Realistic Day in the Life as a Software Engineer

I got the concurrent cloning and the TUI tickets moved to Dunn, and then today I opened Okay, so I just had three meetings back-to-back-to-back. If you guys watched my last video, You know that I work on a team called WorkSpaces, and yes, we own the product WorkSpaces. which are essentially remote computers in the cloud. I have been working on implementing a new set of features that allows users to customize their WorkSpaces. After spending a good amount spending time iterating on the plan with Claude, incorporating feedback from the team, and ensuring that I I really don't understand every component and what's going on. The implementation is like... The role of a software engineer, honestly, right now does not involve any manual coding, which is Crazy to think about. A junior engineer used to do the most low-level basic manual coding. but now that AI has taken over that task, junior engineers are empowered to focus on other aspects faster, more productively, understand systems at a higher level to develop a product-oriented mindset outcome-oriented mindset. This one-on-one was a meeting with a senior software engineer on my team. to discuss a new project that involved collaborating together. Our project involves a SSM, which used to stand for a Simple Systems Manager, is an operations hub within AWS. that lets you monitor, configure, and manage virtual servers and other resources. We had our high-level discussion on this project, which the senior engineer on my team walked me through the high-level components that would be involved in this project. And my next steps here are to Conduct a more in-depth analysis of a SSM and examine key topics such as authentication, authorization, and networking, as well as consider the various problems and questions involved. Like, oh wait, I love that game you play for three hours. Wait, what game? And you sneak around, but it's like... And now, like, I'm moving. This is my dog. This is me. Your Sasquatch who owns a dog? Yeah. Okay. It'll be off. Watch it be on. I'm not gonna lie, I've been feeling kind of stressed with work recently. I just sometimes feel that the responsibility of my work has increased so much, and I'm anxious. that I am not meeting the expectations others have of me, and that I am letting them down I'm letting people down, I'm letting myself down. I have imposter syndrome, and I feel incompetent. I feel like I'm working too slowly, and I get really stressed when I get stuck on something. And then it ends up delaying my progress, and I'm not able to ship it as quickly as I want. This stress has honestly made me stay late at the office a few times. And I know I shouldn't complain. I'm extremely, extremely grateful for the work-life balance. that I have, and that my company provides me, and also there's no expectation to work Beyond the nine-to-five, and no one is pressuring me or expecting that from me. This is more of an expectation I am setting for myself, because I feel like I'm not making enough progress, and I want to complete a certain amount of work by the end of the day, or to present at the stand-up meeting the next morning. Yesterday, I stayed at the office until 9 p.m. So I literally worked a 9-to-9, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Last week, there was a day when I worked until Midnight at the office, and once again, that was entirely self-inflicted. I just felt so behind on my work. Due to my blockers, and I'm still learning how to manage my time. I'm learning how to work. through blockers to get unblocked faster, and most of all, something that I'm going to try to start learning and doing is to better communicate my blockers to my team and to my manager. All they You know, at a high level, the thing is that my ticket is still in progress after however long it's been. time, and that it appears at a high level that I made no progress, when in reality I got blocked. but here's A, B, C, and D that I tried, and what I did, and what I learned, and then I tried this and I got unblocked here, but then I got blocked here. Yeah, but it's been a lot of learning in not only technical skills, but also soft skills, communication, and all that stuff, so It's approaching 5 p.m. I'm going back to my desk to get ready to wrap up the workday. And today is Friday, so I have some fun plans. Yeah, let's head over and get dinner. I'm seeing familiar faces from my internship cohort last year among the new graduates who are starting. This week has been really nice, including my good friend Kaylin here, whom I'm having dinner with. with, and it's got me thinking about what I value in friendships in my life. I have observed that I always drift toward one-on-one or very small group settings with friends, and don't get me Wrong, I occasionally enjoy a group setting. I like that sense of belonging and community. that comes with having a larger group of friends. I mean, who doesn't? But I really think it's the one-on-one settings where I truly feel seen and understood, and where I am also able to see the other person for who they are and understand them as well on a deeper level. I am in a very independent and exploratory phase of life where I have many thoughts and many things I want to achieve having a few but high-quality friendships, which enable me to maintain my independence. and freedom to pursue them, but I also feel FOMO when I enjoy my independence, so it is An interesting situation, and perhaps you can relate to me, and perhaps you won't. Maybe you're someone who excels in group settings and is constantly surrounded by others, or someone who loves their alone time and never feels lonely, and maybe you feel as I do. If you made it to That's it for now, thanks for being here, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!