For a while now I’ve not been on X/Twitter (as in, I deleted my account some years ago). Let’s face it, Musk is a nazi and X is an absolute cesspool right now. I initially moved to Mastodon but have now jumped fully onto Bluesky.
I haven’t actively used Facebook for some time – it stopped being useful many years ago and, these days, is full of meaningless ads and really inappropriate video shorts and page recommendations (and when I say inappropriate, I mean sexually so). In fact, it was similar on Instagram, which I also moved away from, along with Threads.
And, Google, well, I moved far away from them some time ago (in terms of using Gmail, maps, etc.) although came back to their search engine.
Now, we have the situation where both Google and Meta are cosying up to Trump, dropping company DEI policies and getting rid of fact checking. This doesn’t sit comfortably with me at all. Yet, indirectly, I’m paying both of these companies, who make their money from using my data. It has to stop. Or, at least, be reduced.
Back in 2022 I wrote “A day in the life of a VIP Support Lead“. 3 years later, still doing that role but now looking a little different, I thought it was time to repeat the same, but without looking at what I wrote before (especially as that was based on my original “Day in the life of a Support Engineer” post).
What most days look like
I get up at 6:30am. It was the time I always used to get up in my previous office job, plus it’s when my wife needs to get up too.
After feeding the cat, I make myself a strong cup of tea (loose Yorkshire tea, a small drop of lactose-free milk) and a bowl of cereal (Weetabix or Bran Flakes with diced banana – gotta keep those fibre levels ups). Breakfast, I believe, isn’t something that should be skipped – hunger will only negatively affect your performance.
I watch about 30 minutes of TV whilst I have my breakfast and generally wake up. Then I open up my personal laptop and catch up with the world (inc. technology news – it’s important to know what’s going on in your industry as a whole, in my opinion) as well as some initial work. Basically, as much work as I can do without needing to use my work proxy access.
I clean my teeth, put the coffee machine on and grab my first cup of coffee (PARKLIFE!) before I get on my bike (or get in the car, when the weather is particularly inclement), and cycle through the local park to the leisure centre, where I’ll swim half a mile and then hit the gym for some extra leg exercise, before returning home again.
On Tuesday I don’t go until 10:40am because I go to play 1.5 hours of badminton. My other non-work break is every other Monday when I have an online singing lesson in the afternoon (until recently, I had an in-person drumming lesson instead). Both of these are the kind of things that I started during my sabbatical last year (Automattic give all employees a 3 month paid sabbatical every 5 years) but, realised I didn’t need one to do these, so have continued.
I head upstairs to my small box bedroom/home office and continue working.
I break for lunch around noon. I take a good hour each day and, apart from eating lunch, I use it to catch up on some TV shows that my wife isn’t interested in watching. Every day, summer or winter, I have a salad along with egg and a meat substitute product (vegetarian sausages, nuggets, etc). I’ve reduced my meat intact down in recent years and this is one the ways I’ve done this.
Just as I said breakfast is important, I think taking a break for lunch – rather than eating at your desk – is just as important. It breaks the day in half, helping you reset and is great for relaxation and mental health in general.
I continue until around 5pm. I’ve got out of the habit of dipping into any work conversations in the evening, by ensuring I leave my work laptop in my office and not having Slack access on my personal laptop.
And that’s how most of my days go. Now, let’s dip into what goes on during those work hours.
What I do as a Support Lead
I have, as I write this, a small support team – just 4 people. It was 8 in the past, but is due to grow again the coming months. They are a combination of Support Engineers and CS Engineers (the latter being more like developers). They spend their day, as the name suggests, providing support for our enterprise level customers (more specifically, usually their development teams). My team are based in EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa), which is the are I cover, in terms of timezone.
At least 2 hours a day is calls (of the video variety – I am working for a remote company after all)! I try and block out calls on Mondays and Fridays and, as a result, the other days are often at least 3 calls. Because my team are on-call in the morning, and my fellow Support leads are mainly in the US timezone, most of those calls are in the afternoon. Basically, I have the morning for anything else.
That everything else is so variable, depending on what’s needed from me at the time, but things that come up more regular are…
Preparing for a 1:1 with a member of my team. This will include reviewing recent performance, as well as working on their development plan. Each time it takes me a number of hours, and I may have multiple 1:1s that day.
Writing HR feedback. One of the things I do with my team, that’s not a requirement or, indeed, done by other leads, is to share my feedback in advance. That way they can comment on anything – something that could be missing, or just plain wrong. It also “keeps me on my toes” – feedback should never be a surprise, so being so transparent in advance means that I’ll quickly learn if I’ve forgotten to do this. HR feedback for a member of my team, if I sat down and did it one go, would take me probably half a day. Instead, I spread it out over around 2 weeks – a little each day, which I can deeply concentrate on. This gives the other person more time to read and digest any content too, before it gets submitted.
Monitoring the customer queues – whether these are the main, incoming queues or backlogs, I’ll keep an eye on any issues, or just where a friendly nudge may be needed.
All of this is combined with providing advice, working on specific projects and whatever else may be occurring.
Travelling
As a lead I get to travel more than I did before.
There are at least 3 times I get to travel each year – for a team meetup, a Support Leads meetup, and the company Divisional Meetup. The picture at the very top of this post was a lot (but not all) of the Support teams, who were at the meetup in Tulum, Mexico, this year.
In 2025, we’ll be having the first all-company Grand Meetup (replacing the Divisional Meetup) since 2017.
There are also additional opportunities too, inc. WordCamps and assorted VIP-related events.
You can get an idea of where I get to go using the map below, which represents all of my travel since I joined the company in 2017…
When I was at school, I was the fat kid who wasn’t particularly good at most sports. However, when I was it was usually overlooked – I was always quick at short distances and loved hurdling, not that anybody would know any of this.
I’d learnt to swim at an early age due to my first primary school having its own pool. An outdoor pool. An unheated outdoor pool. You learnt to move quite quickly in that.
But, by the time I was going at secondary school, they’d given up on me. I was able to do a 50m length and beyond that I didn’t feel I was capable so I remained in the same swimming group. I watched enviously as the best swimmers jumped in to retrieve blocks in their pyjamas and stay behind to attempt to swim a mile, in an empty, calm pool.
I never liked the idea of swimming in pyjamas but swimming a mile (1600 metres, or 32 lengths) seemed such an achievement.
