This post is part of a series of posts describing what we do on a daily basis at Automattic. If you’re interested in reading more you can follow the tag #a8cday.
I am often asked what a typical day at Automattic looks like. My answer? Usually that there is no such thing as typical. Every day is different. And that’s what I love about it.
In many ways today was just like yesterday with a few edits here and there.
I was up at 6am today and made the mistake of turning on my laptop and opening our internal communication apps before I got my coffee. Before I knew it I found myself in a conversation with the hiring team about team assignments and wrangling schedules for leading a new Happiness Engineer trial.
Then I chatted with a coworker about her day in a life blog post.
I was getting a bit shaky by the time I realized it was just about time for an interview with a potential HE. No worries, quick cup of coffee later and I was all set and ready to go.
After the interview was done, I read up on news and updates on our internal blogs, replied to a few things, and it was time for a break.
Kids weren’t up yet so I took the rare opportunity to chat with my husband in the relative silence.
When I got back to work I worked through a few tasks:
- a conversation about our training program to gather feedback on our first run through
- an anniversary greeting for a coworker
- a preliminary email to a trial with info on weekly checkin times
Around noon a friend of mine stopped by with her kids. Which obviously meant it was time for more coffee and some lunch.
My afternoon looked like this:
- ticket reviews for trials
- scheduling appointments for checkins and interviews
- quick break to look at a spider in a plant in front of our house. Said spider caught an ant and was wrapping it up. The kids were fascinated and insisted I come out to see it. Impromptu science class 😉
- checked in with a Happiness Engineer I haven’t chatted with for a while.
And with that I called it a day. Another day in the life of a Happiness Engineer.
Karen Alma 