One Month In

It is amazing how fast this past month has gone by. I had to look back on my blog to double check to see if it had really been a full month. It was really was June 1st that I started in my role as a team lead and here we are at June 30th and almost the end of the day.

There have been a number of times during this month where I have felt way over my head. The group of leads at Automattic are such a smart and dynamic group, like the company as a whole, impostor syndrome has kicked me pretty hard at times. What business do I have being associated with these folks? To prove how awesome they are, and rub it in a bit more, they have also all been extremely supportive and assure they went through the same thing. My previous lead Zandy has been so helpful to me moving into this role and sharing so much good information and her knowledge from her experience.

When it comes to interacting with the team I’m on directly I feel pretty confident. They make things pretty easy and I enjoy being able to interact and talk with each member. Most of the stress comes from me trying to figure out how to organize my time. What is the best things I can be doing to support the team? Then when it comes to working with the group of leads, despite their support, I’m still lacking confidence to contribute a lot in this front. Most of the chats I’ve been on with them involve me being pretty silent and just taking it all in.

The past few days especially seem as though they can be a turning point for me though. They days have gone very smooth and I’ve been feeling on top of things. A big part I’m sure is just time, I’ve been at this a month now, but yesterday I went back to really analyzing my time and how I’m spending it. It forced me to think about my day in advance and then I track at a pretty granular level how I’ve been spending my time. I’m still not sure I am using my time as best I can, but I have a good picture of where my time is going and I’ll continue doing this for a while more. From there I can work on making sure I’m spending my time where I’ll have the most impact.

I won’t go into all the details but I thought I’d give a run down of what my day was like today.

Typically I start my day fairly early. This morning it was about 6:15 am when I first signed on. I started by getting caught up on things that had happened over night from when I last checked on things. Typically this is reading only, I don’t usually respond to anything just read things over. Then I take a break for a bit to grab breakfast and coffee.

7:30 am is when I had myself scheduled to do a session of live chat. When chat was quieter I would also work answering questions in our mobile app support. Always lots to do! I had scheduled for 2.5 hours but I ended up on for just about 3 all together. I love that I’m still able to provide direct support to our users. For one it is something I’m comfortable doing so it is a good confident boost when some of the other things I’m not so sure on yet. Plus I get to have comments like this one I received this morning.

You are a life saver Sandy

After a quick break and more coffee I went into start preparing to have a one on one with a team mate. I reviewed things we talked about last time and the goals they were working on. Double checked to see where they were in working towards them. From there we went right into the meeting. The chat was really enjoyable and we had a good conversation.

Last night I had been sent a request to provide a bit of feedback on one of the team. So my next task was to get that done. It was at this point where I figured I was on the right path. The feedback came pretty easily because I knew them pretty well. I knew what they were working on and where they were in the process.

From there I took another short break to get more coffee, do you see a trend here yet? Thanks to my flexible schedule I was then able to take my oldest to an orthodontist appointment. While I was there I was able to spend some time getting caught back up in slack conversations. The appointment ran a bit longer than I thought so it became clear I was going to be late for a lead chat that was scheduled. I let the rest of the group know that I would end up being late. My lead Andrew tells me not to worry if I can’t join and to take care of family stuff, which is extremely comforting, but I really did want to attend as well. As it ended up I made it back home pretty quick and was only a few minutes late.

Once were done there I took a bit of time to do some organization. There were some things I needed to add to my todo list from the chat so did that and organized some other tasks and added some reminders to my calendar.

Took another break to grab some food and give my teeth a good cleaning because it was time for me to go to my own dentist appointment. It seems the past couple weeks it’s been dentist season in my house. The kids all had cleanings and some then had follow up appointments. We have the orthodontist appointments, and I was having some serious pain. Heat really bothers it so I’ve been making and drinking iced coffee instead. Earlier this week I had a checkup and then was scheduled in today for a root canal. I’ll take this time to say how thankful I am for the benefits plan Automattic provides as well or else I’m pretty sure between the dentist and orthodontist they would own my house by now.

