A *REALISTIC* Day in the Life as a Software Engineer | Big Tech

hey guys welcome to my channel I'm jelana and if you've been here before welcome so today is going to be a different type of Vlog so I'm going to be showing like you know lifestyle the typical daylight and a lot but this time I'm going to have an emphasis on what it is that I actually do at work so I'm gonna try to make this as informational as possible I'm going to stop every now and then to just explain to you guys what it is that I actually do at work so if you're interested in learning more about the actual day in the life of a software engineer stay tuned for the rest of this video [Music] foreign [Music] okay so I wanted to make this type of video because I feel like when I went to be a software engineer I really wanted to find more content on YouTube about like what software Engineers actually do at work like I want to know what tools you're using what's your day actually like I feel like most people only show like myself only show like the fun parts of work and don't really show like what they actually work on um obviously I might have to keep it super super big because I can't share my screen with y'all and I can't really give y'all specific details on what I'm working on because you know but I'll try to just in general just talk about like what I do what work I'm in what kind of things I work on and Etc so I just left Smoothie King because I'm on a weight gain Journey as well wish we could talk about that in the video but um I just picked up a smoothie and now I'm about to go pick up my best friend and we're gonna head to the office together so I will actually see you guys once I get to the office [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so I came to this conference room really quick just so that I can chat with y'all and explain to y'all a little bit more about what I do so I am a front-end software engineer I am actually a part of a program that is called talent development program and it's inside of the data org of my company I'm the only software engineer in the program the other members are data science and machine learning engineering if you watched my Bay Area Vlog you probably saw me talk a little bit more about my program that I'm in I really like the program so when I first started the program I joined a team called data science productivity and we basically build tools for data scientists so just vaguely we have a few products that we own um I would considered a team to kind of be like a piloting team almost because we own a lot of products but we were like a small team so we kind of quickly built things that would help make the lives of data Sciences easier as you can imagine you're working very closely with scientists and you kind of have to understand what the data scientists are looking for to understand like their business case value like the business value of what you're you know building so with that being said I kind of found myself not really being that interested in data like I think that being I think that data is super exciting I think that you know data literally everything starts with data and honestly the data at my company is very very interesting like I I really appreciate hearing about the storytelling and I really um I really love hearing about the things that the people in my program are working on however like while it's interesting I just felt like I was working too close to data scientists because it's to the point where I'm building tools to help data scientists perform like complex analyzes even though I'm not doing any of the calculation it's still just like you kind of have to understand at some level the data science part to fully understand the business you know the business case that you're working on and I just like find myself just not being really interested and it kind of like made me I kind of felt a little bit bad about it at first because I'm in this data program for two years so I'm like you know I kind of kind of felt bad at first that I really wasn't interested and I was really trying to like get myself to be excited about it but I just wasn't So eventually I end up telling my boss like you know I kind of don't really like working that close to data I kind of eventually like after the program my goal is to work on something that's more like customer facing or like regular consumer facing like I don't really it's already hard enough for me to learn software engineering but then like to add the data context to it was very difficult for me so I kind of want to work on something that is just more of a regular you know user facing product and my boss super super supportive like really great boss I've had really good bosses here super supportive about that and he ended up putting me on this project um they were looking for I guess kind of like a couple of volunteers from each team and so he ended up like volunteering me for this project so that I didn't have to work as closely to data and that's the project that I'm on now so I really enjoy what I'm working on now I liked what I was working on before of course because I was still working on interesting UI components but I think what's interesting and I'm so grateful for him for putting me on this project but like what's interesting about this project is I got to actually build it from scratch so me and there's only about five of us on the engineering side two in the front end in about three or four in the back end and then we have other members of the team as well I think our team is probably about 10 or 12 10 to 12 people we actually got to start the project from scratch and I'm really I'm literally building an MVP and I feel like me me working on this project I have gotten to learn so much about the front end and on top of that I get to use react in this project we don't typically use react on my company most of us use Ember like 99 of the company uses Amber um so I just find it really interesting that I get to actually work on react and not only do I get the react but I get to literally build something from scratch I get to work with everything from the uxd everything all front end front engineering and I get to work very closely with the uxd very Hands-On and I am like you know a decision maker as you know as it pertains to the future of this product so that is like what I'm working on now um I have started this project in August and the product the project has come such a long way I can't really talk about specifically what the project is for but the project has come such a long way and I just really really enjoy