A few weeks back, I took a day off to go camping with my family. I am pretty used to working on the road while traveling in my RV with my family, but it was my intention to be completely offline for this particular outing. I had one message to send to someone before I…
I’m in Singapore for a work trip and am really enjoying the food. The breakfast buffet at the hotel is fantastic with a stellar spread of amazing fruit every morning. The dragon fruit is underwhelming, to be frank, I expected it to be sweet and delicious but it’s bland and sort of boring. The waiter…
The last time I had a milestone at Automattic I was too busy on my sabbatical to write about the anniversary but it’s been a year and here I am. Six years on February 6th! Wow. And what a year. I got a new awesome laptop. This usually happens at around four years but I didn’t need…
Ever since I started at Automattic, the Dvorak keyboard layout has been lurking in the background. Matt Mullenweg wrote a great post about Dvorak so I won’t go into the history. You can also read this zine for a quick explanation. Basically, it’s a keyboard layout that puts the keys into different positions so it’s easier to type. Allegedly. I’ll give…
Since I started working with the hiring team at Automattic we’ve had a consistent focus on hiring Happiness Engineers all over the world. At times, we’ve even focused our recruiting efforts in specific areas like Spain, Argentina, and Brazil. Over the last few years, we’ve noticed that without intentional efforts, we just don’t get as many…
When I talk to people about Automattic, remote work is often a topic of conversation. And along with that usually comes some version of my personal story: my kids are homeschooled, I work from home 100% of my time, we spend an insane number of months traveling in a motorhome, etc, etc. How *do* you…
Having worked in customer support for over 5 years, I’m always noticing good or bad experiences with support staff out in the world. Spoiler alert: We had an amazing experience at the Jayco Motorhome Factory yesterday. Here’s the story. Some time ago we noticed a bump under the linoleum in the kitchen area of our…