Before I had to leave for the appointment I had a bit of time so I started in on watching a recording of one of the Leadership Workshops that co-worker Simon has setup and organized. This one was on Thinking Like a Founder by Chris Hardie. I didn’t get to finish it then but after my appointment I came home and took one of my daughters to their dance class. While she was there I went to the cafe where I could bot drink a hot coffee again and finish off the leadership session.

This evening I hopped back on to write up a few posts to get feedback from the team on that were followups from the lead chat earlier. So I spread the day out a bit, but I had a couple breaks in there for the appointments which is the great part about having a flexible schedule. Thinking about the day and month in general led me to send this tweet earlier.

The downfall of tweets though is that it is hard to get the full story, so that’s what inspired me to write down the post showing some of the reasons I’m so thankful for my job and just some of the things that make it so great.

If you’ve been here before you probably already know how I’m going to end this off. We’re hiring!

Wapuu Face Painting

This weekend we’ve been celebrating my nephew Gavin turning one year old! We started the day at Ross Farm Museum to get together with a bunch of friends. It lined up perfectly with our annual tradition of planting pumpkins which we can then come back later in the year to pick up.

As I’ve mentioned before our family likes Wapuu. When we first arrived both my niece Kaitlyn and I were wearing our Wapuunk t-shirts. I hadn’t worn mine in a while but figured a kids birthday party was a good time to break out a fun shirt like that. I guess Katie agreed with me 🙂

Later that night we got together again for a BBQ and backyard fire at my sisters house. Alexandria has a few face painting jobs coming up so she asked if she could bring along her paints to get some practice in. She didn’t bring any designs just asked the kids each what they wanted. Katie choose to get Wapuunk! Alex did a great job, if it hadn’t been getting close to time to leave I would have gotten one too so we really matched.

A New Role

The past few months for me at Automattic have been simply out of this world. In December I let myself get into a little rut and had concentrated myself almost exclusively on providing support in our Mobile apps. I would spend just about my full day there everyday without a lot of interaction from my peers. It was then I decided I needed to mix things up a little bit.

It started with me doing a rotation to another team. January and February are typically some of our busiest months so I waited until close to the end of February to start. For two months I was able to experience working with another team and supporting other products that I wasn’t very familiar with, VaultPress and Jetpack, with the most focus on VaultPress. They are excellent products for WordPress used to help bring some of the security and features which we offer on WordPress.com to self hosted versions of WordPress. During these two months I learned so much about these products and just about another aspect of Automattic I didn’t have a lot of connection to previously.

Pretty much right when I started my rotation I also offered to help organize my home teams upcoming meetup and project we would work on while we were there. To go along with that I started to help out organizing our weekly team chats as well. Although at times it felt like a lot to balance it worked very well to keep me connected to my team while working with another.

Pushing myself to learn new things and take on new tasks, many of which were not in my comfort zone, was a turning point for me. It allowed me to gain insight into some of my work habits and allowed me to make improvements, expand my skills and develop new ones.

As a team we started the discussion of our teams future. We had ended up being a large group and it made sense that we should split our team into at least a couple of smaller ones and I was asked if I would be the Team Lead for one of them. During our meetup one of the things we worked on was splitting us up into three squads with the idea that if these became our teams it would give us lots of room to grow as we are hiring more.

Since we have been back from the meetup we have been working together closely in our squads but still as one big team and it worked out very well. Being able to attend SupConf excited me and put me in a good mindset to come back with.

As it turns out SupConf was really great timing for me as on Wednesday we made the split. Each of the squads we had broken into became their own team each with a new team lead. It’s a little bitter sweet for me. While I’m both nervous and excited about my new role, I’m also a little sad to see the team I was on since being hired become part of Automattic history. I’ve learned so much from the team especially from Zandy my team lead. I’m so thankful for her guidance and little bit of pushing to get me here.

