Monte Carlo Work-Life Balance & Wellbeing

Tell us about your usual day working remotely. 

Working for a company in a different time zone, I have more free time in the morning than the evening. Every day starts with a coffee and then sitting down to catch up on Slack and emails. I then work until lunch — mostly on “keeping the lights on” work and things that do not require collaboration. After lunch, most people start to get online due to the time zone difference and I have a few meetings, then work until the evening is mostly on shared or joint projects with other people.

What habits or routines help you to thrive as a data engineer in a remote environment? 

I have a very strict morning routine that I do not break. My morning ritual of coffee, pastry and a book for 30 minutes helps me start my day very refreshed and energetic. Sometimes in the middle of the day, I take a break to go to the gym since I can work late into the evening many times. I highly recommend setting aside focus time and making sure meetings are squeezed together as much as possible to allow you to actually get things done without too much context switching. In order to transition into my evening, I just close the laptop!
 

How do you balance “heads-down” concentration with collaborative work while working remotely?

I think the main thing to be done in order to mix concentration time and collaboration when working remotely is making sure you have time slots for meetings and focus time. Having the planning and action items for each member of the team as clear and laid out as possible allows each person to concentrate on their part of the system. Regular syncs help keep everyone together.

I use mostly Slack and Zoom to communicate paired with Notion and Linear to organize the tasks and action items across the team. Even with good planning, the main obstacle can be when you need another team member and they are not available.