what I work on and it really has gotten me super super excited about working in the front end so that was kind of like a long spill about what I work on so now that I've talked about like the area that I work on um I like the area that I work in I'm going to talk a little bit more about what I actually am doing now so like I told you I started working on a new projects um I started the project in August and we literally started it from scratch we are now about to start phase two of the project and this is a pretty big face and I am currently the only UI person on the team right now so as of like January I'm like the only person that's in UI so what I did just to make my life easier is I spent about a week refactoring the code that we had previously because I feel like we built the project so fast that I just wanted to make sure that all the decisions that we made were like actually the best decision for the project or for the product and that the code base is as clean as possible before we further expand so in addition to that I am also working on um my the engineering manager that's managing this project has asked me to think of ways that we can integrate UI I mean sorry think of ways that we can integrate AI or artificial intelligence into the front end of our project and this part is actually pretty exciting for me because if you watched my creative careers in Tech video you know that I work on the front end and that I enjoy uxd work but I wouldn't want to do uxd full-time so uxd is like user experience design also you know uid you use your interface design so that's like the actual design of what the project or product visually looks like and I am a very creative person so I don't mind doing that type of work here and there um I just wouldn't want to do it full time so I'm excited because this is a good opportunity for me to you know showcase some of my user interface design skills user experience design skills and create visual markups for you know how we could potentially add artificial intelligence into our product so some of the technologies that I use let's talk about that I use a lot of Visual Studio code I think that's vs code you know um that's what I used to write my code in so I I love using that I really haven't explored too much of I think I might have used the sub is it called Sublime something like that I don't know what it's called I might have tried a couple other ones I've tried IntelliJ IntelliJ just has too much going on for me but yeah I use Visual Studio code all right so now that's that let's go into what a typical day looks like for me so I work on the east coast and majority of my team works on the west coast so there's a three hour time difference most of my team is not logging in until about 12 o'clock like that's like the earliest so 9am their time is usually when they log in but anyway so um I usually have my first meeting around 12 o'clock I feel like my mornings are typically just very chill coding I can just kind of work on things by myself there's pros and cons to that because I feel like if I have any blockers or if I need any help I have to kind of wait until noon for people to log in so you know in the morning I usually try to just work on things that like that don't really have any dependencies which is most of my work obviously so at 12 o'clock I have a sync up with the front end like front and back in sync up in and sometimes the engineering manager will join the sync up as well so we do that Tuesday Wednesdays and Thursdays and then at 12 30 I actually have another interesting meeting so um the team that I just said you know how I said I was working on that special project and I've been on that project since about August so this this project is actually becoming like my permanent project and the team is actually becoming my permanent team including the manager so she's going to become my manager so we're actually going to have our first actual team meeting today so I'm really excited about that so that's only that's the only thing on my agenda today work wise and then as you guys know um I work inside of the Microsoft building so uh black at Microsoft is hosting a happy hour today from 4 to 5 30. so I'll probably make it at the end of that honestly lately I've been finding myself working a little later than usual um the last couple of weeks just because like I said we're going into phase two of that project I have been really busy at work lately so I might push me going to the happy hour back to like five I might just go to like for like the last 30 minutes or so so we'll see what that looks like we'll see what my day you know looks like when I get there and I usually do lunch around one one o'clock 1 30 so meeting at 12. new team meeting at 12 30 and then lunch around one that is today's agenda okay so the informational portion of this has concluded um I'm going to continue to take you guys along with me for the rest of the day and still kind of explain things that I'm doing I hope you guys like that kind of stuff if you have questions please leave them in the comments um and I will definitely answer whatever questions you have about what it's actually like to be a software engineer um but yeah I'm about to continue to work on these mock-ups so I will catch you guys later [Music] okay y'all so it's 12 o'clock um so I'm about to join my daily sync well it's only Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday but basically this is just my time where I get to talk to the back end um and just talk about any blockers that I have or just any questions that I might have um it's really quick and Casual it's kind of like a stand-up meeting if you're um if you're familiar with like the agile method but yeah basically this is just a really chill meeting for me to ask questions [Music] okay so I just got out of that meeting um it's 12 50 so ran 20 minutes over and most of us are in the next meeting so I'm about to just quickly join the next meeting which is supposed to be our first team meeting all of us are 20 minutes late so we'll only probably have like 10 to 20 minutes to meet but I'm gonna quickly jump with that meeting so I'll catch you guys after this in a crisis [Music] okay y'all I just finally got on my last meeting is 105 and um yeah it was really quick we just basically did like intros um because like I said um it's basically even though we're working with the same people but now it's like officially a team so I'm super excited like I really like the order that I'm in now um and I'm just excited to see like what type of projects we'll be working on