Tag: interviews

July 6, 2021

Nicereply Podcast Interview

Craig Stoss and the folks at Nicereply had me on their podcast to talk about how we hire in support at Automattic. The episode’s a nice, focused 20-minute conversation about our hiring approach and philosophy. I’m a big fan of these short, specific podcast conversations; not everything has to be 60+ minutes!

One of our quirkier (yet highly effective!) practices is text interviews, which I wrote about earlier this year. Craig and I talk about that and more. If you’re interested in distributed teams, hiring practices, or any mix of the two, give the episode a listen.

And, of course, Automattic’s actively hiring in all manner of roles.

November 25, 2018

Support Operations Webinar

At Automattic we recently started building a support operations team. We’re wrapping up hiring for a Director-level position and will add a handful of roles within the team after that. Formalizing this work will help us strengthen many of the behind-the-scenes processes that power our support. It’s been a great learning process to go through as well.

Later this week I’m joining the fine folks at Help Scout along with pros from SmugMug and FreshBooks to chat about how we’ve built our various operations teams. We’ll cover how we structure our teams, why we started building them, and more. It should be a great conversation!

You can find all the details for the webinar on Help Scout’s site. It’ll also be recorded, so if you can’t make it live they’ll send you the recording if you sign up.

February 10, 2017

https://vimeo.com/198408049

5QCX: Recruit & Retain The Best Talent. A few weeks back I did a short interview with the folks at Directly about our Happiness team at Automattic. We talked about how we hire for support and how the team operates.

July 22, 2016

Robert Caro Wonders What New York Is Going To Become

I gradually came to understand that because [Robert Moses] had done this thing, that no one else had ever done, gotten all this power without being elected, if I could find out how he did it and explain how he did it, I would be explaining something that no one else understood and I thought they really should understand, which is, how does power really work in cities? Not what we’re taught in textbooks, but what’s the raw, bottom, naked essence of real power?

Robert Caro Wonders What New York Is Going To Become.

June 2, 2015

Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man

A few days later, I found myself in pajama pants, pacing frantically around my apartment, on the phone with Elon Musk. We had a discussion about Tesla, SpaceX, the automotive and aerospace and solar power industries, and he told me what he thought confused people about each of these things.

Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man – part one of a series of posts Tim Urban has queued up about Elon Musk and his various projects. Part 2, focused on Tesla, is already in my Instapaper list.

May 22, 2015

Interview with Brunello Cucinelli. Om’s interview with the “king of cashmere.” There are really interesting perspectives on life, business, and seeking balance throughout the interview. And, if you’re not already following Pico I highly recommend it.

May 10, 2014

The Rumpus Interview with Astra Taylor:

It wasn’t that people wanted things for free and asked for advertising to fund it—it’s that these companies wanted to amass an audience whose “eyeballs” they could sell, and they gave people things for free to do that. Free services and content has been foisted upon us because there wasn’t the will power to explore other options.

Her new book sounds fascinating as well.

November 29, 2013

The Great Discontent: Merlin Mann:

When we mythologize ourselves, we tend to amplify the things that turned out okay and try to turn the failures or lack of success into something we learned from. You can do anything to make your life look really grand. It’s a shame that so many people find it difficult to do the things they’d like to do because they feel cowed by seemingly successful people who appear to never do anything wrong, or always learn from their mistakes. That just rings as a lot of B.S. and self-mythology to me.

September 5, 2013

The Great Discontent: Frank Chimero. An interview with Frank Chimero about work, design, and what motivates you. I really enjoyed this line from the interview:

I guess that means that design must talk about something else. If you make design about design, you’re just stacking bowls, and that’s not what bowls are for.

May 17, 2013

Hiring Engineers, a Process. The tips for successful interviews are particularly interesting. I also like the way Eran summed it up at the end with:

A job interview goes both ways. We interview you, and you interview us. We want great talent and respect is the first step.