A Day in the Life...

Can you tell us a bit about your team and the kind of work you do?

I work on the Client Services team with the other Project Team Leads, reporting directly to the Director of Client Services. Our work varies daily: we could be conducting an in-depth strategic analysis one day and an exhaustive quality assurance (QA) review session the next.

At a fundamental level, we are responsible for ensuring proper communication with our clients and design partners, managing internal and external project schedules, adhering to our project budgets, providing both strategic and tactical guidance to our clients, and delivering the premium level of quality that our clients expect.

What are the most common tools that you use to do your job?

To be successful in my job, I use Trello, Smartsheet, Request Tracker (for ticketing), Slack, Rocket.Chat, Gmail, as well as my telephone.

What is an average day-in-the-life like for you?

I begin most days by writing a to-do list. This is followed by an unquantified amount of coffee and topical reading to be in the know. We then have our daily RubensteinTech Stand-Up meeting, a companywide standing check-in session. Next, I respond to a mountain of email and initiate project reviews.

Lunch finds a way to stay on my schedule most days, especially since we eat as a team, which provides valuable face-time and conversation with our engineers. The remainder of the day includes meetings, client calls, more emails, a much-needed snack, and whatever few items remain on my to-do list.

A highlight to any routine day is helping clients solve particularly gnarly challenges. Since our team is based in New York City–in fact, I sit no more than 20 feet from most of them–we’re able to quickly put our heads together and figure out a solution when issues arise.

A recent challenge we solved for a client was how to ensure that PDFs attached to a page contributed to the overall SEO ranking for the parent page. We started with an obvious idea: could we migrate the PDF content onto the webpage? We ended up dropping that idea due to text styling and general layout concerns. From there, we wondered whether or not the PDFs themselves were indexed by Google. Turns out, the answer is yes! The PDFs attached to a page are indexed by Google as separate entities (unique URL, meta description, etc.). We then realized that if PDFs are treated as separate pages then that means that common SEO rules around well formed content, backlinking, non-content duplication, etc., still applied.

As a result, we were able to guide our client to a solution that required just the RubyLaw CMS and a minor tweak to the client’s content entry guidelines.

We do this kind of collaborative thinking every day, all day. As a Project Team Lead, it’s my favorite part of the job, and what helps get me into the office each day (except weekends and vacation days, of course. Those are sacred).

What makes RubensteinTech a special place for you to do your job?

I <3 RubensteinTech because, each day, we’re pushed to improve our craft to improve outcomes for our clients. We have a great team, great camaraderie, and great coffee (on tap).

It’s a place where I’ve been able make mistakes, recover, and get better.

Finally, we’re a group that lives by our core values. This makes the entire experience meaningful, professionally and personally.