A Day in the Life of Toni Antonova, Tech Lead at Ash Wellness

Ash Wellness Tech Lead Toni Antonova gave us a rundown of a typical day of overseeing data migration, writing tickets, and playing jazz piano. 

[6:55am] I live in Oakland. In order to synchronize with my east coast teammates, I have to get up early. I walk across the hall to the kitchen to brew my first cup of many coffees. Some days, I work mornings in the laundry room to let my girlfriend sleep without hearing our morning calls. Today, with my girlfriend awake, I can settle into our shared office space. 

[7:30am] Tech Standup. We split Engineering into two team meetings. Five of us in one. Four in the other. My team gives their updates. What bugs do we need to fix today?

[8:00am] Roll into another huddle with Product Managers Jasmin Linares Vera and Stephanie Patafio, as well as Tech Lead Michelle Rather. We go over pull requests that the patient portal team is working on. We need to change how patient results are displayed for our clients. 

[8:15am] Log into Github. 

[8:30am] Standup with our third Engineering team, Remedy Product Studio, based in Europe. They are working on a multi-lab routing option for New York, so our clients in that state can use more than one lab at a time to process test results. We discuss what changes will have to be made to ensure backwards compatibility with our current Lab API. 

[8:55am] Second coffee. This time, cold brew. 

[9:00am] SQL Database migration timeline talk with VP of Engineering Nick Sempere and Stephanie. It’s a big project to transfer all our data storage to a new SQL database. We have more complex data storage and performance needs now. 

[10:05am] Do some work in order placement and notification APIs to ensure missing fields get written to the new SQL database from our many services. 

[11:55am] Jazz piano and drums break! Ba-ba-bam. I’m new to both. Good thing the neighbors are patient.

[12:30pm] Review tickets that Stephanie put together based on discussions we had about bugs and error-handling related to the SQL migration.

[1:00pm] My girlfriend reminds me to get some sunlight. Quick walk before I wrap up for the day. Third coffee — Peet’s cappuccino!  

[1:20pm] Write out the tickets in a new project, Agile epic. Stephanie fills out the business requirements and I try to fill out as many technical details as possible. 

[2:20pm] Close laptop. Early mornings mean early EOD in California. Plenty of time to practice more drums and jazz piano. 

[2:25pm] Fourth coffee. 

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