Harry Edwards-Taylor

Curious to know what a day in the life of a Network Engineering Graduate is like? Here’s a typical day working from home during COVID-19…

8.00 AM

Wake up after slapping my snooze button as much as I can muster, head to the shower to get ready for the day.

8.30 AM

Put together a pretty simple breakfast consisting mainly of coffee and whatever fruit and bread is lying around the house coupled with peanut butter.

9.00 AM

Primed and ready to go, possibly on my second coffee at this point. Start the day by checking through my emails, see if there is anything that immediately needs actioning/clarification, send out emails accordingly. We are currently in the ‘innovation and planning’ sprint which is a period of time where we plan for the next PI (3 months of work), look at hosting knowledge shares and completing tech-debt work (work outside of our typical delivery).

9.35 AM

Daily stand up meeting with my delivery team. We update with current progress/blockers in our environment or anything else top of mind, sometimes consists of just a chin-wag with my team, there’s always plenty to talk about!

10.00 AM

I chair and facilitate a meeting with the rest of my chapter every 2 weeks, where we discuss work done by the separate delivery teams within the chapter. This is called a technology community of practice (TCOP). This is super important for us so we can understand changes to our environment(s) baseline, discuss new defects in our environment/production environment, or raise issues with the rest of the larger chapter. Today we run through a brief update of the delivery teams’ progress and what they are working on, followed by a knowledge share from a solution lead outside of our chapter regarding a future upgrade of the aggregation aspect of our network.

11.00 AM

I have some time now to work on my tech debt work, which is with a ‘virtual team’ outside of my delivery team. I am currently working with 2 other engineers to do a deep dive on all API calls made by components of the NAL to other components for our FTTC program. There is no better way to learn how the network operates than by following all of the calls a component makes! The ICDs we produced will be used by many other parties at nbn to learn how these components send information through our network.

11.30 AM

Meeting with the other graduates to discuss updates pertaining to us by our wonderful graduate leaders.

12.00 PM

Quick walk down to the local coffee shop for lunch and an oat latte. Not ordering full cream milk is key to maintaining your elite Melbournian status. Hang out with the pups is also imperative.

12.45 PM

Continue work on the ICD, this also involves a lot of detective work into our network using a big-data-analyser to follow these RESTful API calls.

1.30 PM

A knowledge share session to learn of emerging technologies that could improve the reliability of the network. These technologies have the potential to further improve the experience of customers.

2.30 PM

Our chapter showcase where we discuss all the work our whole chapter has done (4 delivery teams) over the last 3 months of work. I am presenting for 15 minutes or so about a portion of work I was performing. The work I was involved with over the last 3 months was primarily with a new piece of technology, which involved preparing our test environment, re-testing of defects raised, as well as developing simple sanity tests for this piece of hardware. My presentation went smoothly which is a good sign.

4.00 PM

Continue working on my part of the ICD in conjunction with my tech debt team until I sign off.

5.00 PM

Hit the gym and sling some steel.

7.00 PM

Make dinner with my partner, settle down and watch a movie or play some games and chill out until bedtime.

10.00 PM

Hit the hay, another big day of ICD work tomorrow, but less meetings!