A Day in the Life for Julie Barbarese

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

As a project team lead, my primary role is to facilitate conversations—both internally and externally—and to act as a conduit between the client, our design partners, and the RubensteinTech team.

To be effective in my role, I approach every conversation by first asking myself, "How can I provide value,” and “Why should the person on the end of the line care?" With this thought process as my guide, I apply consideration and empathy to each conversation I have—all of which are important.

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

Tasks—we call them ToDos—are basically the altar upon which I worship.

To complete them, I rely heavily on the app Bear. It’s user-friendly—like our software—and it lets you use common tags (H1, H2), while also integrating with tons of other applications. I have combined my Evernote account with Apple Notes, and even some Microsoft Word documents with Bear. I can also merge existing lists, which is extremely helpful at the end of the week when I'm taking an inventory.

What is an average day-in-the-life like for you (e.g., how do you fill your schedule)?

Meetings, meetings, phone calls, more meetings, and—you get the point. An oft-used quote at RubensteinTech is: “Our calendars look like games of Tetris.”

When I’m not on a call or in a meeting, I’m usually working in the bullpen with our team—most of our project teams sit together—with my computer perched on an engineer’s desk, and me prioritizing tasks and requests in our task management software.

What are some of the challenges you face on a daily basis?

One of the biggest challenges I face is walking through the true complexity of development when a particular ask looks simple and easy. That, and why it often takes time to get something perfectly right. Even though the internet makes it seem like anything can be updated in an instant, coding and implementation frequently take longer.

A serial case is the creation of printer-friendly output from a client website: it looks really simple, and seems like it’s only a matter of updating a header. Explaining that every browser handles printing differently—and as a result may take a developer weeks to finish and test—can be a trying conversation. But, I love navigating those conversations: they’re part of why I do what I do.

What makes RubensteinTech a special place to work?

Our core values aren’t something we just say to sound edgy. We honestly and earnestly strive for transparency and to build trust with our clients and with one another.