Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg, cofounder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, embarks on a journey to understand the future of work. Having built his own company with no offices and more than 1,300 employees in 76 countries, speaking 95 different languages, Mullenweg examines the benefits and challenges of distributed work and recruiting talented people around the globe.
Fri, May 26, 2023
Episode 30: The Magic of Meetups
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . 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. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy howdy. This is Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and the CEO of Automattic, and you are listening to the Distributed podcast, which is back after a – I’m embarrassed to say – 500 day hiatus, roughly. I wasn’t as drawn to do more Distributed episodes last year. One because I got super busy and, you know, 2022 I started running Tumblr directly and WordPress.com. So, things at work got pretty busy, but also just felt like everyone was doing it. Everyone had kind of figured out the remote and distributed thing. And it was going fine. So like, the reason I started the podcast was done so the purpose, the goal I set out to accomplish was completed. However, recently there’s been a lot of news about companies who are rolling back their employee flexibility and forcing people back into the office 2, 3, 4, 5 days a week. Sometimes, they might be doing this as a way to lay people off. It’s hard to tell the motivations of some of these executives. But some, I think, in good faith are saying that they were missing something when people weren’t getting together and that employees that joined during the pandemic maybe weren’t as productive as employees who joined prior. It got me thinking and I started to wonder if what t
Fri, November 19, 2021
Episode 29: Dylan Field, Figma Co-founder, Talks Design, Digital Economy, and Remote Culture with Host Connie Yang
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . 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. <img data-attachment-id="3865" data-permalink="https://distributed.blog/2021/11/18/dylan-field-figma-talks-design-with-connie-yang/connie-yang/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?fit=1328%2C1262&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1328,1262" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Connie Yang" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?fit=300%2C285&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?fit=782%2C743&ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?resize=340%2C323&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3865" width="340" height="323" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?resize=1024%2C973&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?resize=300%2C285&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?resize=768%2C730&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/distributed.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Connie-Yang.png?resize=1200%2C1140
Thu, July 22, 2021
Episode 28: Erica Pandey of Axios on Returning to Work
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . We admire journalists today more than ever. Whether getting their start as a solo blogger on their own beat, or growing up in a thriving newsroom, journalists must forge their own unique work life as they write the first draft of history. So it’s no surprise that this episode of the Distributed podcast with Matt Mullenweg and special guest Erica Pandey, business journalist and writer of the What’s Next newsletter at Axios , moves fast and covers a lot of ground, from Erica’s career, to how she works with her Axios colleagues in different cities and bureaus, to what she is seeing as she covers the intersection of technology, business and people. Erica has recently written about how workers are discovering their own ‘Third Workplace,” and shared insight on how HR departments can improve childcare benefits for working parents. “Childcare has always been a problem. The pandemic just spotlighted it, and hopefully now something will be done about it,” says Pandey. She balances Axios’ Smart Brevity style with authoritative reporting on complex topics, seeking multiples perspectives, from data to experts to people on the ground. Says Erica, “One of my greatest joys is being able to talk to people.” The lively conversation centers on how we’re all returning to work after so much change and adaptation, including the rise of hybrid workplaces. “The best possible form of hybrid – and this is not just me, this is what HR experts are trying to game out here – is everybody meeting, and (then) everybody at home, at the same time,” says Pandey. “The benefits of being in person, which are social interaction, which may be rubbing shoulders with leadership, which may be the innovation that happens on the spot when you are talking with someone at the coffee maker, happen when everyone is there. And then when everyone’s home, they can work on solo projects or get longer term projects done.” “When you make it so that there is no penalty for not being in the office,” Matt later agrees, “you’re not missing opportunities, you’re not missing socialization, y
Thu, June 10, 2021
Distributed by Default: Matt Mullenweg on The Knowledge Project
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “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 .
Fri, May 21, 2021
Episode 27: Leading with Values: Sid Sijbrandij joins Matt Mullenweg to talk about GitLab, Transparency and Growing a Distributed Company
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “Every company has a poster on the wall,” says Matt Mullenweg in the latest episode of The Distributed Podcast. Matt welcomes Sid Sijbrandij, Co-founder and CEO of GitLab, another pioneering company with Open Source origins and a long-running commitment to a completely distributed workforce. Sid and Matt settle into a conversation about GitLab’s six values – which have been cut down from the original 13, and which are always visible in Sid’s video background – are reinforced in 20 ways at the fully-distributed company. GitLab, now with more than 1,300 employees, updated its values over 300 times in the last calendar year. “They have to be reinforced,” says Sid, “and be alive in that way.” And as for sharing just about everything publicly? “Transparency is sunlight.” The values are part of the publicly-viewable GitLab Handbook that, with over 10,000 pages, details data both interesting and “mundane,” from compensation to how employees should interact with Hacker News. An example: “I think what’s really interesting is our engineering metrics. We pay very close to what we call the MR rate: how many merge requests did an engineer make over a month; how many did a team make over a month?” Sid shares. “If you push on that, people start making the changes that they make smaller to kind of increase that rate. The whole process becomes more efficient.” Sid and Matt – an observer on GitLab’s board – get into the details: taking time off, leadership development programs, scheduling coffee chats that actually work, and much more. And they revisit predictions Sid made on Twitter in May, 2020, about the post-Pandemic future of distributed work. Check out the full episode above, or on your favorite podcasting platform. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy everybody and welcome to the Distributed Podcast. I am your host, Matt Mullenweg. Today’s guest is a like-minded leader of a software company that is driven by its values, supports open source and happens to be distributed too. Sid Sijbrandij is the Co-Founder and CEO of GitLab, a fast-growing company and a sing
Tue, May 11, 2021
Hiring For Distributed Companies & Angel Investing: This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “Why would the best employees in the world choose so little autonomy in the third of their day or more that they spend working?” Matt Mullenweg asks Jason Calacanis in a recent appearance on the long-running This Week In Startups . The angel investing-themed episode opens with both investors sharing their approaches to early-stage companies, supporting entrepreneurs, and making an ecosystem-building impact, on top of return-on-investment. The conversation soon shifts toward the outlook for distributed work. “What do you think the world’s going to look like in six months when everybody’s got their shots and is back to work, in at least the United States and Europe?” Jason asks. Matt shares a hiring insight for distributed, global companies, from the changing perspective of a talented individual who can now work from many more places: “You can really build a robust social network with folks you choose to connect with…(anything) that gives you that sense of community, not just where you happen to work.” Matt’s latest appearance on the show – he first appeared on Episode 26 in 2010, according to Jason, and again in 2013 – touches on Automattic’s business structure, using collaboration tools like P2 to onboard new employees, cryptocurrency, and the value of editors. “I haven’t met a single writer – or any of my own writing – that hasn’t been vastly improved by really great editing,” says Matt. “Engaging your ideas with another human just improves them every single time.” You can listen to the full This Week in Startups episode here , or check out the YouTube channel .
