Coming back to work after a long break rarely feels clean. Calendars restart instantly, but people don’t. And when you return to a system that kept moving without you, the first thing you notice is not the work itself, but whether you still feel oriented inside it.
A planned return that still felt unstable
My return had been planned in advance. I talked to my team lead in December before he went on sabbatical, and we agreed on how I would come back after my exchange. From that side, things were clear.
In parallel, the company had gone through internal system changes over the last year. The result was that my contract extension only arrived this Monday. From December until then, I technically didn’t have one.
That limbo felt strange. Not dramatic, but uncomfortable. Especially because it wasn’t caused by anything I had done. Four weeks before my previous contract ended, while I was still abroad, I had already asked about the extension. My mentor had done his part too. Somewhere in the middle of a very large organisation, things were simply dropped.
This wasn’t a personal failure, just what happens when responsibility diffuses inside a big international corporation.
Trusting people when systems fail
When I went into the office to meet my mentor, we talked it through. I was open about my uncertainty. He was clear in return. The contract would be sorted. I should just start working again.
That was a small leap of trust on my side. Starting without a valid contract is not something I would normally do. But this wasn’t about blind faith in the system. It was about trusting a person when the system wasn’t functioning properly.
In the end, it paid off. They delivered.
Re-entering a team in maintenance mode
Once that was settled, the reintroduction into the team itself was smooth. I’m working twenty hours as a working student, mostly on Mondays and Tuesdays, so returning always has a slightly staggered rhythm.
The first Tuesday back was almost entirely conversations. Talking to the tech lead and the scrum master. Rebuilding context. Catching up on what had happened since August.
The answer was not much. Many core people had left around the same time as I did, including another student developer. With reduced manpower, the project had effectively been in maintenance mode. That wasn’t new, but it became more visible in my absence.
Coming back felt less like jumping onto a fast-moving train and more like carefully restarting an engine that had been kept alive, but not pushed forward.
The second week, I could start doing actual work again.
Corporate friction as a constant
Alongside that, there was the familiar background friction. Company-wide firewall rules. WSL setups breaking. Certificate issues. Weeks lost over the last year to figuring out how development could continue at all.
None of this was new. It has been part of the project for a long time. It’s still frustrating, even if it’s no longer surprising. Large organisations roll out changes, and teams adapt as best they can.
What has changed for me is how personally I take it. I don’t anymore.
I enjoy this project a lot. The team, the atmosphere, the way we work together. But I’ve also made up my mind that I don’t want to build a long-term future inside this company structure. After my master’s, I will very likely have to move to a different project, one that is much more bureaucratic and much less aligned with how I like to work. If the work stays and the bureaucracy increases, that’s my exit point.
Meeting the team in person
Tomorrow I’m travelling to Köln for our sprint meetings: review, retro, planning. Most of the team members are new to me. But the tech lead and the scrum master are people I’ve worked closely with for over a year without ever meeting them in person.
The team has always been remote first. Finally meeting in person feels like closing a loop. Putting a person to a face you already know from video calls changes how collaboration feels, even briefly. It doesn’t fix systemic issues, but it grounds the work socially in a way remote setups rarely do.
Returning is a process, not a switch
Switching back to work after a long break isn’t about immediately performing or proving anything. Especially not part-time. It’s about re-orienting yourself inside a system that may have shifted while you were gone.
That takes a bit of patience. And some realism about what you’re willing to tolerate and for how long.
