A day in the life of… Engineering Manager — Andrea Rojas
What does it mean to be a woman in tech? A question best answered by highlighting those who face growth, challenges, and wins in the tech industry on a daily basis. Today, we’d like you to meet our Engineering Manager, Andrea, who will let us in on what actually goes on in her typical working day.
My name is Andrea. I’m from Bogotá, Colombia. I studied Electronic Engineering and after finishing university, 14 years ago, I moved to Barcelona with the idea of studying for a master’s degree and returning, but destiny had other plans for me!
My first job was in Quality Assurance (QA), where I started doing manual testing. After that, I learned Java programming and worked on automation testing. My next step was to move on to management, then QA Lead, QA Manager and later Engineering Manager. This brings me to where I am now — I joined Preply’s engineering team just over 10 months ago.
On a personal note, I have a Jack Russell dog named “Rola” (as Bogotanos are called, rolos and rolas) so every day I have to take her for a walk to burn off some energy. I really love dancing and for almost 3 years I have been trying to learn sevillanas and flamenco. I really like to chat with people, share experiences, and just talk about life!
This is how how my typical day looks like:
7:30
My first alarm sounds and depending on how I feel, I either wake up or wait for the second (and final alarm) at 8:00 to get up and start the day :)
8:00
I take my lovely dog Rola for a walk around the neighborhood. It’s good for her but also for me — we start the day with some fresh air and a quick workout.
8:30
This is when my day really begins: I prepare a Colombian coffee and start working! First I check any unread messages in Slack, new emails and upcoming meetings I have. If there is an action I need to do, I’ll add a card to my Trello board. I’m a big fan of the tool and I would be lost in life without it! I have mainly two boards there, one for my Preply work and one for my personal life where I can plan my travels and Christmas gifts for example. For my professional board, I use the Kanban method columns: To Do, In Progress, Waiting and Done. Every Monday I archive the Done column and review the cards in the others columns. Usually, I plan the current day and outline 2–3 key things I want to get done by the end of the day.
9:00
I attend a weekly Engineering Managers sync where we meet our Engineering Managers, the Engineering Director, the CTO and the Employee Experience Lead to discuss various topics we’ve added to the shared agenda.
10:00
This is my first focus time blocker of the day! Usually, I try to book some time in my calendar to have allocated time in my schedule to attend to my priorities from my Trello board in between meetings and ad-hoc requests. So this is my time to really roll up my sleeves and get stuff done. 💪
11:00
I have a 1-on-1 meeting with one of my engineers. We start off with sharing how we are, what we did on the weekend, and then move on to checking if there is something in the shared agenda that needs to be discussed. This is also our time to talk about initiatives, development plan action items, incidents or just something random (spoiler: I love to talk!). I think that the 1-on-1 meetings are the most powerful management tool, as they help to build a close and trusting relationship with my team. Personally, I really like those meetings because my main motivation is to help my team, and I can be there for them during this allocated time to address their questions, concerns and focus on their development.
12:00
Time for my next focus time blocker! Before I get back to my tasks, I always check my Slack messages just in case someone needs my help, there is a question for my team, or there is an experiment ready to be tested. Part of my role is to always get ready to jump from task to task and quickly assist on an urgent matter to help my team. So before going into my focus mode, I always make sure there are no burning questions waiting for my input.
12:40
Lunch time! I try to have something quick because as we know, lunch hour flies by quicker than any other hour of the day! I try to have a super quick meal and reserve some time after lunch to organize personal things or call my family.
14:45
I have a Daily Sync meeting with my team. At Preply, our way of working is through multidisciplinary team collaboration, meaning that we’ll have Product Managers, Data Analysts, Engineers, Data Scientists, etc. working all together depending on the scope and goal of the project. This is also one of the reasons I chose to join Preply — being able to not just do my daily tasks but continuously learn alongside top professionals.
At the moment, I am involved working in the Engagement and Marketing Optimization team. In the Engagement team our goal is to make language learning an exciting and motivating journey, guiding students and tutors through a personalized experience that helps them achieve their goals. And in the Marketing Optimization squad, we provide solutions to enable exploration and exploitation of optimization opportunities across all Performance Marketing channels we advertise on. During our daily sync meetings, we review together the shared Jira board, status of the open tickets, and discuss issues and any blockers.
15:00
I attend a bi-weekly Marketing Optimization Product Review meeting with all stakeholders to align across product, marketing and data functions on various initiatives. During the meeting different project owners share updates, and together we discuss quarterly OKRs progress, upcoming challenges, and share meaningful research and insight findings. Since we’ve been working on an exciting promo code initiative, we share with the team an update on the tech progress and our CRM channel experts inform everyone about the campaign work results.
16:00
This is my last focus time blocker of the day, so after responding to all my messages and important questions, I get back to my Trello board and start preparing a group feedback session for one of the engineers.
At Preply, every day is different for me. Sometimes I have a plan and can follow through but there are times I need to be agile and quickly jump onto new things because things change very quickly here. I need to be able to switch context within a second and be available for interruptions in the midst of it all. This environment is ideal for me because I work better with a bit of chaos and flexibility!
19:00
After work, I hurry to my weekly Sevillanas and Flamenco class to move my body, clear my mind and have a bit of fun 💃! On the way back home, I usually do some grocery shopping for dinner and if the weather is nice (luckily it almost always is in Barcelona), I enjoy a drink on a terrace or a walk around with Rola and spend quality time with my boyfriend.
21:30
Dinner time! We cook something healthy, fast and light. My go-to meal is to make arepas with cheese — it takes less than 15 minutes and they are so delicious… If you haven’t tried, you definitely should!
22:00
Python lesson! Our Preply tech stack is Python and JavaScript, since my Python knowledge is quite basic I’m using our employee perk of monthly 200$ credit to learn it directly on our platform with a tutor. Recently, I’ve also started learning French, so now I’m taking 1 Python lesson and 1 French lesson per week.
23:00
Starting to slowly wind down the day by chilling on the sofa and watching the news or something light on TV.
23:30
This is my time to go to bed and finally have some rest! 💤
If this post resonates with you and you’d like to explore opportunities with Preply, check out our open vacancies. If you believe you would be a great fit, apply now and who knows — Your story might be the next one on our blog! 🚀