Fri, April 23, 2021
Getting Legal Work Done in a Distributed Environment: Paul Sieminski with Chad Main on Technically Legal
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . 500-page bound merger agreements, office printers, and libraries lined with law books. Legal work looks a lot different now that most in-house counsel (and law firms for that matter) have adopted some form of distributed work. But that doesn’t mean the work itself has changed. Contracts still need to be written and signed, litigation still needs to happen, and employment law might be more important than ever. What’s become clear over a year into a global pandemic is that legal work can be even more effective without the office. To make it happen, however, lawyers need to adapt their communication mediums and technology in a way that fits company culture and mission. Automattic’s General Counsel, Paul Sieminski, recently joined the Technically Legal podcast to talk about how legal work can thrive in a fully distributed company. “It’s aimed at a legal audience, and I love to remind my fellow layers how much value we can add to a distributed organization,” said Paul of his appearance on the podcast. “We are trained to communicate clearly, and especially to write cogently and persuasively. These are invaluable skills in any environment, but especially in an environment where writing is paramount…like a distributed company.” Paul has written on the topic in other places, such as Modern Counsel . He talks about communication starting just after the 23:00 mark with host Chad Main. For that discussion, and legal topics spanning the advantages of creating a searchable document database, to what tools and protocols we use to communicate transparently while protecting confidentiality, you can learn more about legal work in the distributed model by listening to the full episode here .
Tue, April 20, 2021
Growing as a Leader: Matt Mullenweg on the Starting Greatness Podcast with Mike Maples Jr.
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “Was there a palpable time when you felt like…you had to have a new kind of thought as you got bigger?” asks Mike Maples Jr., host of the Starting Greatness podcast in an April conversation with Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg. Matt shares several such pivotal moments in an episode full of stories and insight from the growth of Automattic, and of his own journey and leadership evolution. “For better or worse, you become close personal friends with everyone because you’re kind of in the trenches,” Matt said, sharing a story about when the company almost accepted an acquisition offer at a time of friction among the small, but growing, Automattic team. “So when you fight, it kind of feels like you’re fighting with your partner, your significant other.” Matt reflects on a journey from his Palm Pilot user group to first meeting Jeffrey Zeldman of A List Apart (and now a Principal Designer at Automattic), and later his first visit to San Francisco, all before committing full-time to WordPress and Automattic. Mike and Matt also touch on the difference between a learn-it-all and a know-it-all, and even some books that have been influential along the way. Maples, partner in venture capital firm Floodgate, has also hosted Annie Duke, Mark Cuban, Tim Ferriss and David Sacks in the second season of Starting Greatness, a podcast dedicated to startup founders who want to go from “nothing to awesome, super fast.” You can listen to the full Starting Greatness episode, and all others, right here .
Wed, December 16, 2020
Episode 26: Jack Dorsey and Matt Mullenweg on Remote Collaboration, Finding Serendipity, and the Art of Deliberate Work
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Join us for the latest episode of Distributed, as Matt Mullenweg interviews Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter and Square. They discuss how both companies have embraced remote collaboration, the underrated value of deliberate work, and how questioning preconceived models from the get-go can change everything. This spring, Jack Dorsey told Twitter and Square employees they could work from home forever if they choose. But a year earlier –– before the global pandemic happened –– he had already started working from home two days a week. There wasn’t the noise or the distraction. It was a place and a time where he felt more freedom and creativity. Now, he reflects on how his way of working has evolved alongside Twitter and Square over the past year. From leading thousands of employees as a self-described introvert, to why he planned (and still does) to work from Africa for an extended period (spoiler: largely, to support entrepreneurs on the continent), Matt and Jack share ideas for combining the deliberate, thoughtful pace of asynchronous work with the serendipity that occurs in the office. “If we can run the company without missing a beat,” says Dorsey of planning to work in Africa, “it really opens the door for a lot, especially our ability to hire anywhere as well.” Tune in to learn how meetings work at fully distributed Twitter and Square, what open source and the punk scene have in common, why bringing thoughtfulness into collaboration is more important than ever, and if Jack Dorsey ever wants to go back to the old board meetings. Plus a whole lot more. The full episode transcript is below. Thanks to Sriram Krishnan for help preparing for this episode. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy, everyone and welcome to the Distributed podcast. Today’s guest does not need much in the way of introduction. He is the co-founder and CEO of Twitter and also the Founder and CEO of Square. In addition to creating three iconic products, Twitter, Square and Cash App, he has been a philanthropist and a world traveler. And what we’re going to focus on today is he has recently issued an invitation to all Twitter and Square employees to work from home forever if they want. So everyone please
Thu, October 15, 2020
Episode 25: Davit Baghdasaryan on the Science of Sound in a Distributed Work World
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . 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. *** (Intro Music) MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy everybody. Today we are going to talk to the Co-founder and CEO of a company whose technology makes it easier for those of us working from home to hear each other, even with all of life’s noisy distractions going on in the background behind us. At Automattic we say, “Communication is oxygen.” We are advocates of anything
Fri, July 24, 2020
Episode 23: Lara Hogan on the Secret to Being a Successful Manager
