turns returning to the office. I didn't even get to check my desk on my first day, as, well, I'm not going to use it during that time! The job is also about software developing, so naturally, we can also do all of our stuff anywhere as long as there is a laptop and an internet connection. The experience is really similar. I still wake up at 8 or 830am, sometimes accidentally extending my working hours when my stuff got stuck at some weird place that I am not willing to leave overnight, and we still communicate through voice calls with compressed sound quality (and video quality) when something doesn't go as expected. It's not bad, but I also never really tried working from office... how does that feel?
After a month and a little more, we got the notice that we can now take turns to work from the office. So, here's my first experience! Driving close to 1 hour to the office in the morning (and arriving too early almost every time, allowing me to play MapleStory in the car for quite a bit before working hours officially start), having lunch with colleagues at nearby stores where we walk to, spending close to another two hours in the car when going home at the end of the day (thanks to Penang traffic, yes, it's horrible), and of course, the job itself - doing our jobs in a pretty sweet environment with little to no distractions, free from worries that the Wi-Fi will randomly stop working and cause your software deployment to fail, and the comfort of being able to find someone for a quick discussion or talk by just walking over to their desk and see if they're down for it. It's not bad, really. Apart from the traffic. Ignore that, and it's really not bad, I kinda like it.
The best part of the working from office experience probably lies in how there are so less distractions around. There's no random events popping out at unexpected times, no people suddenly screaming really loud when the dog from next door pees at our door (almost literally), and you don't really inconvenient people by needing others nearby to shut up while you're in a call. We software developers love it when we aren't distracted, so... yes. We also get a good desk in the office, with two extra monitors, and you are free to bring your own accessories to work if you need to. Maybe it's only me, but this helps me to be more productive by just making use of these hardware, as I don't have a desk at home, let alone extra monitors. Extra monitors are those upgrades that are hard to live without after you get used to them. No more spamming alt-tab wondering where that Visual Studio went while you are checking the network requests made from the web browser, with extra monitors we just put them on separate screens and everything is there. I still don't really get how I lived without them in the past two weeks where my team worked from home. Pretty amazing now that I think of it.
Recently, we got the notice that we are all required to get back to office starting from some day in June. I still have some mixed feelings over that, as it means that I will need to spend almost 3 hours every day in the traffic and spend more money on lunch as well as fuel. Inflation isn't helping, either. But with the pandemic slowing down, things need to go back to normal... Maybe, it won't be as normal as the old normal anymore, since we will all need to do a self-test every week when that happens and that doesn't sound like old normal. We still have to try to get back to do what we were doing, anyway. This is probably the first step for me.
And well, when everything really goes back to normal, maybe I can attend Comic Fiesta again? That's quite motivating, you know. Just hope that when I finally feel comfortable enough to attend it won't be as crowded as the recent Anime Fest in Paradigm Mall... hah.
Stay safe! Don't bring the numbers up again, thanks.
:)
Hi, really interesting story. Also for me after getting covid the whole rhythm of life changes to the other side and a whole new world opens up as I work from home. Of course, I only do some part of the work with documentation, unfortunately, another part is not possible to do remotely in my profession. But it was really nice you don't have to get up so early and drive about 40 minutes to work every day. You get up, make some coffee, get something to eat, and sit at your computer and you are in the work. 😃
Totally agree... I actually hope that we can continue to take turns to work at the office instead of all going back lol. Two weeks at home followed by one week at the office is like the perfect cycle, but oh well 😂