Work-life balance for software engineers – retrospective and plan for February 2023

This blog post is a kind of personal essay to leave a retrospective on January 2023, and make a plan for February 2023. You can see the previous post at the following link. As a note, I am working at Autify as a senior site reliability engineer, and looking for a good work-life balance to prepare for the birth of my first kid.

[embed]Plan and milestones for January 2023 I decided not to have any clear goals and milestones to prioritize family stuff, but I realized it led to the situation that relaxed me too…medium.com

Retrospective

The milestones I planned are as follows;

Family milestones

I prioritized a family issue and there are three milestones.

• Read 2 books about childcare and publish a book review -> 8 books
• 2 days to think up a menu and cook -> 5+
• List up necessary tasks until our first child is born -> done

The result is 8 books. I’ve learned about parenting more than I expected. It was beneficial to know anti-patterns as a father that can annoy my wife.

Additionally, I found that reading English childcare books is a bridge between work and childcare. I am not a native English speaker, so I’ve trained my English skill for my business. Previously, the topics I chose were only software engineering but the mindset change to prioritize life with my family brought me a new topic. I got lots of new vocabulary from these books and YouTube videos. It is a precious discovery that I didn’t expect last year because it indicates the possibility that I can work on both important aspects, work and life, seamlessly.

Regarding cooking, I achieved the milestone. An issue of this milestone is hard to track the result. We often cook a meal and discuss a receipt, together. Also, the basis of the cooking is not day. There are three timing to cook theoretically, morning, lunch, and dinner. Still, I feel I succeeded in getting more trust from my wife. After the birth, I should be the duty with housekeeping, although the mother of my wife also is going to help us. I’ll keep improving my skill to prepare for it.

Software engineering milestones

They are not a top priority but I have three concrete milestones.

• Publish a blog about “Chaos Engineering(O’Reilly)” -> still in progress
• Publish one small blog related to technology used by current work. -> zero
• Read one book about architecting -> 1 book

Regarding small blogs, I started writing several drafts but haven’t finalized them yet. Considering other milestones, I should have changed this goal to discovering new learns that could be a topic of blogs. That’s because the main point is to be careful with spending meaningful time learning new things every day.

One thing I achieved is reading a book about architecture. I chose “Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster” written by David Farley. I like this book because I am a TDD lover. This book gave me beneficial insight on a whole software engineering. I am writing a book review and am going to finalize it this week.

English

English is one of the essential keys to both my personal career and work because I am working for a global company the official language is English. Besides, I am not a native English speaker.

• 30-minute online private English lesson every weekday -> 18 days / 19 days
• 30-minute English grammar book (1 chapter) exercise -> 4 days /19 days

I tried DMM Eikaiwa to have 25 minutes personal lesson every workday and it worked well. I found having an English lesson every morning had a good effect to communicate with colleagues.

One issue is that I still sometimes have trouble with understanding fast-speed English talk. It usually happens in hiring interviews.

Also, I wrote a technical blog in my company blog, but I found that my English writing still needs to train more, especially in finding suitable phrases.

Regarding grammar books, I failed to make time to work on them because of two reasons. The first reason is my English teacher gave me homework and it worked as an alternative. The second reason is it takes roughly 30 minutes and it isn’t realistic to work in a day.

Work

I am working as a senior site reliability engineer at Autify. On January, I had two milestones.

• Publish one blog about Autify Connect’s technical aspect on the Autify company blog -> One blog has been published!
• One question or comment every meeting –> 20 meetings /22 meetings

I have two drafts of my blog, and one of them is in the final review. Finally, I’ve published a blog in my company blog, which has taken one year and more since I joined.

[embed]Joined SREcon22 Asia/Pacific to give a session about Autify's Design of a stateful system | Autify… SREcon22 Asia/Pacific is a three-day conference organized by the USENIX Association, which was held on 7-9 December…blog.autify.com

Meetings. Expect an all-hands meeting and another small spot meeting, but I succeeded in participating in them actively. This milestone also brought me a discovery that it could resolve the gap between Japanese-style conversation and English-style conversation. I feel I got used to English-style conversation more, in other words, a style not to wait for others saying and… hmm, difficult to describe…

What I’ve tried to build a new work-life balance

I tried the following trials on January 2023.

• Fixed working hours from 9 AM to 6 PM to prioritize family tasks
• Don’t respond to business messages during personal time.
• Use 1 hour from 8:00 AM to address family tasks and learning.
• 1 hour and 30 minutes break time
• 3 days per week: drinking

It sounds quite natural and easy, but it was challenging for me. Previously, when I get up early morning, I start working and make a progress in a project that I am involved in. That’s why many colleagues said to me “when do you sleep? You look to work anytime even midnight.” Since I graduated from my university and started working as a full-time employee, I’ve continued this kind of working style.

Additionally, I’ve been working as a software engineer for a web service, and my expectation for myself is that I should always be online in case something critical happens. When I was a “junior-level” engineer, I studied the behavior of excellent infra engineers and tech leads. They had a great sense of responsibility to ensure their service reliability.

As a result of these trials, fixed working hour works very well for me! I usually get up at 7:40 AM and start the laundry, make a coffee and have breakfast. When I get up earlier, I read a book about childcare or software engineering. After 6 PM, I finish working and start cooking, doing house chores, or taking a bath.

I guess it will be tough after my first kid is born, but I succeeded in building a new rhythm.

Plan for February 2033

The structure of milestones is the same as the last month.

I don’t expect myself to grow up rapidly. Just do what I can within my time. I tend to concentrate on working rather than family chores without any policy, so I set Family as the top priority. Software engineering is just a part of my Family’s happiness. That’s because I am impressed by someone’s advice that you should take into account your happiness as your family’s happiness. I expect this way of thinking to allow me to think of work and life seamlessly.

Milestones

Family

• 1 book in my native language, 1 book in English
• 10 times or fewer house chores when only my wife does

I found an English book is beneficial both for knowing better practices and being able to explain parenting in 1on1 meetings or etc.

I found it troublesome to count up every time, so I changed my mind to set another milestone. It is a demerit method to count up a negative point. What I need to avoid is being lazy and doing nothing while there are necessary tasks.

Additionally, I feel that I need to be more proactive to prepare the childbirth like researching goods to welcome a baby. However, I’ve not found a good indicator to measure that.

Software Engineering

• Publish two book review blogs that I’ve read last month.
• Read one book about SRE.

I found that it is not realistic to read a book and write a book review blog, so I compromised the milestone of reading new books related to architecture reviews and SRE.

English

• 30-minute online private English lesson every weekday

This is the same milestone as the last month because it worked well to have an English conversation lesson before business meetings.

Work

• Publish one blog in the Autify company blog
• One question or comment every meeting

These are the same milestone as the last month.