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Are companies setting up their managers for success? What are BICEPS? How do you assemble your colleagues like a management Voltron? Lara Hogan is the founder of Wherewithall , a firm that specializes in management and leadership training — a company that Automattic has worked with in the past. She’s the author of Resilient Management , a must-read for anyone who is a manager, wants to become one, or generally just wants to learn how to be a better teammate. Lara spent a decade growing emerging leaders as the VP of Engineering at Kickstarter and an Engineering Director at Etsy. Related links: Management Voltron Bingo Card Core Needs: BICEPS (Paloma Medina) @Lara_Hogan on Twitter Full episode transcript is below. MATT MULLENWEG: Hello everybody, this is Matt Mullenweg with the Distributed Podcast. I cannot think of another time in my entire work career when we’ve been so faced with so much dramatic change in so little time. How we come together, how we listen to each other, and even how we understand ourselves can define the future of our companies right now in this pivotal time. What does it mean to be a good manager or leader in this moment? Today we’re going to chat with Lara Hogan, she is the founder of Wherewithall, a firm which specializes in management and leadership training and that Automattic has worked with in the past. She is also the author of a book called Resilient Management , which is a must-read for anyone who is a manager, wants to become one or generally just wants to learn how to be a better teammate. She spent a decade growing emerging leaders as the VP of engineering at Kickstarter and an engineering director at Etsy, both companies known for their excellent engineering and execution. So thank you so much for being here. LARA HOGAN: Thank you so much, what a lovely introduction. MATT: We’ll make it
Fri, July 03, 2020
Episode 22: Raj Choudhury Sees a Future Where You Don’t Have to Move Your Family for a Job
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “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. *** (Intro Music) MATT MULLENWEG: So here we are. It’s been more than three months into this global transition to remote work. And let’s be honest, a lot of this has been difficult and exhausting and even for folks at Automattic, who have been doing distributed work for 15 years, it’s quite different when there is a global pandemic and economic uncertainty everywhere. But there have been a ton of positives too. I’ve heard from many friends who are working in knowledge-worker roles and they’re saying “I never want to go back into a full time office,” particularly with the restrictions that these physical offices are probably going to have. So they’re seeing benefits in their productivity, their lifestyle, and their connection with their families and their life. So there is uncertainty but there is also opportunity. Today I am excited to speak with Raj Choudhury, a professor at Harvard Business School, who is focused on questions around the geography of work and the outcomes of mobility on productivity. He has studied this question very closely and I was excited to find out what he has learned. So welcome, Raj. RAJ CHOUDURY: Hi Matt, thanks for having me. MATT: Oh it’s a real pleasure. What brought
Fri, June 19, 2020
Episode 21: Morra Aarons-Mele on Introversion and Anxiety in Remote Work
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . 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. (Intro Music) MATT MULLENWEG: You are listening to Distributed with me, Matt Mullenweg. Today’s guest is Morra Aarons-Mele. Morra is the founder of Women Online, an award-winning social impact agency, and she is also the author of “Hiding In the Bathroom: How to Get Out There When You’d Rather Stay At Home.” A title I love. [laughs] It’s a book that rethinks introversion in the workplace. Interested to hear about her experiences so I can learn more about how Automattic can better serve the many introverts on distributed teams and talk about the theory that maybe distributed is better for introverts. So, welcome, Morra. MORRA AARONS-MELE: Hi, Matt. How are you? MATT: Thank you so much for joining. And where are you joining from today just out of curiosity? MORRA: Right outside Boston. MATT: Cool. I’m in Houston, Texas. MORRA: All right. MATT: I celebrated 100 days here yesterday which is my longest I’ve been here in a long time. MORRA: Oh my gosh. [laughter] MATT: So we had a very brief introduction there but what brought you to this topic? MORRA: Uh, life. [laughter] I didn’t know that I was an introvert with social anxiety, I th
Wed, April 29, 2020
Episode 20: Adam Gazzaley on the Distracted Mind During a Crisis
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Matt Mullenweg speaks with neuroscientist Dr. Adam Gazzaley, co-author of the 2016 book The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World , about how our brains work, particularly during times like the current pandemic. How does the brain handle internal and external stimuli, and what do we know about the effect of practices like meditation, exercise, nutrition, and sleep? Gazzaley obtained an M.D. and Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, completed Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the David Dolby Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco, and the Founder & Executive Director of Neuroscape , a translational neuroscience center at UCSF. Gazzaley co-authored The Distracted Mind with Larry D. Rosen, and he’s a scientist who enjoys seeing his work solve real-world problems. He’s also founded startups, including Akili Interactive and Sensync, to build technology products that enhance learning, mindfulness, and well-being. More can be found at his website, gazzaley.com . A full transcript of the episode is below. *** (Intro Music) MATT MULLENWEG: Hello everybody and welcome back to the Distributed Podcast. We’ve all had to make so many adjustments in recent weeks and some of them quite radical. I hope that wherever you are and wherever you might be tuning in from this process has been going smoothly for you, or at least as painlessly as one might hope under these circumstances. In conversations with my colleagues at Automattic and with people at many other companies, both distributed and not, one common thread I keep seeing is how difficult it has been to stay focused in recent weeks. I have been struggling with this as well. We’ve been dealing with non-stop bad news. Many of us have either been directly affected by Covid 19 or know people who have, either health-wise, financially, or socially. Even more of us have had to
Wed, April 15, 2020
Matt Mullenweg with Sam Harris on Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy
On a recent episode of Sam Harris's excellent Making Sense podcast, Matt shared insights for managers and companies who are currently exploring remote work for the first time. More Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen .
