The Distributed Podcast is an in-depth conversation about the future of work — with the companies and leaders driving it. Hosted by Co-Founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic Matt Mullenweg. Subscribe.
On this episode of Distributed, we dig into the good, the bad, and the karaoke-filled history of Automattic meetups. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, our annual Grand Meetup brought the entire company together for a week. The time spent together — along with team-specific meetups scattered throughout the year — helped us strengthen relationships with our colleagues located around the world. Now, as companies and workers grapple with returning to the office, it’s a perfect chance to consider in-person time as an important complement to the autonomy and flexibility of distributed work.
We spoke with Automatticians about how to stay connected in a distributed work culture. You’ll hear from Toni Schneider, Automattic’s first CEO, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Project, and Nick Gernert, CEO of WordPress VIP, along with a wide range of Automatticians.
The full episode transcript is below and has been lightly edited for clarity.
Nearly ten years ago, Dylan Field and Evan Wallace turned a Thiel Fellowship into a solution to the ‘single source of truth’ problem for design systems.
Their interest in design collaboration and WebGL laid the foundation for the origin story of Figma, today’s ubiquitous browser-based design tool — and rapidly-growing company.
“The more (we) pulled this thread, the more we learned there’s so much to do in terms of making design better, and in making it so more people can access design within the organization,” says Dylan of their early pursuis. (Spoiler: drone technology was a runner up in their technology explorations).
The latest episode of the Distributed podcast pairs Dylan, Figma’s CEO and Co-founder, and guest host Connie Yang, Head of Payments Design at Stripe, with past design leadership posts at Coinbase and Facebook.
Connie’s passion — uncovering the bits of magic surrounding us in everyday life — guides their friendly dialogue from design to remote culture and much more. Early in the show, Dylan shares what he’s learned about instilling culture in a rapidly-growing company, especially amid the changes brought on by the pandemic. “The main thing that changes once you go from in-person to remote is you can no longer rely on physical context to instill culture,” says Dylan. “It matters even more to elevate the role of design, and elevate anything you think is really important in that digital context.”
Dylan also builds on a recurring Distributed podcast theme over the past year, adding “It’s really important to be intentional about creating serendipitous moments.” Figma’s playful approach to collaboration influenced its recently-launched FigJam, a digital whiteboard that can help fill the need for serendipity.
Dylan speaks with the unique authority of a tech leader who has not only prioritized design but, with his team and products, greatly influenced it in a way that seems to have happened just in time for distributed collaboration.
“We’ve gone from a physical economy to a digital economy. I don’t think these are new trends or new things that happen but now, all of a sudden it happened all at once, and accelerated massively,” he says, echoing Matt’s May 2020 post Gradually, Then Suddenly.
“I think that we’re seeing every part of the economy shape around design,” says Dylan, noting how Figma has even observed collaboration in the product, beyond design, on days when other workplace chat tools were down.
Why does it matter? Because now, Dylan says, “Design leads to winning.”
Thank you to both of our guests for this latest episode of Distributed. We hope you enjoy it.
“Aren’t people lonely because they don’t have their friendships at work?”
On a recent appearance of The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish of Farnam Street, Matt Mullenweg revealed that he hears this question often, and that the answer is one of many benefits of a company built to be distributed from the start.
“If your only social network is at work, you might be lonely if you weren’t working with people physcally,” answered Matt. “But then what does that open up? It opens up the opportunity for you to choose people around you geographically to spend time with.”
The conversation evolved to the Five Levels of Autonomy (spoiler: many companies made it to Level Two during the pandemic) and how it allows teams to focus on the work. “Part of our model of distributed work also provides a fair amount of autonomy in how people get their work done,” Matt said. “I like that it creates a lot more objectivity and focus around what the actual work is.”
The episode was first published in January, but it is a great listen today as many companies that became distributed by necessity in 2020 make decisions about returning to work places.
Shane and Matt also talk about blending the cultures of different business units within a company like Automattic, the future of proprietary software, and how Open Source is like kids banding together on a playground, for the greater good of the open web.
This was the 100th episode of The Knowledge Project, whose recent guests have also included Angela Duckworth, Jim Collins and Josh Kaufman.
You can listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform, watch it on YouTube, and read Shane’s highlights from the conversation over at The Knowledge Project.
