Up to three months ago, I was seriously planning to take a long summer holiday and I had difficulty choosing the destination. Who could have predicted that three months later, the situation changed so dramatically that walking for an hour in my neighborhood makes me already very happy and feel like a nice vacation! This reminds me of a well-said quote by Japanese scholar “Kakuzo Okakura”: The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings .”
Speaking more practically, I have been working for ALTEN for more than two years now. Currently, I am working as a consultant at a global provider of pensions, insurance and asset management in the Hague. I am part of the ALTEN team. This team has 2 responsibilities. On ingestion team is responsible for replicating data from all different sources to a pool of data (aka data lake). The other team, namely publication team , is responsible to publish the replicated data in the data lake towards business teams that demand it. I am part of the ingestion team
Unsurprisingly, these days I am working from my home office. It may not be as equipped as my external office but still shares the same level of professionality with certainly more comfortable dress code ! The main communication media between me and the rest of the team is Microsoft Teams these days and, so far, it has turned out to be efficient.
As I said earlier, I take a walk for almost an hour every day and that helps me clear my mind and prepares me for the next day. I also eat healthier as no canteen or fast food is within my reach anymore, and I need to cook accordingly.
Overall, I have noticed no significant negative impact in respect to the work progress and the new way of working. So, I think working from home is not that bad. I can work more flexible; I can walk outside anytime I feel I need to clear my mind and I am strategically closer to my fridge. The only things I miss are my awesome colleagues and, of course, the football table facility at the client’s office that we used to play every day.
Anyway, I hope you will all stay healthy and positive during this new normality!