Diary of a Bay Area tech worker

Monday, 8am
Drive to work, cross the bridge. $7 toll. Up a dollar since last year.

Monday, 8:35am
Made it across the bridge. Traffic sucks, pay another $9.35 toll to use the Carpool—err, Express—lanes so you’re not late for your 10am meeting.

Monday, 10:03am
Parking spots are all gone at work, so park on the street and run up to your meeting.

Monday, 1:00pm
Decide to go out for lunch. When you get back to your car, you find it’s been broken into. Call police. No answer, but it says to fill out a report on their website. You will never hear of it again.

Monday, 3:36pm
Call your insurance while simultaneously on a Zoom sync up meeting (on mute the entire time). You get put on hold.

Monday, 4:22pm
Finally get connected with an agent. You can’t understand their accent. They can’t understand yours. The hold music will be stuck in your head for the rest of day.

Monday, 5:38pm
Drive to a body shop with your window smashed out. Traffic still sucks. After dropping off your car to get the glass fixed, take an Uber home.

Monday, 8:01pm
Eat instant ramen for dinner.

Monday, 9:00pm
Conference call with APAC. Double check your camera is turned off twice since you’re in bed wearing only your boxers.

Tuesday, 7:15am
Take BART to work today since your car is in the shop. Walk to the station. Stepped in poop. Try to smear it off your shoes onto the edge of the curb.

Tuesday, 7:47am
Your train arrives, late. Luckily you get a seat. As you sit down, you realize there’s a needle wedged between the seats. You quickly sit up and start feeling around your butt to make sure you weren’t pricked. Pick a new seat next to a weird smelling dude with a gnarly beard. Can’t tell if he’s homeless or just a hipster. Realize he’s wearing Beats headphones, so you lean towards the latter. But what if they’re stolen? 🤔 You finally arrive at the station near your office.

Tuesday, 8:55am
Walking to your work, you stop by a cafe for a cup of coffee. Work has free coffee, but somehow you’re tired of it and crave some variety. There’s 12 customers inside, but only 1 worker. An iPad takes your order. $6.50. You see your name appear on a screen over the bar. Estimated wait time: 18 minutes.

Tuesday, 9:20am
Got your coffee (oatmilk honey latte) and realize you don’t like the taste of oatmilk.

Tuesday, 9:49am
Wait until the break room is empty, then dump your oatmilk honey latte down the sink. Grab a new cup of coffee from the decanter.

Tuesday, 10:15am
Spend until lunch doing code reviews.

Tuesday, 2:30pm
Forgot about lunch. Go down to company cafeteria. They stopped serving lunch now, so you grab a pre made packaged sandwich from the refrigerated case. It’s vegan, gluten free, and allergen free. You taste it and decide it’s made of cardboard. No wait—Manila envelopes.

Tuesday, 5:11pm
Open up Uber to get a ride to the body shop to pick up your car. Decide on Lyft because it’s $3.50 cheaper. The driver is chatty. Asks if you’re a programmer since he picked you up from a tech company. You say yes. He tells you about this app idea and asks if you want to make it with him. It’s like Uber or Airbnb but for umbrellas and other weather related apparel.

Tuesday, 5:48pm
They want $650 for the window replacement. You curse at the miscreant(s) who broke your window and spend 20 minutes scrolling through real estate in Montana in the parking lot when you get back to your car. Are there other brown people in Montana? You drive home.

Tuesday, 6:30pm
Your work friends (are we friends?) arrange to meet for drinks on WhatsApp. You have nothing better to do, so you decide to join. You take another Uber. You wonder how much money have you spent on Uber/Lyft this year.

Tuesday, 6:48pm
Half way through the ride, your boss texts that they found a security vulnerability in your app and needs you to fix it by end of day. You open the Uber app and tell it to change the destination back home.

Tuesday, 7:11pm
You hunch over your laptop sitting on the couch and drink beer while your friends post pics from the bar in your WhatsApp group.

Tuesday, 10:29pm
Still working. Mom calls from back home with exciting news. She found a girl you can get married with.

Wednesday, 1:03am
All the issues are patched and you email your boss.

Wednesday, 9:00am
You wake up and scroll through your work email. For your efforts last night, your boss sends you a $20 gift card and cc’s your second level. You hope he remembers that when performance evaluations roll around.

Wednesday, 9:07am
Go to the bathroom. Open up Blind while on the toilet to post prestige and TC posts, and to make fun of Amazon. Mostly make fun of Amazon. You wonder if Amazon workers have good bowel movements because of the free bananas. Someone likes your post and you feel validated for a moment or two. The feeling passes.

#tech #swe #life

Part 2: https://us.teamblind.com/s/B8LAMapG

Diary of a Bay Area tech worker, Part 2 Blind