Thu, April 09, 2020
Vanessa Van Edwards on Navigating the Virtual Workplace in Stressful Times
Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . The world has dramatically changed in just a few weeks. As companies around the world shift to remote work, how do we navigate this crisis? Distributed host Matt Mullenweg talks to Vanessa Van Edwards, bestselling author, speaker, and founder of Science of People, about how we communicate with our friends, family, and coworkers during a time when Zoom and Slack are our primary tools for understanding each other. To learn more about Vanessa’s work, visit scienceofpeople.com . The full episode transcript is below. *** (Intro Music) MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy, everyone. Welcome back to the Distributed Podcast. This is our first episode since, well, everything has changed for our lives, for our family and friends and for the way we work. A lot of folks have been using Distributed.blog as a resource for remote work and best practices, so we wanted to do everything we can to help folks out in the weeks and months to come and look for lots of updates to the website that are already happening. Today we are going to speak with Vanessa Van Edwards, an expert on public speaking who had to change the way she thought about her own work. And she also has some great tips for how we present ourselves in remote work as well. So without further ado, here is my chat with Vanessa. Welcome, Vanessa Van Edwards. VANESSA VAN EDWARDS: Thank you so much for having me. MATT: I’m very excited. And also, thank you for.. you were one of our featured speakers at the Grand Meetup. VANESSA: [laughs] Yes. MATT: So just to give some background to the listeners, once a year, Automattic would bring everyone together and we invite very few awesome speakers and Vanessa was one of them last year. VANESSA: It was such a lovely audience, too. I remember they actually gave me a standing ovation, which made me cry on stage. MATT: Well, thank you very much. And it was I think one of the earlier talks we had in the week so it ended up being fairly influential. Just to give a little bit of background for you though.. Now my understanding is you actually start
Thu, January 09, 2020
Episode 18: Jason Fried on Treating Workers Like Adults
Read more about Jason Fried in “ Working Smaller, Slower, and Smarter .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . For our first episode of the year, host Matt Mullenweg talks to Jason Fried, the CEO of Basecamp. Jason runs a semi-distributed company that’s been making project management software for 20 years. He’s accumulated a wealth of wisdom about how trusting employees and treating them with respect can yield long-term success. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy, howdy, and welcome to the Distributed podcast. I am your host, Matt Mullenweg, and I’m here with our first episode of 2020. Today’s guest is Jason Fried, the CEO of Basecamp, a semi-distributed company that’s been making project management tools for about 20 years now. Back in 2013, Jason wrote a book called Remote , which was an early manifesto for remote and distributed work models. I’m excited to catch up with him to hear about what he’s learned in the six years since that book came out and how Basecamp operates today. All righty. Let’s get started. MATT: Jason, I am so glad to connect today. JASON FRIED: Likewise. MATT: Basecamp, formerly known as 37signals, has been in so many ways an inspiration for Automattic over the years, and I’m sure countless other distributed companies, so thank you for that, first and foremost. JASON: Of course. And I would say likewise. I mean, you guys are even more distributed than us, so I feel like you’re the ideal situation where we’re getting there because we still have about 15 people in Chicago and we have an office that we’re maybe getting rid of, so we’re going to be following in your footsteps. MATT: Ah. So we had zero offices but then with the acquisition of Tumblr we’ve now got a space in New York again, so we’ve gone in the opposite direction. JASON: Ahh, right. That’s funny how we keep trading. Yeah. We’re not sure what we’re going to do but our lease ends in August so we’re thinking about moving on, as in moving on to nothing and then trying to do that for
Thu, December 26, 2019
Episode 17: Matt Mullenweg Reflects on Distributed Work in 2019
Read more of our 2019 takeaways in “ Eight Lessons from the Distributed Podcast So Far .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . To close out the year, our host Matt Mullenweg is joined once again by Automattic’s Mark Armstrong to discuss the state of distributed work as we transition into a new decade. Matt discusses his key takeaways from his 2019 conversations on the podcast, and reflects on his year as the CEO of a growing distributed company. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy, howdy. Here we are. We made it: the last episode of 2019. The finale of our first season of the Distributed podcast, with me, Matt Mullenweg. We’re currently in the thick of planning a fresh slate of episodes for next year. We’ve got the first female 4-star general in the U.S. Army, a guy who grew up in a family of Argentinian sheep ranchers and now runs a distributed blockchain company. Business leaders, thinkers… I’m really excited for next year overall. But December is also a great time to reflect. So that’s what we’re going to do now — reflect on some of the great conversations we had in 2019 and talk about where we think distributed work is headed in 2020. Today I’m joined once again by my colleague Mark Armstrong, who works on a bunch of editorial things at Automattic. He’s been very involved in developing this podcast from day one. MARK ARMSTRONG: Hey Matt, how’s it going? MATT: Pretty good, pretty good. It is the end of the year so it’s exciting. I’m actually on my support rotation this week so if anyone contacts WordPress.com support they might get me. MARK: Yeah, feel free to take a break from this interview to do some live chats if you need to jump in there. [laughter] Well, Matt, thanks again for having me on. I have been enjoying the podcast all year and I am curious to understand some of your takeaways from the interviews on this podcast. And also, it’s been a big year for Automattic itself, so [I’d like] to understand a little bit about how the changes at Automattic have changed how we work as well.</
Thu, December 12, 2019
Episode 16: Glitch CEO Anil Dash on Strengthening Values in a Distributed Startup
Read more about Anil Dash in “ To Remake Tech, Remake the Tech Company “ Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Anil Dash didn’t like the direction the web was going, so he joined a tech company that promised to take web development back to its indie roots. That company became Glitch, a semi-distributed company based in New York City. In this episode, Matt and Anil talk about the good old days of blogging and how the ideals of those pioneers inform the way Glitch treats its employees and its product. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: A lot of tech companies talk about prizing “people over profits,” but Glitch is a startup that is serious about these ideals, and holds itself publicly accountable for sustaining this commitment as the company grows. That’s partially because Glitch’s CEO is Anil Dash. Anil’s an old acquaintance of mine — he’s one of the early pioneers of blogging. Over the last twenty years he’s developed a reputation as something of a tech prophet — not just for predicting what’s going to happen next, but for holding the industry’s feet to the fire. Glitch is a partially-distributed company that runs a social platform for building and sharing web applications. To do that, they’ve developed a workplace environment that centers around employees’ well-being. I’m interested to hear from him how his company has aimed to go beyond platitudes and create a genuinely equitable and respectful workplace, and to learn where their semi-distributed structure fits into that goal. Alright, let’s get started. MATT: Anil, you have been blogging forever. ANIL DASH: [laughs] Roughly, yes. In geological time, it’s short, but in human years it’s 20 years. MATT: How did you start and what keeps you going? ANIL: People in my life were tired of hearing me rant about things. So they were like, “Go put it somewhere else.” [laughs] And at the time I had a really long commute. I was commuting by train an hour and a half each way. I mean it was really — it was
