The Developer's Pandemic Survival Guide

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way everyone works - developers included. Even those who are fortunate enough to have kept their jobs find many additional complications to deal with. Folks who were used to going into the office every day suddenly find themselves working from home, which isn’t always as easy as it sounds. We are all also dealing with additional stress that can lead to burnout.

In this special event, we’ll have two sessions to help developers cope with the pandemic. Dawn Parzych will offer tips and strategies for coping with working from home and Peter McKee will talk about dealing with stress and burnout.

How to Deal with Stress and Burnout in Tough Times

Our world has been turned upside down. We’ve seen a global pandemic, racial divide, wildfires, and a heated Presidential Election. Not to mention Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quitting the royal family. What are we to do? It’s hard to deal with normal work burnout and stress let alone the compounding effect of all the crazy world events going on. In this talk, we’ll take a look at caring for yourself and loved ones, setting boundaries, and developing a routine. We’ll also explore various techniques and tactics to stay mentaly and emotionally healthy. If we are more cognizant of our mental and emotional health and of those around us, we are then able to reverse and even prevent burnout and stress in our lives.

When Temporary Remote-work Becomes Permanent

Many employees were thrust into working remotely with little to no warning. Everybody was scrambling to figure out how to temporarily set up for employees being remote. This temporary shift seems to be moving towards a more long-term situation.

This remote work is not typical of what remote work looked like in the past. There are new challenges that we need to address and plan for. This talk will answer the following questions:

  • Are you experiencing Zoom fatigue?
  • How do you balance work and caring for yourself and others?
  • How do you interview and on-board new team members remotely?

We’ll explore the ways to make ourselves and our teams successful in a distributed and remote world.

Peter McKee is the Head of Developer Relations and Advocacy at Docker and maintainer of the open source project Ronin.js. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA but currently residing in Austin, TX, Peter built his career developing full-stack applications for over 25 years. He has held multiple roles but enjoys teaching and mentoring the most. When he’s not slapping away at the keyboard, you can find him practicing Spanish and hanging out with his wife and seven children.

Dawn is a Developer Advocate at LaunchDarkly where she uses her storytelling prowess to write and speak about the intersection of technology and psychology. She enjoys helping people be more successful at work and at life. She makes technical information accessible avoiding buzzwords and jargon whenever possible. Dawn has spoken at DevOpsDays, Velocity, Interop, and Monitorama. Her articles have appeared in numerous technical publications. In her freetime she serves as an organizer for Write/Speak/Code, the Seattle DevOps Meetup, and is on the organizing committee for DevOpsDays Seattle.

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