Hi, everyone! Bahiya here.
Two days ago, I ended up working all night because I had a meeting! 💀 While I’m sure many people have had a similar experience, I would like to talk about mine in context of working for a Japanese company remotely. Let’s get into it 🙂
The Demo
Every week, I have a scheduled meeting with my team-members who are in Japan. Because of time-zone differences, they join the meeting really late at night there! Even though it’s difficult for them, I really appreciate that they make time to talk with me every week.
For this week’s meeting, I wanted to have a demo ready so I can show them what I’ve been working on. Unfortunately, I was seeing some bugs and many other issues that made my demo break. Due to the upcoming meeting, I decided that I would work all night to have something interesting to show them.
Staying up Late
After deciding to stay up all night, I told Sakura (<3) about my plan. She was worried about whether or not I would be alright, but I told her that I wanted to get my demo ready for the meeting, and I’ll sleep a lot afterwards. While I was working on my demo, I was talking with Slowpoke like we usually do. I was also happy to be able to help her with studying Java too.
We talked about many things like we usually do while I kept working on my demo. I’m glad she called me, or I definitely would have fallen asleep 😂
I kept working through the night trying to fix bugs and figuring out what to do. Unfortunately, I was really tired so my brain was only working at 50% it’s normal level 😿 I had to read some papers as well, and it was difficult trying to stay focused and not fall asleep while reading loooooong documents.
The Meeting
Even though I stayed up all night working, I wasn’t able to get the demo finished like I had planned. I managed to fix many bugs and issues, but the demo still wasn’t running as expected. I decided that I would tell my company honestly about my progress, apologize, and work hard to get something ready as soon s possible.
Before the meeting started, Sakura reminded me to write down in Japanese whatever I wanted to talk about. Sometimes it’s hard to make a sentence when you’re under pressure 😅 She wished me good luck, and I went ahead and joined the meeting.
The meeting went well, and my company said it’s okay if I need more time to get my demo done.
The End
As soon as the meeting was over, I felt so relieved. In fact, I was so relieved that I instantly crashed on my bed and fell asleep!
However, I don’t think I want to work all night ever again. It’s really stressful, and I can’t work at my full energy anyways. I’d rather work a few hours on weekends or holidays instead.