Tue, November 26, 2019
Episode 15: Inside the Grand Meetup
Read more about the Grand Meetup in “The Importance of IRL in a World of Screens.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . On this episode of the Distributed podcast, we get an insider’s look at the Grand Meetup, Automattic’s annual weeklong all-staff event, where employees have an opportunity to collaborate, learn from one another, and hang out face-to-face. Folks from across the company share what makes this gathering so special, talk about social cohesion in the context of a large distributed company, and reflect on what’s great (and what’s tough) about the distributed lifestyle. The full episode transcript is below. *** Mark Armstrong: Okay go. Josepha: The song that’s in my head right now is “Good morning. Good morning.” My name is Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I shouldn’t say it like a question. That is my name. My name is Josepha. Mark: Great to see you. Thank you for stopping by the Automattic podcast booth. Josepha what do you do with Automattic? Josepha: Great question. A little bit of everything. I am the lead of the .Organization Division, which is the division that supports and helps to guide a lot of our open-source work with the WordPress project itself. /// Mark: Who are you? Tell me your name. Aaron Douglas: My name is Aaron Douglas. I am a Mobile Wrangler for Automattic. My official job title is actually Chief Tater Tot Officer — I neglected to change that and it just stuck. I work on the WooCommerce mobile app as my primary thing, but everywhere around Automattic I try to help out where I can. /// Mark: OK. Here we are in the hallway again. What’s your name and what do you do at Automattic? Brandon Kraft: Hi, I’m Brandon Kraft. I’m a Code Wrangler working with our Jetpack plugin. /// Mark: What is your name? Sheri: Sheri Bigelow. Mark: And what do you do at Automattic? Sheri: I am an Excellence Wrangler. /// Rocío Valdivia: My name is Rocío Valdivia. I am from Spain and I’m a Community Wrangler at Automattic. /// Achaessa James: I’m Achaessa and I’m with the Legal team. ///
Thu, November 14, 2019
Episode 14: InVision CEO Clark Valberg on Distributed Design
Read more about Clark Valberg in “Building the Tools that Bring the Screen to Life.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . InVision CEO Clark Valberg needed a tool to help his distributed team collaborate on design projects. So he created it — and it became the company’s flagship product, one that every Fortune 100 company now uses. In this episode, Clark joins our host Matt Mullenweg to discuss how he built his distributed company, and how that structure informs InVision’s collaborative-design products. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy howdy. Welcome to the Distributed podcast. I’m your host, Matt Mullenweg. My guest this week is Clark Valberg, the founder and CEO of InVision, a company that makes a collaborative design platform that’s very popular with distributed teams. It does ideation, design, prototyping, sharing… and it all lives in the cloud. No more emailing files back and forth — it’s pretty slick. Clark founded the company seven years ago in Brooklyn, and now they have over 5 million users at places like Airbnb, Amazon, Netflix, Starbucks, and my company, Automattic. Like Automattic, InVision is fully distributed. And they’re similar to us in size, so I’m interested to hear from Clark about his experience leading and growing a distributed workforce. Alrighty. Let’s get started. MATT MULLENWEG: Welcome, Clark. CLARK VALBERG: Hey, great to be here. MATT: Y’all are one of the other big fully distributed companies. Tell me a little bit first about what InVision does for people in a cave who might not know yet. And tell me a little bit about the scale of what y’all are doing in the — CLARK: That was my opening to you, by the way. Oh y’all are one of the other largest remote companies. This is a constant debate, by the way, internally, which one is bigger. CLARK: Okay so Clark is the CEO and Founder of a company called InVision. InVision is a design collaborat
Thu, October 31, 2019
Episode 13: Attorney Lydia X. Z. Brown on Making Work More Accessible
Read more about Lydia X.Z. Brown in “Making Work Accessible, Wherever it Happens.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Because of their background in working with disabled and marginalized people, attorney and activist Lydia X. Z. Brown has a deep understanding of how different workplace environments can best serve diverse workforces. Today they join our host Matt Mullenweg to discuss what distributed companies can do to make workflows and working conditions more inclusive. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy howdy. Welcome to the Distributed podcast. I’m your host, Matt Mullenweg. Today’s guest is Lydia X. Z. Brown, who is a… well, Lydia wears many, many hats — we’ll get to that in a minute. Lydia once gave a talk for Automattic about disability inclusion, and today we’re going to continue that conversation. Lydia spent much of their life feeling left out, and they’ve dedicated their career to advocating for marginalized folks of all kinds. As the CEO of a distributed company, I’m curious to know more about how we can make the hundreds of Automatticians across the world more comfortable at work, and I know Lydia will have some insightful thoughts to share about that. Okay. Let’s get started. MATT MULLENWEG: Hey Lydia. LYDIA X. Z. BROWN: Hi Matt. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. MATT: You are a multi-hyphenate. It says here you’re a writer-advocate-organizer-strategist-educator-speaker and attorney. How did all those things come to be for you? LYDIA: I have believed from a very young age that every single one of us has a moral obligation to use whatever resources we have — time, money, knowledge, skills, emotional energy, access to physical resources — however that might be defined — that we each have a moral obligation to use those resources in service of justice, and fighting against injustice and oppression and violence in all of its forms, structural and individual, subtle and overt. And since
Thu, October 17, 2019
Episode 12: Toptal’s Taso Du Val on Finding the Top Distributed Talent
Read more about Taso Du Val in “Inside Toptal’s Distributed Screening Process.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . When hiring managers interview a candidate for a high-level role, they want to be sure that the person they choose will be productive and able to work well with their prospective team. But what if the hiring process takes place over video chat? A growing number of companies outsource the vetting process to a company like Toptal, a freelance marketplace. Toptal’s CEO Taso Du Val joins us on this episode of the Distributed podcast, with Matt Mullenweg. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy. My name is Matt Mullenweg, and I run a company called Automattic, with over 950 employees distributed across over 70 countries. We’re growing quickly, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how the company is going to find the very best people. Since our team leads might never meet a far-flung applicant face to face until well after they’ve been hired, our hiring process has to be comprehensive, so sometimes it can be a little bit of a slow and long process. But what if you need to hire top talent quickly? What if you need a world-class project manager on a short-term basis, and you don’t have time to rigorously vet a bunch of applicants or set them up on a payroll platform? Well, you might turn to Toptal, a freelance marketplace that aims to provide companies with a fully-vetted pool of talent that represents the top 3 percent of their network’s applicants. Toptal’s CEO, Taso Du Val, joins me today to talk about how he built his company, which happens to be distributed all over the world, and about how current approaches to recruitment are undergoing a major sea change. Let’s get started. MATT: All right, we are here today on the latest episode of Distributed with Matt Mullenweg, and we have CEO and Founder of Toptal, Taso Du Val. Welcome very much. TASO DU VAL: Thank you, Matt, for having me. MATT: Just for listeners who might not know what Toptal — do you mind
