Camilla Decrespigny

Hi there. I’m Camilla and I’m currently a Software Engineer graduate at REA Group. I have a degree in Business from Swinburne University. After completing my degree, I did a 3-month boot camp at General Assembly before joining the REA Grad Program. Thanks to a certain pandemic, I’ve mostly been working from home this year, with brief intervals of heading into the office, so here is what a typical work from home day looks like for me.

7:30 am

After snoozing my alarm at least twice I stumble out of bed and jump in the shower to wake myself up. I then head downstairs and make myself some breakfast. One of the joys of working from home is I have more time in the morning, so I usually make some eggs and coffee to start my day.

9:00 am

I head back upstairs to my desk, ready to start the day. I always start my day by checking what is on my calendar, and any to-do reminders I might have set for myself. Following this, I check Slack and emails. There are some great channels on Slack, filled with interesting articles, so I often spend this time reading them. If there’s time before stand-up, I’ll do some self-learning and remind myself of the status of what I am working on, so I’m ready to give an update at stand-up.

10:00am

Team stand-up time. This is where we update the whole team on how we’re going with the card we’re working on. It’s an opportunity to check in and ask for help if needed and to share updates on how other work is going. In true stand-up style, ours is usually quick, lasting between 15 – 20 minutes. Each week we have a theme that we finish off with, and a personal favourite of mine was “if you were a piece of furniture what would you be and why?” Once the work chat is done, we talk about the theme of the day before we head off to continue our work.

10:15am – 12:00pm

 Pairing time! If I have no meetings, after stand-up I’ll break off with my pair and we’ll work on our card together. I learn well by pairing, so unless I’m working on a quick and simple card I can easily do on my own, I will always try to pair with someone. I prefer pairing in person, but as a team we’ve got very used to pairing on Zoom. We just need to make sure we take regular breaks away from our desks so we can keep our focus up.

12:00pm – 1:00pm

At around 12pm I’ll head downstairs for lunch. Sometimes I'll just hang out with my house mates who have also been working from home, other times I will run errands or go for a walk (weather dependent). I can’t wait to be back in the office more as we love having in-person team lunches.

1:00pm – 3:30pm

The afternoon is spent either pairing or in meetings. At REA we have guilds and dojos for different areas of tech. I usually try to go to the Mobile Guild, Kotlin Dojo and Swift Dojos. They are great places to learn from other Mobile Developers across the company. People give talks about interesting things they’ve learned recently, or a challenge they’ve come across and how they worked through it.

3:30 pm

Afternoon tea-time! Being on Zoom all day can be exhausting, so breaks are important. I’ll head back down to the kitchen and make a cup of tea or coffee and grab a snack to keep me going for the rest of the day. Might chat with my housemates for a bit or water my plants and then head back to up my desk.

3:45 – 5:00 pm

More pairing time or meetings. Often in the afternoon there are check-in’s, knowledge shares, or games sessions. Once a week the grads have a game session to catch up and hear how everyone is going. It’s a nice touch point to have because we haven’t been able to spend much time as a cohort together in person. 

5:00 pm

Sign off for the day. If I’m still pairing on a card, I generally try to take a couple of quick notes as a reminder for tomorrow of where we’re up to or any issues we came across that we need to research a bit more. It’s then a final check of emails and slack before shutting off my computer and heading downstairs to hang out with my housemates and enjoy the rest of the evening.