We recently asked our fellow colleagues at Automattic:
How are you taking care of yourself during the pandemic, or making work from home more manageable for yourself and your loved ones?
Here are 161 of their best answers.
Category Archives: News
Distributed FAQ: Should Companies Use Software Tools to Monitor Remote Workers?
In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.
Q. At distributed companies, managers can’t always see when — or if — employees are working. Do you recommend using monitoring software to ensure people are productive?
A. No.
I don’t advocate for using this type of software at all. Instead of monitoring progress, you should focus on outcomes. Respect the outcome and trust that your employees will do their jobs.
Culture is what you do when no one is looking — it’s something I firmly believe in, and it’s especially true in the context of trust in a distributed setting.
Even in companies that thrive on mutual trust, different communication styles and social-interaction preferences can lead to friction. Listen to Matt’s conversation with Morra Aarons-Mele about introversion and anxiety in distributed companies.
The Things You Learn about Leadership after 10 Years at a Distributed Company
For many, remote work is a recent phenomenon — a nascent practice brought about by public health concerns. By now, however, there are also quite a few companies that have used various distributed models for years, and the people who’ve been part of their journeys possess deep knowledge about what makes (and occasionally breaks) a fully distributed workforce.
Case in point: Sara Rosso, WordPress.com’s Director of Product Marketing. Sara recently celebrated her 10th anniversary at Automattic, and to mark the occasion she took to her own WordPress.com blog to share 10 leadership lessons she’s learned over the course of a decade working with and leading distributed teams.
Sara’s insights span a wide range — from ways to foster psychological safety in the absence of shared physical space, to tips on how to successfully separate work hours from personal time when they both take place in the same house (if not the same room). One of her standout lessons? Optimizing remote meetings to work for people with diverse communication styles and preferences:
Though written communication is a very strong skill needed in a remote company, there is likely a wide variance of personalities and work styles in the company. A remote company can attract both clear extroverts (like myself) and introverts who would be fine not to meet up even twice a year.
One of the ways I’ve had to learn how to lead team and project synchronous meetings is to be sensitive to all types of personalities. As Automattic has grown, it has gone from a company where I knew who had kids and where they each lived, to video calls with people whom I’d never met, never worked with, and in some cases I wasn’t even sure what country or city they’re sitting in.
As an extrovert I am especially aware I need to make space for others to contribute in a synchronous discussion. However not everyone wants to be included in that moment, especially when that means calling on someone spontaneously. Some of the advice I’d heard in the past for meetings was “call on people who haven’t spoken up” to make sure diverse voices are heard on the call. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and can definitely backfire.
To explore tools and strategies based on Sara’s deep experience at Automattic, head over to her blog to read the full post.
Illustration by Lily Padula
Episode 22: Raj Choudhury Sees a Future Where You Don’t Have to Move Your Family for a Job
“We have introduced so many frictions to people’s lives by forcing them to move.”
Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, the Lumry Family Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, studies the future of work — specifically the changing geography of work. What happens to cities, to immigration policies, and to issues around gender equity when more companies let people work from anywhere?
Choudhury earned his doctorate from Harvard, has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management. Prior to academia, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, and IBM.
For more on Choudhury, go to HBS.edu or follow him on Twitter (@prithwic).
The full episode transcript is below.
Are We at the End of the “Culture of Presentism and Micromanagement”?
Back in April, when entire sectors of the economy had just recently — and abruptly — transitioned to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Matt Mullenweg shared an aspirational roadmap, describing the five levels of autonomy companies go through along their journey from fully colocated to truly distributed. With increasing signs that we might never go back to the old normal, Enrique Dans, at Forbes, reflects on what executives and employees alike have learned in the intervening months. He takes Matt’s five levels as a starting point to ask how our collective understanding of remote work has changed as well, and what the near future might hold.
