General

Ok, somehow Wednesday seems to be a turning point. The first two days were really hard, chaotic, still productive but balancing 2 remote jobs + 2 kids seemed impossible.

We change small things:

• Accept the situation.
• Don't create a stressful environment for the partner (which I unconsciously did 😫)
• Enjoy the moment with kids, put the phone away.
• During midday nap of our son, our daughter is doing preschool stuff (iPad Apps, printed items.)
• I work an hour after both kids fall asleep.

This situation is not perfect, yet I'm positively looking forward as every day we do small changes with my wife.

Our daily schedule is still in place (more or less):

We are also trying to ask our daughter how her day was, what she liked and what not.

Guess what? Her best moments are Watching TV, Playing on iPad and Eating sweet stuff 😂 our kids basically have unexpected holidays for another 3 1/2 weeks (at least).

Corona is still rising, I'm checking the numbers and reading some news.

Work

Today, we had our first Zalon All Hands and Google Hangouts is more or less working reliable. When there is an issue it is a connectivity issue rather hangouts itself.

Still, there is a general rule establishing:

• If you're not presenting, asking a question please mute + hide video
• If it is a topic with a lot of questions take it to a separate meeting
• We use https://www.sli.do/ which is a nice way to ask questions and let them be answered easily.

Regarding my presentation:

• I'll write a blogpost dedicated to it.
• I shared that "We need more Fun", my random take of Snap Camera and the need for Watercooler Chat. The outcome is that our Data Team is now sharing their funny standups. Looks like I triggered something here 😅 (yet they were doing it already before).

All in all, I prepared it based on my past blogpost and 2h of investment. For that, I have to admit it worked out nice.

TIL

Writing down some thoughts and observation feels great! I'm trying to not overthink this. I'm not a native english speaker and had to speak / write more actively when I did my masters degree and when I joined Zalando.

Normally, I try to use Hemingway App or Grammar.ly but I feel that they overcomplicate my thought process. So this time, it's raw (most likely wrong) written english. Enjoy it 😅

Technically, there was not much on the React side. We found an issue in what kind of article ID I was sending and fixed that. Right now, I'm trying to get my head around a good way of functional testing.

At the same time, I tackled smaller tasks related to some legacy Scala Templates, Scala code. As long as developers don't go to crazy with functional Scala I'm always realizing that with a good clean code strategy, anyone can understand and change code no matter their background.

Past Posts: