It's now been exactly five years since I came home on a Wednesday, and told my wife: "I don't think I'm going back in to my office for a while". The following Tuesday, the company notified me (and everyone else) of the truth of that statement.
I had spent the first 40 years of my professional career, through nine different jobs across three states and both coasts (three coasts if you count Lake Michigan), always in a "white collar" job where I had an assigned desk, with space to set up my computer and other equipment, hang my coat, put up a picture of my wife, have a desk drawer where I could store various necessities.
If anyone needed to find me, I had a phone and I was at my desk, unless I was away at a meeting. And if I needed to find anyone else to discuss things, I knew how to do that, too.
I was totally unprepared for any other way of doing software engineering.
I'd had about 10 years or so of Open Source activities, so I wasn't completely unaware that there were other ways to collaborate on large software projects, but I had no idea how completely unprepared I really was.
I rarely used social media chat programs for informal conversations with co-workers who were 5 feet away.
When I wanted to brainstorm ideas and describe large unfamiliar concepts, I was great at a whiteboard, but horrible at getting my thoughts across in a phone call.
And what was this video conference stuff? How did it work? What was all this unfamiliar software? Skype? Zoom? Google Meet? I knew the names of this stuff, but couldn't find the buttons to click. None of my computers had webcams.
Oh my how much I've learned in five years. Perhaps old dogs can indeed slowly learn some new tricks.
I still struggle mightily to organize and conduct a 25-person technical design review effectively. When I can't "read the room", it's hard for me to tell when I'm moving too slow, or moving too fast, and losing my audience either way. I often spend too much time on small talk when I should move on to the meat of the matter, or jump right into a challenging conversation with someone I've barely met before I've even gotten to know them.
And it's so, so, so hard for me to meet people online. I have colleagues with whom I've collaborated extensively, over hundreds of hours, but whom I've barely met face to face. I couldn't tell you how tall they are, whether they are left- or right-handed, or if they prefer slacks and a dress shirt or blue jeans and a hoodie.
The next generation will grow up completely comfortable with these topics that I only came to late, near the end of my career, and undoubtedly these sorts of things will fade away into the mists of time.
But my goodness what a difference five years has made in my life.