Where are we headed? Toward levels 4 and 5, characterized by the optimization of working practices, which means changing the synchronous-asynchronous balance: fewer rounds of endless video conferences and more short videos recorded for later viewing, much more Slackand similar communication tools, along with less time spent sitting in front of a screen listening to other people. Shared documents people can work on synchronously — coordinating in the chat window — or asynchronously are infinitely more effective than a marathon video conference. A spreadsheet, text document, or presentation that requires input from several people is an ideal solution for Google Docs, Office 360, or any of their competitors.
Head to Forbes to read the rest of Enrique Dans’ article.
Distributed FAQ: What Does the Ideal Remote Office Setup Look Like?
In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.
Q. Who at Automattic has the best office setup — and what does an ideal remote office look like?
A. The short answer is: nobody and everybody.
When people join Automattic, we provide an allowance they can spend on setting up their home office. They can invest in an ergonomic chair, a standing desk, a good monitor, or almost any other item that would make their workspace more comfortable.
One of the best things about working from home, however, is that everyone gets to have a corner office — or their version thereof. You can avoid compromises that you would have to make in a shared office. This goes beyond the choice of furniture; for example, music is something that can help some people when they’re feeling low and need to change a mood or mindset. In a traditional office, they’d need to use headphones. In their home office, they can do whatever works for them.
Having complete agency over your physical environment is incredibly empowering and can inspire people to be more creative and productive. It also makes us more inclusive as a company, and allows us to attract a talent pool that includes people for whom an office isn’t the best environment.
Check out our Tools and Gear page for specific recommendations, and listen to Matt’s conversation with Lydia X. Z. Brown about flexible and inclusive work environments.
Episode 21: Morra Aarons-Mele on Introversion and Anxiety in Remote Work
Is working from home a breakthrough for introverts?
The answer, of course, is not so simple. Matt Mullenweg’s latest Distributed conversation is with Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever podcast for HBR Presents from Harvard Business Review, and founder of award-winning social impact agency Women Online and its database of women influencers, The Mission List.
She’s also the author of Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home).
To learn more about Aarons-Mele’s work, go to womenandwork.org.
The full episode transcript is below.
Distributed FAQ: How Did P2 Become Automattic’s Signature Mode of Communication?
In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.
Q. Automattic is known for using internal blogs called P2s for most work-related conversations. How and why did that happen?
A. In Automattic’s early days, we collaborated a lot directly in the code, or on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), a Slack precursor. We quickly realized that it wasn’t great for asynchronous discussions, and when we tried email instead, it didn’t allow for the transparency that is the hallmark of open source (it also brought a lot of noise with it). Finally, we ditched email and moved to an internal blogging system. P2 is the evolution of the blog for the purpose of working within and across teams. It’s organized much like a Yammer or Facebook stream, but on the back end it still operates like a blog, allowing for archiving, advanced search, and rich media embeds.
Which U.S. Cities Are Offering Incentives to Attract Remote Workers?
As millions of people have switched to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as their employers decide whether to continue this model indefinitely, many U.S. cities are seeing an opportunity to bring well-paid remote workers to their region.
Why Distributed Companies Will Likely Move Away from Location-Based Compensation
Managing a remote workforce comes with obvious benefits (no pricy office space, for one), but also with some distinct complexities. With potential employees applying to a variety of positions from dozens of countries around the world, it can be a tall order to create salary ranges that are equitable, fair, and scalable. But as Matt Mullenweg recently explained in an interview with Connie Loizos at TechCrunch, getting this right is a crucial goal and an ongoing process for any distributed company that wants to hire from a geographically diverse talent pool.
Among other highlights, Matt mentioned that ethical considerations and macro-economic trends will push more and more companies in the direction of location-agnostic salaries:
“Long term,” said Mullenweg, “I think market forces and the mobility of talent will force employers to stop discriminating on the basis of geography for geographically agnostic roles.” He also said that while he isn’t aware of location or geography currently being a protected class for pay discrimination suits — at least in the U.S. — he thinks that for “moral and competitive reasons, companies will move toward globally fair compensation over time with roles that can be done from anywhere.”