Hi, I’m Thiraporn Chuencharoen, technical services manager at Acclaro in Bangkok. My colleagues and I make up the Bangkok engineering team. We provide technical services to Acclaro, including localization engineering, desktop publishing, eLearning, test lead functions, and other support tasks. I lead the engineering team here in Bangkok and coordinate with colleagues around the world, spanning widely different time zones.

A fresh day begins

The first thing I do when I wake up is grab my phone to check on any urgent requests from the U.S. team and look through any messages from my night shift engineer. Then, I get up and start my new day.

Before the pandemic, I used to go for an 8 kilometer run in the morning, which is about 5 miles. But these days, I changed my exercise activity to sweat doing housework instead. Now, I spend about 30 minutes taking care of chores at home. After that, I check the news feeds from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn before jumping into another world checking cryptocurrency news, technical charts and trade publications.

Time to start the work day

I normally start my workday around 9 a.m., and my first task is to allocate jobs to the team. Since Thailand is about 12 hours ahead of the time zone in the Eastern U.S., most of the jobs I have to assign arrive overnight. When I log in, the jobs are already in my mailbox so I go through each one checking the requirements and files to be processed before assigning them to the team.

It’s easier connecting with people on the West Coast, because the time difference is smaller. Some of the California-based project managers are still online when I start working, and they like to talk about complex projects to ensure we have clear instructions for the day’s work. I also have a regular meeting with the engineering lead to give updates on current priorities.

My team normally comes online at 10 a.m., and we have a standup meeting on MS Teams to quickly catch up on what we completed yesterday and what we have to do today.

After the meeting, it’s time for a cup of coffee. Then, I spend the rest of the morning going through emails to answer questions, confirm resources, create schedules and fix issues.

Lunch time with the family 

When we all worked together in the office before the pandemic, my team and I would normally go out to lunch. Now, after almost two years, everyone is still working from home, and I eat lunch with my family. I live with my wife, son and mother-in-law, who is a very good chef specializing in Thai cuisine. I’m so lucky to have delicious Thai food every day at home, and I like to post my yummy lunch pictures on Facebook.

Back to work 

In the afternoon, I start to work on my projects. However, I also spend time on development tasks, planning and managing the team. The amount of time I give to other tasks depends on how busy I am with projects.

I also make sure to connect with my team. I need to support them to answer all of their questions and provide guidance to make sure we do quality work and meet our deadlines. Later in the afternoon, I’m able to talk to my colleagues in Europe. Often, I meet with the multimedia services manager, who lives in Ireland. We discuss eLearning projects and technical challenges to ensure we have enough resources to support our projects. I also coordinate with European project managers to manage rush projects with tight timelines.

The busiest time of the day

Between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. is the busiest time of day for me. The team is finishing their day, so I check in with them before they leave. If there are unfinished projects, I assign them to other team members to work on overnight. I also touch base with a project manager in Europe to provide an update on what’s in the queue for delivery.

Almost finished (but not quite yet)

Once my team wraps up, I stay online for another hour or two to connect with people on the East Coast. I take care of any urgent issues and have regular meetings with the publishing, engineering and test leads.

Family (and me) time 

Around 8 p.m., I have a quick meal with my wife and spend time with my son. We play video games, write journals and check homework before I send him off to bed.

Then, I spend some time looking up new technology related to work, such as new features of apps we use and solutions to issues we have. Sometimes, I also write programming to reduce my team’s manual work.

Finally, I usually end my day reading up on the world of cryptocurrency and enjoying my drink.