Category Archives: News

Vox Tackles the Pros and Cons of Remote Work

Citing a few recent studies that discovered remote work increases productivity and employee satisfaction, Vox looks at the causes and effects of distributed work arrangements.

Most interestingly, they explore the broader trends driving the popularity of remote work, such as millennials moving out of tech hub cities like San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.

Ten years ago, even as technology came online that would enable people to work from anywhere, people continued to cluster in the biggest cities in what King calls the “paradox of place.”

That’s changing.

As King put it, “The societal impact of remote work is, we’re finally starting to see what was promised in the first internet boom: more flexibility in where we live.”

Read the rest at Vox.

Welcome to the Chaos

“Welcome to the Chaos.”

These are the words every new hire at Automattic sees on their first day, emblazoned across the company’s online handbook. They are designed not to instill fear, but to prepare the newly-minted Automattician for life in a fast-moving, globally-distributed company. Working at Automattic sometimes feels like chaos, but over 950 employees wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sonal Gupta is one of them. She describes the moment she first read those words. They gave her immediate comfort because they confirmed that yes, working in this environment can feel overwhelming, but she wasn’t alone. 

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Observe, Don’t Surveil: Managing Distributed Teams with Respect

Like any new employee, Scott Berkun had the jitters on his first day at Automattic. He was a little older than most of the people at the company, having spent the previous nine years at Microsoft. Although he witnessed firsthand the excitement of the tech giant’s glory days, office life was still rather conventional.

Now, in 2010, Scott was joining a young company with no offices, and — prior to his hiring — no managers. Before Scott joined, everyone in the company reported more or less directly to Automattic’s founder Matt Mullenweg and then-CEO Toni Schneider. Scott had been hired based on his own advice as an Automattic consultant. He had observed that the company had grown too large to operate efficiently with a flat structure. Scott suggested a turn toward a more conventional approach — the company needed hierarchy. 

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How to Build and Strengthen Distributed Engineering Teams

The term “digital nomad” appeared in the ‘90s to describe an emerging class of globetrotting workers. The digital nomad in those days was an edgy, lone-wolf cyberpunk character with little dependence on hearth and home. Freed from the constraints of geography, the digital nomad hops from hotspot to hostel, client to client, living out of a suitcase and funding her lifestyle with contract work. 

Cate Huston is the Head of Developer Experience at Automattic. She embodies the ethos of the modern digital nomad, and maintains a newsletter chronicling her travels. Though she calls the Irish city of Cork home, you’re as likely to find her in any other corner of the world. Yet Cate’s no lone wolf. Modern communication tools have made it possible for Cate to help manage and stay in constant contact with large teams. She’s deeply embedded within the Automattic organization, helping to define how its many engineers engage with stakeholders around the company — and with each other. 

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How to Stay Connected in a Distributed World

When Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich reached his breaking point, his company was pulling in millions in annual revenue. He’d achieved his dreams of profitability and financial security, and he’d built a dedicated team working together toward a common goal. His team was distributed, a point of pride for the company. But Leo was lonely, unfulfilled, and felt ill-equipped to cope with the ups and downs of life. 

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Helping Creativity Happen from a Distance

Design is visual and tactile. It plays with the form and function of objects and systems to improve them. It’s a discipline in which every undertaking is akin to getting together with a group of people and asking, “Look at what I made — what do you think? How can we make this better?” 

Now, imagine this group of creators scattered all over the world. How can these collaborators find and maintain the spark of creativity that passes from one designer to another when they’re all hunched over a blueprint or marking up a whiteboard together? If anyone knows, it’s John Maeda. 

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Engineering with Empathy

When you supervise a team of engineers hailing from over 40 countries, the way Upwork’s Senior VP of Engineering Han Yuan does, you develop priceless knowledge about how distributed teams work. According to Han, the crux of the challenge is setting expectations with every team member. Doing this well requires maintaining a consistent culture, along with regular, frequent, and — most of all — clear communication. 

What does it mean to maintain a consistent culture? Han calls this a “very difficult problem” when applied to distributed teams. 

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How to do HR in a Blended Company

Upwork is the largest freelancing platform, operating across 180 countries. It’s a company that deals in human resources, so its own HR department needs to model best practices. Upwork’s Head of Human Resources and Talent Innovation, Zoe Harte, keeps the department at the cutting edge. Making sure that the right people in the right places are equipped with the skills and tools they need to perform at a high level requires strategic decision-making, so it makes sense that the person responsible for that core work would serve much more than an administrative role.

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