Thu, October 03, 2019
Stephen Wolfram on 28 Years of Remote Work
Read more about Stephen Wolfram in “The Machine that Turns Ideas into Real Things.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Stephen Wolfram started out on an academic career path, but eventually realized that founding a company would allow him to pursue his scientific work more efficiently. He’s served as a remote CEO of Wolfram Research for the last 28 years. In this episode, Stephen shares with host Matt Mullenweg — another remote CEO — his perspective on the value of geo-distribution, and the processes his partially-distributed company uses to make world-changing software. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy, howdy. Welcome to the Distributed podcast. I’m your host, Matt Mullenweg. I got the chance to catch up with today’s guest, Stephen Wolfram, because my company Automattic invited him to give a talk at our annual company meetup in Orlando, Florida. This is a magical occasion where all 950+ Automatticians (which is what we call ourselves) get together to meet up face-to-face. This gives us an opportunity to hang out, break bread, and collaborate over the course of a few days. We also invite a number of speakers, smart people like Stephen. Stephen’s been leading Wolfram Research for 32 years, which is a really long time for a tech CEO. The company has pioneered a lot of different technologies in computation and education. Wolfram Research has about 850 employees, many of whom are scattered across 29 countries, so it’s pretty close in size to Automattic. But Stephen’s been doing the remote CEO thing for way longer than I have — about 28 years! So naturally I wanted to pick his brain, which is an amazing brain, on why he chose to go the partially-distributed route, and learn about how he’s led his company remotely for longer than just about anybody. Alright. Let’s get started. MATT: Welcome. This is Distributed with Matt Mullenweg, and today we have Stephen Wolfram, who is the Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, known for things such as Mathematica, an amazing tome called A New Kind
Thu, September 19, 2019
Automattic’s Sonal Gupta on Communication and Chaos
Read more about Sonal Gupta in “Welcome to the Chaos.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Sonal Gupta leads Automattic’s Other Bets division, a team that builds products that aren’t yet core to Automattic’s business, but keep the company innovating and pushing it to explore new territory. In this episode, Sonal and our host Matt Mullenweg talk about how important communication is in the organized chaos of a fully distributed company. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Howdy howdy. I’m Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, and the co-founder of WordPress. Automattic is the company that makes WordPress.com and a bunch of other things. At Automattic we have a division called Other Bets, which encompasses a host of experimental projects that aren’t directly related to our core business. When we started thinking about this department, I knew we needed a renaissance person to lead it — with a background in legal, finance, and entrepreneurship, Sonal Gupta is just such a person. Sonal’s been with the company for coming up on three years, and I wanted to get some time on the calendar to talk to her about what made her want to work for a distributed company, what she likes about it, and what she finds challenging. Alright, let’s get started with Sonal. MATT: Today we’re going to go inside a company I know a little bit more about — Automattic, which is a company I founded in 2005. Today, Automattic has over 850 employees working from 68 countries. So to understand better how Automattic works, I’m joined by one of my colleagues, Sonal Gupta. Thank you so much for joining today, Sonal. SONAL GUPTA: Thanks for having me. MATT: She is the lead for what we call the Other Bets Division, a name we borrowed a little shamelessly from Alphabet, which oversees a number of different emerging businesses, including our latest bet, which is focused on tools that power our distributed work model, Happy.tools. Sonal is both a tech founder and a lawyer. She joined Automattic two years ago as a legal counsel
Thu, September 05, 2019
Author Scott Berkun on Managing Distributed Teams with Respect
Read more about Scott Berkun in “ Observe, Don’t Surveil: Managing Distributed Teams with Respect .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Scott Berkun wrote the book on distributed teams. Literally. He spent a couple of years at Automattic and wrote about his experience as a manager in a distributed company. In this episode, Scott talks about that experience, discusses how things have changed since, and explains how today’s managers can cultivate a shared vision in a distributed team. The full episode transcript is below. *** Matt Mullenweg: I want for you to imagine that you’ve been hired as a manager at a scrappy startup where there are no meetings, no hierarchy — not even an office. How do you make people feel like they’re part of a team? How do you brainstorm, and how do you make sure the work’s getting done? Is it possible to cultivate a shared vision, structure, and goals by only meeting in person twice a year? That’s what Scott Berkun faced nine years ago, when I hired him to join a little company called Automattic, which is the parent company of WordPress.com, which I founded in 2005. As you know from listening to this podcast, Automattic is fully distributed, with no central office and more than 900 employees working from 68 countries. When Scott joined us, we were quite a bit smaller, we were using IRC instead of Slack, and there was a lot that we were still figuring out. Scott wrote a book about his experience at Automattic called The Year Without Pants , and since then he’s written a whole bunch of books about management, culture, and how we work. Today he’s a sought-after speaker on creativity and innovation. I caught up with Scott in Seattle to talk about his experience at Automattic, and everything he’s learned since then. Has the future of work panned out like we first imagined it? Matt: We used to work together, actually. SCOTT BERKUN: We did used to work together. I used to work for you. [laughs] Matt: Well let’s talk a little bit about how that happened, because that was an interesting
Thu, August 22, 2019
Automattic’s Cate Huston on Building Distributed Engineering Teams
Read more about Cate Huston in “ How to Build and Strengthen Distributed Engineering Teams .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Cate Huston is the Head of Developer Experience at Automattic, where her team is responsible for hiring, onboarding, and retaining some of the best software engineers in the world. In this episode, Cate talks with Matt about what kinds of people thrive on distributed engineering teams, and how team leads can keep their engineers happy, productive, and connected to their colleagues. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: There are all sorts of approaches to distributed work. Some people work from home or at a café in their neighborhood. Others are digital nomads. I’m Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, and I travel around 300 days out of the year. I appreciate that I get to spend time with my family in Texas, but I love life on the road too, and being able to hang out with friends and colleagues all over the world, and meet WordPress users wherever they might be. One of the nice things about running a fully-distributed company is that even the CEO gets to be just as remote as everyone else. Today’s guest is Cate Huston, who is a true digital nomad. All she needs is a cup of tea and a place to set up her laptop and she’s ready to go. Her home base is the city of Cork, in Ireland, but you’re just as likely to find her in any other corner of the globe. Just because Cate is always moving doesn’t mean she has trouble staying connected. Her role at Automattic requires her to be in close contact with her team, and it’s her job to help make sure that all of her fellow engineers stay connected, too. After leading several engineering teams at places like Google and others, Cate became the Head of Developer Experience at Automattic, a team responsible for helping all our engineers at Automattic stay engaged, productive, and professionally fulfilled. I knew we had to talk to Cate on this podcast because she lives out the distributed model so fully. She also has a comprehensive point of view on what kinds of engineers excel in
