Tag Archives: distributed

Matt Mullenweg On Finding Talent: From Cheddar News

“If you’re a business for whom talent is a key differentiator,” said Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg this week on Cheddar News, “then I would highly recommend you learning how to evolve your business to be fully inclusive of remote people.”

On Wednesday, Matt joined senior reporter Michelle Castillo on Cheddar’s Closing Bell to talk about Automattic’s latest fundraising, and how the company will continue to hire for and invest in technology that democratizes publishing and commerce.

Matt made the announcement earlier this week.

“One thing that’s fascinating about Automattic is that you guys have a work remote policy,” Castillo asked. “Why did you make that decision so many years ago?”

“When we started being fully remote, which was I guess 15, 16 years ago, it was the best way to access the best talent in the world,” Matt responded.

“I think that’s still true.”

Offering encouragement to those who have only experienced remote work by necessity because of the pandemic, Matt also urged organizations to commit to being fully distributed, instead of settling for hybrid situations that can create new challenges: “Keep in mind, even if last year was tough, it was tough for every company, including us – who have been doing this for over a decade.”

You can watch the full interview at Cheddar.

Episode 25: Davit Baghdasaryan on the Science of Sound in a Distributed Work World

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Trying to sound your best as you work away from an office more than ever before?  

As audio and video conferencing surge worldwide, Matt talks about the science of sound with Davit Baghdasaryan, the CEO of Krisp, a fast-growing company offering an AI-powered noise cancellation app for removing background noise on any conferencing platform. Krisp’s technology, including its proprietary deep neural network krispNet DNN, processes audio securely on the user’s computer. 

Find out how Krisp started, why Davit foresees his company returning to a hybrid work model, and what it means to Work from Forest. 

With employees in the United States and Armenia that shifted to working from home in 2020, Krisp surged this challenging year, announcing a $5M Series A round in August and growing to 600 Enterprise customers despite continuing to focus on consumer users. Check out this demo of how Krisp works in meeting room.)

A native of Armenia, Davit spends time in both countries leading Krisp. Prior to co-founding Krisp, Davit was a Security Product Lead at Twilio in San Francisco, among other security-focused technology leadership roles.

The full episode transcript is below.

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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

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.

Twitter Will Let Employees Work from Home Permanently

Millions of people have been forced to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the big question remains: Which companies will change the way they work forever?

Twitter is now making the call. It’s permanent.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey emailed employees on Tuesday telling them that they’d be allowed to work from home permanently, even after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown passes. Some jobs that require physical presence, such as maintaining servers, will still require employees to come in.

“We’ve been very thoughtful in how we’ve approached this from the time we were one of the first companies to move to a work-from-home model,” a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “We’ll continue to be, and we’ll continue to put the safety of our people and communities first.”

Read the full BuzzFeed story here.

Photo via Pexels