Celebrating 2 years at Automattic

Today is a really cool day because it marks my 2 year anniversary at Automattic.

In many many ways… it still feels like I just started a few months ago. I still feel so new in that I’m always learning and have brilliant challenges ahead of me. In other ways, I feel like I’ve grown leaps and bounds knowledge-wise. Things that I always thought were way too hard to learn (I’m looking at you, domains!! lol), somehow are second nature now.

So I thought I’d throw myself a little GIF party and also take a moment to share 3 of my favorite stats.

 

12,000 interactions

Since I’ve started this journey at Automattic I’ve had 12,000 interactions with the users of WordPress.com. That’s thousands of websites of captivating writers, brilliant artists, fascinating points of views and super cool projects, I just feel so humbled and privileged that I get to help these people every single day with their sites. At the end of the day, these past two years have been about each of those users and enabling them to share their ideas and thoughts with the world.

0 days

The number of days I’ve spent in a physical company office. ZERO!

I’ve been remotely working at Automattic and I have never even seen one of our offices or what we call The Lounge. Not once. No long commutes. No 9am to 5pm chained to a desk (unless I’d like to work those hours). I work remotely from wherever in the world I am, 100% of the time. Usually, I work from home, some days I stop by a coffee shop or a coworking spot.

Actually one of these days I look forward to making the trek to San Francisco just so I can finally see our de facto headquarters.

93,673 words

A big part of remote work is communication and lots of it.

At Automattic, one of the main ways we do this is by using p2s. A p2 is WordPress site/blog using the p2 theme. You can make a p2 post about anything (an upcoming change, an idea, an update to your schedule, sharing a bug report, etc.) and then anyone in the company can comment on that p2. We have over 400 p2s used across teams, projects, and interests. That’s a lot of information!

In the past 2 years I’ve made 240 p2 posts and 834 comments, for a total of 93,673 words.

I’m naturally a very shy person, but one of the main things I’ve learned at Automattic is to communicate and do it often. It’s easier for me to do this in written form, so I think it’s incredibly inclusive that this route enables everyone in the company has a voice.

By sharing your workflow, your schedule,  something new you learned that you couldn’t find documentation for, you’re allowing everyone to learn alongside you. So write about your experiences and share!

No Regrets

The past two years have been amazing.

I’m working alongside some brilliant people. I learn from them every single day. So thank you to each of my coworkers. Yes, if you’re reading this, I mean you too. You are amazing and I’m so thankful that I know you.

I couldn’t adore my teammates more. I’m beyond happy with the leadership at Automattic and the culture they’re fostering. Everyone has been nothing but generous and kind to me.

I’m super excited about what the future holds and seeing WordPress grow even more. To many more years!

*The Picture attached to the beginning of this blog post, is a picture I took on my first day working for Automattic. I couldn’t believe I got to stay home and make my own schedule. Sometimes I still don’t believe it.