User blog:Trellar/A Day in the Life of Wikia Staff: Engineering

Did you know that we have two major engineering teams here at Wikia? It’s true! We have one here in San Francisco and one in Poznan, Poland. In this installment of "A day in the life...", we are going to follow a day in the life of our engineering team in Poznan. There's about an 9 hour difference between the two offices, so at midnight on the West Coast when everyone is asleep, it's already 9am in Poland and the engineering staff there beings to shuffle in. As a result, we have more or less 24-hour coverage between the two offices.

Who are they?
The engineers help keep our site running by developing the latest features and improving upon old ones. They are constantly working to keep Wikia running and track down any bugs that may pop up.

Hour by hour
9am - A few folks make their way in to the office early for English lessons. The lessons assist employees in overcoming language and cultural barriers, as well as improve communication with the San Francisco office. The lessons cover everything from technical jargon to problem solving.

10am  - By 10am more staff start to arrive, and continue to shuffle in until around 11am. Once at work, most engineers start their day off with a typical daily check-in, which consists with reviewing the back-log, or list of projects that are in queue to be completed. In addition, team members must also coordinate with the rest of their team, both in Poznan and in San Francisco, to see what the agenda is for the day. Meanwhile, members of the Poznan Operations Team work hard on keeping the site up and running. Some of their tasks include:
 * Keeping the machines and hardware running
 * Monitoring the speed at which the site runs.
 * CPU memory charts (check out Wade's blog post for a refresher).IMG_0043.jpg

12pm - Every Monday there is an office-wide Engineering meeting. Each week a staff member can sign up give a talk. This could be on some sort of technology that is in development or simply a new idea that's rattling around. Sometimes, a staff member will return from a conference or event and give their report. Everyone is always encouraged to book a slot if they’ve gone to something to share!

3pm - Lunch time! Lunch at the Poznan office is more like an early dinner, as it usually takes place around 3pm or later. As of late, the team has become addicted to going out and getting pork chops (a traditional polish dish) from a small shop downtown by the office. After someone returns with the take out, everyone sits down and dines together in the kitchen together. Some staff members gather around the foosball table and face off against one-another. A few have even made it into major tournaments in the city.



4:30pm  - Teams begin to meet for their daily stand up or check in with the US office. Both offices connect via webcam to cover what they've accomplished thus far and what they plan to do for the rest of the day. This isn't the easiest of task, but is extremely important for collaborating on projects and making sure priorities are clear.

That about wraps it up! Have any questions for Wikia Staff or the engineering team? What team would you like to see covered next? Feel free to leave a comment below!