The uncovered truth about a day of a Web developer
Developers – what do they actually do?
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I am a ‘Web developer’. Every developer’s day is different, of course, but yet we have a common flow of events with time for coding, education, discussions, socialising, and sharing knowledge.
A Wednesday of a Developer
Attention! Whoever thinks that developers only develop – is wrong! For example I am also a Vice Team Lead, Tech Lead and a member of a Guild, and days could become very eventful. Let me tell you a story of one day in a life of a web developer at Exove
6:40. Wakeup
Generally my alarm rings at this time. I check a weather forecast for today, get myself and kids ready and I’m out the door to get to work for 8:45.
08:45. Arriving to work
I am entering the office with a bowl of porridge (that I got from the cafe downstairs) in one hand, ready for the day. Stopping by the kitchen, I am grabbing a spoon and a cup of latte that smells so refreshing at this time of a day!
My desk is at the other side of the building, and I am exchanging ‘Good morning’s’ and ‘Huomenta’s’ with my colleagues on my way to it. The office is half empty still, but I can already see a lot of people in the meeting rooms.
08:50. Work starts
The day starts with checking up on emails and Slack messages and clarifying my schedule for today. Well well, seems that one of my busiest days is ahead of me. I jump up on coding and spend 1,5 hours developing a client’s website – a task for now is to create a mobile view and animations for the main navigation.
What I love about my job is that there are always new ways to do things and new advances in technologies. No two projects are the same, and I am enjoying finding ways to simplify and make the front-end development process more effective.
10:00. Interruption
Suddenly, I am noticing somebody mentioned my name on Slack, and the next 20 minutes are spent on clarifying resources for a new project that starts in two months. As a Vice Team Lead I need to know what the workload of each of my team members is and what technologies they are capable of working with.
10:30. Guild assignment
It’s time now for a short meeting with a fellow developer. I am going to interview him about his opinion and ideas on how to make our project handovers better. This is a part of joined efforts in the Guild Communications to improve ways of interaction inside the company, based on the people’s feedback we have gotten during one of the trainings.
I am going to make a summary of my findings and then we will brainstorm and propose an updated guide. I feel very good knowing that I am having an impact on the company and colleagues’ well being. It gives me encouragement and a proper mood to succeed in the development work.
12:00. #openness
From this time on I usually do coding until the end of the day, as yesterday, but today is different. After an hour, I join all the company in the lobby, where we are getting updates on what happened in last two weeks. It’s staff o’clock.
We won a big sales case, the marketing team has opened a slogan hunt, we cheer our new fellow developers, and the currently established Guild AI presented its experiment results with two chat bots talking to each other. We all had a good laugh.
13:30. Education
Coming back from lunch. Oh, I totally forgot that it’s the day of watering plants at our team’s space! Poor poor greens, I am so sorry.
Occasionally, I take some time to read blogs or articles. I love learning new things and it is important for a web developer to keep up with what’s happening in the industry.
14:00. Back to coding
The rest of the day passes by quietly. I am doing some basic styling of the page elements and integrating a slider plugin to a content lift-up view.
I’m also chatting with my friends during a coffee break and laughing with my team mates while we are selecting an activity for our team day this Autumn. It is going to be a few hours of hiking with a small camping afterwards. Looking forward to it!
16:10. Time to go home
I am leaving a little bit early today, since I need to pick up my kids from the kindergarten. Outside of work I enjoy going to the cinema, reading, and, of course, spend time with my family. I do occasionally work from home, but I am trying not to overwhelm myself much.
The day in review
This was a very productive and fun day at work. On a typical working day, I would say I spend 75% of my time on project work and 25% on meetings and on general communication.
So no, being a web developer doesn’t mean you write code all day, or even most of the day, though days full of coding do happen. That is why there really is no way to define an “average” work day for a web developer.
However, there is one important task, that takes up a portion of every work day no matter what is going on, because it is critical to my ability to function as a developer: obtaining and consuming coffee 🙂