Thu, August 08, 2019
Leadership Coach Leo Widrich on Emotional Wellness for Distributed Workers
Read more about Leo Widrich in “ How to Stay Connected in a Distributed World .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . Leo Widrich co-founded Buffer, the social media management software company, in 2010. But like many founders, the frantic pace and daily stresses of startup life caught up to him. After spending a couple of years in a Buddhist monastery studying mindfulness and learning to build emotional resilience, Leo now coaches other business leaders. In this episode, Leo shares tips for distributed workers on how to build healthy habits and avoid the “loneliness spiral.” The full episode transcript is below. *** Matt Mullenweg: Imagine starting a company with your buddy, turning it into a multibillion dollar business, and offering a service used by brands all over the world, and then walking away from it all to live in a monastery. That’s exactly what this week’s guest did. We’re going to hear all about why he did it. With the startup Buffer, Leo Widrich has achieved success by any measure. But something was missing. His dissatisfaction with the lifestyle led him to pursue deeper truths that he came to realize cannot be found in the pursuit of material success. Leo studied Buddhism. He spent some time living with monks, and learned to appreciate an intentionally slow lifestyle. Now, he coaches entrepreneurs and even other coaches with the goal of helping them manage the stresses of their careers with a combination of ancient wisdom and a sprinkling of modern neuroscience. He wants people to learn how to build emotional resilience, and the ability to self-regulate their emotions so they can deal with their issues and avoid the full-scale burnout that he suffered. Buffer is a remote company, so it’s clear that Leo has a passion for unconventional work arrangements. However, he’s extremely sensitive to potential emotional and psychological pitfalls associated with working from home. In this episode, I learn about the loneliness spiral, what can happen if you don’t exercise your social engagement circuits through regular social contact, and Leo shares a few tools that we can use to care better for ourselves and the people we work with. </st
Thu, July 25, 2019
Design leader John Maeda on how to foster creative collaboration on distributed teams
Read more about John Maeda in “ Helping Creativity Happen from a Distance .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . John Maeda has spent the last three years leading Automattic’s design team, and on this episode of the Distributed podcast, he reflects on what he’s learned with our host, Matt Mullenweg. John shares how to facilitate collaborative creativity across a distributed team, explains why smart managers blog (and vlog) prolifically, and discusses how giving and receiving feedback with a spirit of gratitude, humility, and empathy is essential for managers, especially in a distributed context. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG : What did real-time remote collaboration look like 30 years ago, in the primitive era before Slack and Zoom? My guest on this episode of the Distributed podcast knows, because he was there. Designer, author, and Automattician John Maeda spent the latter half of the 90s pioneering a new field called computational design at the MIT Media Lab, a legendary sandbox for researchers who wanted to explore and create the future of tech. Computational design was a bold new approach that applied design principles to the creation of hardware, software, and computer networks, and John helped define it from the beginning. By 1999, John had developed enough of a reputation for Esquire magazine to name him one of the 21 most important people of the 21st century. Wired magazine once said that “Maeda is to design what Warren Buffett is to finance.” My company, Automattic, has been lucky to have John working with us for the last few years, and he will be moving to Publicis soon. He’s been leading a team of 70 designers scattered all over the world, and before he left, I wanted to talk to him about what that’s like, so I’m thrilled that he’s able to join me for a discussion about creative collaboration at a distance. We are here today with John Maeda, who leads what might be the largest all-distributed design teams, or at least that we know of. He is the author of three books, The Laws of Simplicity , which is actually what introduced
Thu, July 11, 2019
Upwork’s Zoe Harte and Han Yuan on Managing People and Products in a Distributed Company
Read more about Zoe Harte in “ How to do HR in a Blended Company ” and about Han Yuan in “ Engineering with Empathy .” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . On today’s episode, two leaders at Upwork share how they do distributed. First up is Zoe Harte, Upwork’s Head of Human Resources and Talent Innovation, who speaks about her experience of overseeing a blended team of full-time and freelance employees. Then, I talk to Han Yuan, Upwork’s Senior VP of Engineering, who shares insights on the “soft” skills engineers need to work effectively in a distributed world. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Back in June we had the pleasure of speaking with Stephane Kasriel , the CEO of Upwork, the world’s largest freelance marketplace. Stephane laid out a compelling case for the distributed model as a way for talent-starved companies in expensive, crowded cities to do business with workers who live in places with comparatively sluggish economies. But Upwork’s not just thinking about this in theoretical terms: they practice what they preach, with a distributed workforce of their own. In this episode, we’ll talk to two Upwork employees from two very different practice areas who give us glimpses of how their company does distributed. First up is Zoe Harte, Upwork’s Head of Human Resources and Talent Innovation. Upwork’s legal, finance, and even HR departments are a blended mix of full-time and freelance employees scattered across dozens of countries and cultures. Zoe helped to grow the company’s workforce by 75 percent over the last six years, giving her a world-class perspective on how to expand and maintain fluid, flexible teams. After a great conversation with Zoe, I speak with Han Yuan, Upwork’s Senior VP of Engineering. Han gives us an inside look at how his team’s diversity of culture and thought becomes a powerful asset. He says this diversity fosters curiosity and allows the company to tap into a wide array of perspectives and experie
Thu, June 27, 2019
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on building a fully distributed company
