Ever wonder what it’s like to work at Tandem? In this series, we’re taking a peek into the everyday life of Tandem’s team members.

6:45 a.m.

This morning my alarm goes off at 6:45am because I have to get to physical therapy. My ACL reconstruction surgery was 6 months ago now 🩼🤕 and I nearly have enough strength in my left leg to start running and jumping again 🙌 I get up and take my pup, Dasher 🐕, out for a quick potty break and make it to my 7:30 am appointment. A to-go coffee and a water bottle are a must for early morning PT sessions. My therapist, Miki, and I work on lateral knee stability today. It’s tough and sweaty 💦 but it feels great to start the day with some movement. ☀️🙆🏻‍♀️

8:30 a.m.

Around 8:30 I arrive back home and decide to log in a bit early to check emails and do some professional development. I’ve been working with some complicated queries recently, so I’m doing a refresher on SQL joins. 👩🏻‍💻 Breakfast is on my mind. With my Tandem lunch card, I order from Everybody’s Coffee, a top 5 coffee spot in Uptown; a honey latte and a sausage breakfast sandwich ☕️, a little treat for working so hard at PT. I excitedly await its arrival while working on my SQL keywords.

10 a.m.

By 10am I’ve eaten and am working on some tickets for my current project for MEPCOM. With the help of our QA team, I’ve been on a bug squashing mission lately 🚫🐛. So I’m hoping to knock out a quick one today while I await some approvals ✅ for PRs I opened earlier in the week.

Noon

Today is a Tandem Thursday so we have a Tandem Shares meeting at 1pm. That means no company sync at noon and instead we do a virtual sync via Slack 🧵 I write out today’s tasks and take Dasher to the dog park because I have a couple video calls after work today so we won’t have time for a longer walk at 5.

For lunch today, I’m having grits with eggs, cheese, avocado, and chicken sausage 🍳🥑 Yum!

1 p.m.

Normally, we’d have a Thursday Shares presentation, but today we’re showing a recording of the CODiE Award live demo, which I was a part of, so I will not be attending. I’m happy everyone is getting a chance to see the CODiE Award team’s hard work, but I will not be watching myself nervously give a presentation, thank you. 🙅🏻‍♀️ Instead it’s back to bugs 🐛

3 p.m.

Bug squashing is a bit of a chaotic time for me as I’m checking off small bugs quickly while larger PRs are on the back burner waiting for approval or feedback. I embrace the chaos. This is where my brain thrives 🧠 and I’m able to be extremely productive in heads down mode 🙇🏻‍♀️💻. Truth be told, it’s easy for me to get sucked into deep focus work. Luckily, a few meetings were canceled this afternoon so I was able to complete more than I expected ✅ But I need to take a quick look back at Slack to answer any messages. Slack is one of those double edged swords ⚔️ It’s a great tool for remote work but can be extremely distracting when completing client work.

4:45 pm

Google Alexa reminds me at 4:45pm to start wrapping up work because I have therapy at 5pm on Thursdays. I use Alexa to remind me of a lot of things throughout the day, including water reminders every two hours 😅. Working from home means balancing taking care of myself and the dog, keeping my work environment/home clean, getting my client work done and answering Slack messages, all the while not getting too sucked into any one task. The Alexa reminders bring me back to reality and help to keep me on track (also hydrated 💧) So around 4:45 I start working on my “This is where you left off yesterday…” list 📋 for future me 🔮 Thanks present me!

After Work

After therapy, I have a class. I’m teaching Dasher to use buttons to communicate basic concepts with us like “outside” or “play” 🎾🥏 I’m learning how to do that from a zoologist over Zoom. Usually, I heat up dinner and eat while I observe class. Tonight we’re talking about how to read your learner’s emotions based on their body language 😿😻

Currently, I live with my sister. When she comes home from work, we usually do some combination of dinner, watching some TV, going to the gym, watching more TV (right now we’re watching the Netflix Avatar, The Last Airbender remake), and having tea with whatever sweet treat we have on hand 🫖🍪 I love this little ritual and having time to decompress together from our work days. She tells me stories about her (frequently unhinged) patients and I usually update her on what Dasher did that day. Then it’s time for reading and bed 📖🥱

This was a pretty packed day! Not all days are like this, but one or two a week are pretty busy. Thanks for reading 🙏