Welcome back to the Rabbit Hole Podcast where we are practicing our social distancing. We have been working from home for about a week now since COVID-19 started spreading. In this episode, we check in from our homes with the latest facts we’ve learned, how we’ve been adjusting to remote work, and what our best tips and tricks are for keeping a level head while working remotely. To hear all about how we are experiencing the COVID-19 and give us your feedback!
Key Points From This Episode:
Transcript for Bonus: COVID-19 hideout in the rabbit hole
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:01.9] MN: Hey everyone, this is Michael Nunez speaking and our cohost today.
[0:00:06.0] DA: Dave Anderson. How are you doing, Mike?
[0:00:08.7] MN: I’m doing all right man. If you haven’t noticed, the past couple of episodes, we’ve been recording a lot from the boogie down and Dave has been in Jersey. He hasn’t been recording with me and we’re practicing social distancing due to COVID-19.
[0:00:25.8] DA: As much as I would love to be in the boogie down Bronx, I’m in dirty Jers.
[0:00:31.5] MN: Oh yeah, we’ve been at war with the hidden invisible enemy called Corona virus, COVID-19 as people have been calling it and we’ve been working from home for about a week now, I think, and we’ve been recording longer than that since COVID started slowly accelerating and multiplying, which has been pretty crazy.
[0:00:52.1] DA: Yeah, got to keep baby Gio.
[0:00:54.9] MN: Yeah, baby Gio safe, the grandparents, that’s important.
[0:00:58.2] DA: I mean, it’s kind of a really lucky thing that we as software engineers in the tech industry have, this kind of flexibility that we can work from home and you know, we have the technology and tools to collaborate.
[0:01:15.5] MN: I haven’t noticed much like change in terms of like getting the work done but what definitely has caused some slowness for me has been people love to share their own personal Zoom background, which is hilarious. People have all sorts of different backgrounds that show off their pets.
[0:01:36.7] DA: I’ve tabbed away from Zoom right now because like I can’t look.
[0:01:40.8] MN: Yeah, I have my son Gio, he pops up like in every meeting, you’ll see his face and everyone’s like, “Who is that?” And I’m like, “That’s my son, this is why I’m staying home,” and people kind of understand the reason why I’ve been very social distancing.
[0:01:56.5] DA: Sounds like he’s like kind of a Where is Waldo kind of thing in the video chat, just popping up randomly.
[0:02:03.3] MN: He always pops up on the side of the couch, what’s going on there? I’ve noticed the first couple of days where I’ve been working from home, he’s like, “You’re still here, you have not left yet, what’s going on?”
[0:02:17.0] DA: I feel like that with my dog. My dog just bites me instead.
[0:02:21.5] MN: Yeah, exactly. No, Gio just looks very confused, that’s all it is. To those listening, we hope that you stay safe. You know, there are some tools to stay safe including social distancing, we seen many different variations of washing your hands. Google has the top five things you can do where it’s hands, wash them often. Elbow, cough into them. Face, don’t touch it. Feet, stay more than three feet apart, and feel sick? Stay home.
[0:02:53.5] DA: Yeah.
[0:02:54.5] MN: That’s the important one from Google.
[0:02:56.8] DA: Is there an acronym?
[0:02:59.5] MN: No, they didn’t do a good job, it’s –
[0:03:04.7] DA: I feel like the Wu-Tang did a better job with their.
[0:03:07.2] MN: Yeah, there’s a Wu-Tang one where it’s protect your neck against the corona virus. So if you took the word Wu-tang, that’s the Wu-tang clan. The W, wash hands. U, use masks properly. T, touch nothing. A, avoid large crowds. N, never touch your face with unclean hands and G, go to the hospital if you have severe symptoms, protect your neck.
[0:03:31.9] DA: Pretty straight forward.
[0:03:33.8] MN: Exactly, you’ve got to love the Wu-Tang, that’s great.
[0:03:37.7] DA: I mean, 8t’s pretty intense right now in – I mean yeah. Like having these kind of like light things definitely helps. I saw a video that a friend of the show, Shawn, posted on our Slack for Alan Brown about hand washing technique and learn that bar soap is maybe better than liquid soap. That kind of blew my mind.
[0:04:02.8] MN: That’s crazy, I had no idea.
[0:04:05.1] DA: Yeah, never thought about how much in my life I’m touching my face until now.
[0:04:13.2] MN: If you would die from touching your face from this virus, I’d be dead a long time ago, so gone. Not cool.
[0:04:21.4] DA: Unclear if the beard protects.
[0:04:22.9] MN: Yeah, I think last but not least, I mean, I’m definitely not one to working remotely like on a cadence like for the consecutively has not been a thing that I’ve done before. A friend of the show, Travis Hat, put out a blog on adjusting to remote software development.
We’ll definitely leave that in the show notes as well. Shout out to Travis for putting this together, he’s been working remote for a while so he’s definitely used to this. But it was great to like read tips and tricks on things to do to work remotely. I’d love to hear more tips and thoughts and how is everyone doing in this situation. Feel free to hit us up.
[0:05:04.0] DA: Yeah, and I saw some different folks like talking on Twitter about how they’ve worked remotely and we’ve talked with people who work remotely a lot. Like we talked on episode number 83, Remote Only.
[0:05:18.0] MN: Yeah.
[0:05:18.7] DA: Episode number 127, Remote Pair Programming with Ben Orenstein.
[0:05:24.3] MN: Right on the top two, yeah. Reading them tat, fresh.
[0:05:29.8] DA: Super helpful tool to collaborate. But yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, these are very different situation than most people have when they’re working remotely, definitely curious like what kind of challenges you guys are facing and how you’re getting over them?
[0:05:43.1] MN: Yeah, just send us a tweet over at @radiofreerabbit and we’ll check it out and see if we can share any tips to the communities so that we could get better at this.
Catch you later.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:05:54.7] MN: Follow us now on Twitter @radiofreerabbit so we can keep the conversation going. Like what you hear? Give us a five star review and help developers like you find their way into The Rabbit Hole and never miss an episode, subscribe now however you listen to your favorite podcast. On behalf of our producer extraordinaire, William Jeffries and my amazing co-host, Dave Anderson and me, your host, Michael Nunez, thanks for listening to The Rabbit Hole.
[END]
Links and Resources:
Episode 127: Remote Pair Programming