Read Matt’s history of Automattic: “On Building Automattic.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . On today’s episode, Automattic editor Mark Armstrong interviews our usual host Matt Mullenweg to discuss the history of the company and how its distributed culture emerged from conditions that many startups face. They go deep on the tools and processes Automattic has developed to keep everyone connected, even if they’re scattered across the globe. The full episode transcript is below. *** Mark Armstrong: Hi everybody. Thanks for joining the Distributed podcast. I’m not Matt Mullenweg, I’m Mark Armstrong. I’m the founder of Longreads, which is part of Automattic, and I’m on the editorial team working with Matt on the Distributed Podcast. So today I wanted to take a step back from the interviews Matt’s been doing and find some context for how Matt got here in the first place, how he became interested in distributed work, and it all starts with the history of Automattic. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk to Matt about how he got here, how he actually decided to build a company that had no offices, and what worked and what didn’t. Thanks for listening. Now where are you right now? Matt Mullenweg: I’m actually in San Francisco, California. Mark: And I am in Seattle. This is basically how we record this podcast for people who are remote. We have a Zoom connection, we use GarageBand, a tool called Zencastr, and we put it all together and it sounds like we are having this intimate conversation right next to each other. But this is a very good symbol of how distributed work has changed and the technology has changed. Matt: Yes. Mark: So take me through the very beginnings of Automattic and how you ended up with a distributed work model in the first place. Matt: Well at the very beginning I had moved from Houston to San Francisco, actually, to take a job with CNET Networks. And they were actually an early adopter of WordPress. So they offered me a job as a product manager to drop out of college in Houston. I drove across the country with my mom and got a lit
Thu, June 13, 2019
VC Arianna Simpson on Distributed Work and the Blockchain
Read more about Arianna Simpson in “Is Remote Work Bull***t?” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “Remote Work is Bull***t.” When venture capitalist Arianna Simpson tweeted this opinion, she never could have guessed the massive response she would receive. In this episode, Arianna has a chance to clarify her thoughts on remote work. Then she explains how “programmable money” on the blockchain could lead to a new world of smart contracts and distributed work arrangements. The full episode transcript is below. *** MATT MULLENWEG: Back in March, Arianna Simpson tweeted an offhand remark that went crazy viral. “Unpopular Opinion: Remote work is mostly bullshit.” Arianna had no idea that thousands of people would like the tweet, and hundreds would weigh in with their thoughts, some pushing back, others hailing the blunt honesty of her “unpopular opinion.” As a true believer in distributed work, I naturally had to get in touch with Arianna when I saw the tweet. Arianna is an early stage investor, with close to 40 investments to date, many of which deal with the blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. I wanted to find out: How is it that someone, who knows so much about distributed software that’s created among globally- distributed teams, has such a pessimistic view of distributed work? It turns out, as it often does, that Arianna’s thoughts on distributed work are more nuanced than her tweet might lead you to believe. We discuss her reservations with remote work, we cover some of the things that traditional office arrangements are really good at providing workers, and we explore how companies can give their employees the best of both worlds with a hybrid model. But things really get cooking when we started talking about how the blockchain could one day be used by distributed companies to pay workers in far-flung locations with stablecoins that are pegged to a traditional currency. When money becomes programmable, all kinds of interesting contracts and financial arrangements open up, making it easier than e
Thu, May 30, 2019
Pluto VR Cofounder John Vechey on the Virtual Office
Read more about John Vechey in “For Years, VR Promised to Replace the Office. Could It Really Happen Now?” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “A new form of communication” After leading PopCap Games to a successful exit, cofounder John Vechey started Pluto VR to help humanity transcend physical location through a virtual reality chat app. In this episode, John explains how VR might be used in distributed workplaces to enable people to have high fidelity meetings that capture the nuances of human conversations. The full episode transcript is below. *** Matt Mullenweg: We’ve been hearing about virtual reality since the late ’80s, but this technology still hasn’t yet leapt from the pages of science fiction into our universe—at least not into the mainstream. The VR revolution seems to be always just around the corner, but some people believe that we really are on the verge of something that’s going to change everyone’s lives. John Vechey, cofounder of Pluto VR, is one of those people. He’s specifically interested in how VR is going to change the way we communicate. John found success as the founder of PopCap Games–you may know them as the folks behind your favorite mobile games like Bejeweled or Plants vs. Zombies. After selling PopCap, he transitioned into virtual communications. I wanted to speak with John because he’s got some big ideas about how VR will one day be used for work. Pluto VR is building a communication platform that will allow people with VR headsets to talk to each other in a way that feels far more immersive than a phone call or a video chat. His goal is to seamlessly recreate the experience of speaking with someone face-to-face, with shared presence and context. He wants remote conversations to have more fidelity, so they can capture the nuances and subtleties of communication that humans are used to experiencing. If distributed work is going to take off, we’re going to need really good communication tools. But how realistic is it to assume that we can have virtual offices that are so lifelike and useful that they replace physical ones? Are we really anywhere near
Thu, May 16, 2019
Upwork’s Stephane Kasriel on Fixing the American Dream
Read more about Stephane Kasriel in “The American Dream Is Broken, and I Think We Have a Shot at Fixing It.” Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen . “The American Dream is Broken, and I think we have a shot at fixing it.” Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork , thinks that most work, as we think of it today, is in need of an overhaul. In this episode, Stephane explains how changing the way we think about work can simultaneously give workers freedom and flexibility, enable companies to operate more efficiently, and revitalize local economies all over the world. He also shares tips on how companies can make smart moves toward a distributed work model. The full episode transcript is below. *** Matt: To start off, say your name and how long you’ve been here, just so people have a sense of you. And then we’ll talk. Stephane: Sure. So my name is Stephane Kasriel, I’m the CEO of Upwork. I joined the company close to seven years ago. Initially I was running product management and design and then when our head of engineering left, I became the head of product management, design and engineering. And then a couple years later, when the CEO left, I got promoted and became the CEO of the company. And that was about four years ago. Matt: Awesome. How big is Upwork? How should people think of it? Stephane: You know, that’s a great question, how big it is it depends if you define it by employees or everybody in the workforce. There’s about fifteen hundred people who work at the company, about four hundred of them are full time employees of Upwork Inc., the company, and they mostly work in one of our three offices in the U.S. We have an office in Chicago, we have an office in the South Bay — in Mountain View, and then we have an office in San Francisco. But then we have another eleven hundred or so people that are what we would call freelancers and they work from home — they work from about five hundred different cities in the world, which is pretty impressive. Matt: That’s a lot of cities. Stephane: I’m not sure I can name five hundred cities in the world, so that’s a
Wed, May 15, 2019
A new podcast, 15 years in the making.
I created a company with no offices. Now it's time to share what I've learned. More Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RSS , or wherever you like to listen .
loading...