in the future and I think that I've gotten really lucky so far because um I've just been able to work with like really good managers and I've been having really good teammates throughout my whole entire um almost two years now that I've been at my company and yeah I'm just really um excited to see what's to come for the rest of this year but like I said it's 106 and I'll probably be grabbing lunch around 1 30. I just want to Ping a couple people and um finalize a couple things before I head to lunch sometimes I eat lunch and actually take a lunch time sometimes I bring my lunch upstairs I have like a working lunch I'll probably bring lunch upstairs today I don't know we'll see but I'll catch you guys in a little bit this is my office crew we have Michaela who is an ELP slash sales blp is an entry-level program for people by LinkedIn that are in business this is Anaya she is an account they know me sorry an account I am an account director director Big Boss energy there's a couple other people but there are meetings right now so okay we found a secret door at the LinkedIn office that takes us straight to the cafeteria it's really not a secret but we were the last one to find out about it but all this time we've been having to do so much just into bacteria the whole time they're really looking for in our office to go straight to it like wow I didn't even do an OOTD I'm outside [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] and now we're about to we haven't eaten yet though oh now we're about to go to third floor so that we can get some flavored water because they don't have flavored water on our floor maybe there is a cafe is there another cafeteria that's like outside of LinkedIn on the floor no probably not but I'm saying is there a kitchen on this floor that's not LinkedIn that's one thing Microsoft has that we don't have flavored water this is actually my first time on another floor oh this floor is cute no I mean like on a floor that's not the 10th floor this one's cute though Okay so I'm eating lunch finally it's 2 26 and I'm just now getting to eat mostly because I was dragging my feet to get to the cafeteria but meeting Indian food and it's actually pretty good okay so now I'm um listening to a lunch and learn about AI um as you probably have heard about the new chat GPT thing that's like out with Microsoft and open AI so I'm listening um to information like lunch learn about that and then I'm also while I'm in it yeah working on that um starting to implement some of that mock design that I told you guys that I came up with earlier I did present my design this morning um and my team think and they liked it so I'm gonna start implementing it along with one of my teammates um we are going to meeting at four o'clock to finalize the requirements for um the feature but yeah if I'm working in this thing at the same time until my meeting my next meeting at four okay [Music] [Laughter] this is where I've been working at by the way but I'm finally about to attend my last meeting of the day the lunch and learn which was later it really wasn't during lunch because it was based on Pacific time so it's like at three o'clock but that was kind of impromptu because I didn't find out about it until today and then this meeting is also impromptu meeting with my teammate today so that we can like I said earlier just discuss what we're actually going to like the final um design choices for the product that we're going to be working on or the feature that we're going to be adding um the final design choices for the feature that we're going to be adding and we're gonna just like divvy up the tasks and stuff like that and just figure out kind of like a road map for the implementing this feature so yeah last meeting and we're off to happy hour yay [Music] so yeah BRB so I literally got out of my last meeting at 501 it lasted way longer than I expected um so now me and Michaela are about to go to happy hour in the projects [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay y'all so it's 6 11. I am getting on the freeway right now I'm planning on leaving um happy hour was cool um but I'm about to head home my apartment is having a happy hour and I think they're gonna have like hors d'oeuvres too so I'm gonna stop by that um see what they got going on that ends at 7 30. I'll probably get there at this rate there's so much traffic I probably won't get there until like seven um so we'll even see this traffic is literally like stand still right now like I can literally put my car apart right now so that's annoying but hopefully I can get home at a reasonable time okay y'all so I just got back home and I'm about to head to a happy hour that my apartment is having so we'll see what this is hitting for girls [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] okay so I just made it back from my apartment's happy hour um I'm about to do my nighttime routine take a shower take off my makeup you know all that good jazz lay in bed and relax probably eat some dinner um so I'm about to end this Vlog here I had a good time at happy hour I was catching up with a few little girls used to live in my building um so that was nice they had like free drinks and you know some snacks and things like that that you saw in the snippet um but yeah I'm pretty tired I'm socially drained um day in the life if there's anything that I left out that you want to hear more about let me know in the comments um also I will be posting more Tech and software engineering related content so if there's anything that you want to see just let me know um and if you're interested in like how to become a software engineer or how to break into Tech I have videos on that as well which I will link Down Below in the description but yeah so um but yeah so that's it for this Vlog I will catch you guys in the next Vlog make sure you like comment and subscribe so that you don't miss out on content okay so see y'all can I hate [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jelanah

Views: 30,782

Keywords: software engineer, day in the life of a software engineer, software engineer day in the life, software engineering, coding, day in the life swe, working at google, living in nyc, day in my life as a software engineer, google vlog, working from home, beast blender, software engineer day in life, Big Tech, big tech with Jelanah, Jelanah, life in tech, jobs in tech, women in tech, creative jobs, big tech, life as a software engineer, programming, black software engineer, jelanah

Id: QED89AcKK6M

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023