After profiling FastPivot Developer Chris Harman, we decided to look at a typical workday in the Harman home. Here is how Chris describes his typical Day in the Life as a FastPivot developer:
6:30-7:00 am: I usually wake up around this time because this is when our one-and-a-half-year old son gets up. Admittedly, my wife more often then not, beats me to the punch here and is up before me and already has made him breakfast! Around this time, my mother-in-law Sandy (who lives right down the road) comes over to spend time with my son and helps dress him, while my wife and I run around and get ready for the day. I do get to enjoy some playtime with my little man before it is time to leave for day care.
8:00 am: In the car and off to day care. Sometimes, I get to drop him off, however most days my wife will take him and then continue on down the road to her job.
8:30 am: I’m back in the house ready to start my day. I’ll make myself a coffee, grab a quick bowl of cereal, and take both to my office (pictured). I sit down and start checking and organizing emails. FastPivot has clients in many time zones so we frequently get emails during the night. I’ll also finish anything left over from the day before so I’m ready for our daily scrum.
10:00 am: The last 20 minutes before scrum I use to close out everything from the day before and prep for the work day ahead. In terms of billable hours, I try to log all of my time before I go to bed. Anything outstanding, however, will be cleaned up during this time. Mostly, the time before scrum is reserved for non-billable tasks, such as account maintenance or checking posts in BaseCamp. By the time scrum arrives, I try to be completely organized and prepared for the day.
10:20 am: Scrum is the company-wide meeting, and the coolest part of the day for me. Our team is distributed across the country; three of us are in Northeastern Pennsylvania, another developer just moved to Maine, and the others are headquartered in Asheville, NC. This is the time when we’re together, even if we’re not actually physically together. It is a great way to communicate and provides the much-needed community atmosphere.
We’ve used Go to Meetings for a long time, but we’re dabbling with Google Hangout to see if it works better for us. Scrum varies in length but typically lasts 15-20 minutes. Occasionally, it might run 45-60 min if there’s a lot to discuss such as a major update to the Yahoo! platform, or an issue with a project that we need to combine our heads on. Basically, if there is something viable to talk about, we keep talking.
We review the day’s schedule for each developer, and discuss roadblocks we might have or problems we might need help solving. After that, it is time to code.
11:00 am: I’m digging into work. As far as priorities, I’m usually tackling my list based on the priority set in scrum.
12:30 pm: Starting to get a little hungry, so I’ll stop to refuel. Sometimes, it might be a sandwich from the kitchen, or a slice of pizza picked up on the way to the post office or another errand.
1:00 pm: I’m back into the groove. I usually do a straight shot until 4:30 or so when I leave and pick up my son from day care. It is generally four quality hours with my head down and fingers typing away.
5:00 – 6:00 pm: Daddy and son time! On nice days, we’ll head straight to the park from daycare and have some fun. On not so nice days, we’ll retreat back to house and queue up a Pixar flick, play race-cars, or color. He’ll also help me get a plan for dinner, and start getting that ready.
6:00 – 8:45 pm: This is family time. My wife arrives homes from work around 6:00. We’ll have our dinner, and play with our son until he gets sleepy around 8:00. We do bath and bedtime, and then both of us head to our desks in the office. Back to work.
9:00 – 12/1:00 am: I resume work again and generally code until I physically have to get some sleep. Then I hit the sheets. Normally I work until midnight or 1:00 am. Depending on the evening, I’m working on client projects, helping friends with IT issues, working on my own ideas, or improving my programming knowledge and skills.
Summary
That’s it, a Day in the Life of a FastPivot developer. In general, during the week, I’ll aim to put in between 3-5 good hours of quality coding during the day, hang out with the family, then finish my work projects at night after our son has gone to bed. I really like the flexibility and opportunity I have to combine work and family time.
If you were wondering about my technology setup, here is what I work with and on:
Note: My PC is an Intel core i7 – 2600K, with a Quad Core CPU @ 3.40GHz. It has 16 GB of RAM, and runs 64bit Windows 8. It is a super fast, custom-built PC I put together myself. I also rock dual monitors – one is a 24” LCD and the other is a 28” LED. Both are wide-screen, and perfect for handling everything from code to movies/games.
