Category: Work
I love working remotely. Working for Automattic is especially solid, since our entire company is distributed. There is no office anywhere, although we do have a building in San Francisco for events and visiting Automatticians.
Scott recently tweeted about one of the advantages that working remotely offers:
He’s absolutely right. Over the last two years I’ve shrunk my required inventory to be productive down to a pretty tiny footprint. Check it out:
On Focus:
The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.
On Expectations:
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
On Customers:
No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.
All from W. Edward Deming
If you work in hospitality on the internet, or even really UX of any flavor, you should know about Support Driven – it’s a blog, it’s a podcast, it’s a Slack group!
And now, the fine folks at Support Driven (including my dear friends Andrea and Andrew) are organizing an all-new conference, with a really interesting take on the speaker submission and development process. If you work with customers, as a support person or as a data person or really in any form, you should look into this conference – especially if you have something to say!
Talks are only 15 minutes long and are focused on actionable results – do you have a lesson or story that could enrich the experience of other folks in customer-facing roles? You should absolutely submit a talk!
Working at Automattic has a lot of advantages: working remotely, amazing coworkers, and the chance to make a real difference in the future of the internet (I really believe that!)
Being a Team Lead in this environment, leading one of our many Happiness Teams focused on the WordPress.com customer base, is unlike any job I’ve ever had, and for me, one piece that I really value above all else, is the opportunity to experiment – not just on the work itself, but also on the meta-work, on the work of the work. The larger structure, the larger idea. Being able to question and adjust and iterate is both amazing and a little scary.
This time of year inspires in me, like most folks, a feeling of reflection and gratitude – the last year has gone really well, with the little one growing up in so many ways, with my own personal and professional growth, the podcast is picking up steam, not to mention a whole grip of new readers here at the blog!
Today my aunt and her partner went home to Philadelphia after a really lovely weekend visit, and one thing they commented on was my enthusiasm for food – eating it, preparing it, and talking about it. Thinking about this today, for some reason, has brought me back to a really singular moment.
When the Doctor and I lived in Providence, I worked for a small local chain of bakeries called Seven Stars – they’re beloved in that town, and I think rightfully so. Among other things, I actually did my first-ever growth experiment there! I feel immense gratitude to have had the trust and confidence of the owners there – that’s something that has made a huge difference in my whole life.
I remember I also, at one point. had the chance to spend a day in the production bakery, doing some light bake-work, rolling croissants and so forth.
While there, I remember this so, so very clearly, I took a bite out of a plain butter croissant fresh from the oven. It was explosive. It was remarkable. I’ve had red wine at midnight on the banks of the Seine and I had the extended tasting menu in the wine cellar at wd-50 (RIP), and that moment, in a T-shirt and a white apron in a commercial kitchen, stands among my finest and favorite culinary memories. For that, I am immensely grateful.
If you have a bakery in your town, a real artisan bakery that starts their croissants from butter and flour and laminates the dough in-house (this is rarer than you think) – you should do whatever you can to be their friend, and to find some way to replicate this experience. A fresh, warm croissant is simple, and delightful, and can stay with you forever.
Simon Ouderkirk 