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.
Morning
It’s 8 a.m. Admittedly, this is a little earlier than I’ll usually be out of bed these days. I prefer starting work a bit later in the morning and therefore, staying at it later into the evening. Our current core hour policy at Tandem allows me some flexibility here. My start time is normally either 9:30 or 10 a.m., depending on the day of the week.
Today is a pretty atypical Monday for me, since I am usually working remotely in Eastern time. However, I have been visiting Chicago for the past few days through the weekend and needed the flexibility to work from our downtown office before heading home later tonight! Fortunately, Tandem’s downtown office is just up the river from Union Station, which allows me to get in and out of the city quite efficiently.
9 a.m.
I finish showering and getting the last of my items packed away in my hotel room. I’ll start out on the desk here and catch up on some emails and Slack threads that I missed while I was on PTO Thursday and Friday.
9:45 a.m.
I’m currently billing my consulting hours as a member of our client’s Marketing Engineering team. All members of this team attend a daily stand up meeting which is about to kick off.
10 a.m.
The meeting has concluded so it’s time to check out of the hotel and take a short walk over to the Lyric Opera Building, which houses the Tandem office.
10:30 a.m.
I’ve arrived at my “hotdesk” just in time for the Leads Roundtable meeting; this is a recurring internal meeting for several Tandem employees every Monday! Generally, we discuss project progress or any potential threats in the foreseeable future.
11 a.m.
I’ve finally found some uninterrupted time this morning for heads down work on code. Today I’m fixing some failing Capybara feature tests which cropped up after some requested template changes!
Noon
Lightning round! Often referred to as “zaps,” it’s Tandem’s short round-robin stand up meeting where everyone shares what they’re working on today. If you need any immediate help with something, this is also a good time to mention that. Also generally, it’s just nice to check in with fellow employees on the Tandem side of things. While contracted full-time on client projects, this is the one of the only parts of the day I’ll have the opportunity to interact with certain colleagues.
Today I’ll be working through lunch since I had a meeting-heavy morning and had to spend time checking out of my hotel room. I was able to grab some overnight oats earlier at the coffee shop downstairs after the Leads Roundtable meeting, so I should be fine until around 5 p.m. when I’ll have dinner much earlier than usual, due to travel plans.
1 p.m.
It’s time for a sprint retro meeting with my client team. I don’t know if I’ll be able to contribute a whole lot since I was out of office for a couple of days at the end of last week, but we’ll find out!
Some comments about working with Optimizely feature flagging were brought up by a teammate during the meeting so I was able to offer some advice on this.
3 p.m.
Heading up to the office building’s rooftop terrace since it’s only a mild 74 ℉ in August! Looks like I’ll be meeting-free for the remainder of the day. Going to continue fixing up that test suite and then see if I can get started on another task which was assigned to me at the stand-up meeting earlier!
4 p.m.
I’ve retreated back indoors for some air conditioning. It suddenly got much hotter, even in the shade.
5 p.m.
Time to walk over to Union Station – I’ll be taking the train into southwest Michigan. The walk is less than a mile from here. Tandem’s office is in a very convenient location for those of us living in surrounding areas to get to every once in a while!
After Work
Now I’m grabbing a quick dinner in the station, leaving enough time before the train departs.
I boarded the sold-out train and was able to successfully connect to Amtrak’s WiFi. I’ll continue to get some more work done for the next hour and half or so for a productive journey home. A normal day for me consists of “commuting” upstairs to my home office, so this was not a typical day at all!
Do you want to work with Steve and the rest of the Tandem team? Check out our Careers page to apply for our open positions!