While I’ve held team lead type positions at previous companies, like most things, Automattic is very different from them. Early on when I was asked about where I saw myself in Automattic or what direction I wanted to head my answer was that I did not see myself in a team lead role. Here a team lead isn’t considered a promotion, just a different role. This makes it possible that if this role and just end up not being meant for each other I could easily move back into my previous role. However, as Automattic is so different I now feel this will be a good fit and that I will be able to make good contributions to our team and Automattic as a whole, while growing myself.

It’s still very new and I have a lot to learn, it’s a similar feeling to when I first started my Trial, just so much information and new things to consider. Thursday morning I got up early and went for a short walk just to prepare myself for the day. I took a couple minutes just to look out over the beautiful view, stand, think, and be appreciative of everything in my life right now, in particular this new opportunity. I’m very much looking forward to this new role though and excited to be working with our team.

 

Field Notes: SupConf 2016

Some more of my thoughts on SupConf.

Sandy McFadden's avatarWordPress.com News

Automatticians, the people who build WordPress.com, participate in events and projects around the world every day. Periodically, they report back on the exciting things they do in the community.

Last week I attended the first ever SupConf, held at Automattic headquarters in San Francisco, California. I attended the event with Mindy Postoff. Simon Ouderkirk and Jeremey DuVall gave talks. Andrea Badgley, Andrew Spittle, and Diana Potter helped organize the event, and Joe Boydston volunteered. We’re all Happiness Engineers. Happiness Engineers unite!

SupConf came out of the Support Driven community as a conference for people passionate about support as a career. Being an introvert I was worried about stepping out of my shell. I wanted to make the most of the experience and take advantage of being surrounded by fellow support professionals.

As it turns out it was easy to do.

Support professionals are dedicated to…

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Scenic Route

If I have to go to the store I may as well take the scenic route. 

SupConf in San Francisco

This past week I was extremely fortunate enough to travel to San Francisco to attend the first ever SupConf. It was an incredible couple days getting to spend more time with a group of people all passionate about providing support.

The event was organized by the Support Driven community and held at Automattic Headquarters, which we refer to as Hawthorne. To steal a joke which as been used a few times I’m sure, after a year and a half I finally decided to show up at the office.

I had a hard time adjusting to the time difference this trip for some reason. Each morning I was waking up really early and not able to go back to sleep. It seems my body may have adjusted right when I got home, as now I’m having a hard time getting up each day.

It was also tough to try to find the right balance. As Automattic is a fully distributed company it is always a special time when Automatticians are able to spend time in person together. But being at a conference with a group of people from other great companies who are proud to, and really want to, provide excellent support I wanted to spend time talking with and sharing with them as well.

In all the organizers and speakers all did an amazing job and I left feeling energized and excited. I’ll share more thoughts on the conference itself later on but also wanted to share a some of the pictures I took over the trip. I didn’t take a lot but from the little I was able to see San Francisco is a pretty cool city.

Halifax from the air
Mountains from the air
Trolly car
Automattic Headquarters
Hawthorne games area
Samari Wapuu
Hawthorne setup for the conference
Panorama from San Francisco Bay
Walking through the streets in San Francisco
Path of trees
Walking through the streets in San Francisco
San Francisco
San Franciso Bay
The Bay Bridge
Port of San Franciso Bay Ferry Building
San Francisco
Help Scout Photo Booth
Help Scout Photo Booth

Yard Work Kind of Weekend

There are a number of yard work related chores I’ve been needing to get done. So far I’ve been picking away at them. Last weekend it was literally picking away at them. The front yard has been overtaken with weeds, so I spent time picking a bunch of them out. There are still piles there but I put a pretty good dent in them.

When I was out there weeding I had wished I had some better earphones to wear while listening to music out in the yard. I didn’t want anything really good though for fear of wreaking them. Yesterday I remembered that I still had the pair of WordPress earphones Automattic had sent me when I first started. They were good and comfortable but they had broken not long after getting them. Part of the plastic broke which connected the left ear piece to the head band piece. After trying a couple types of glue, which didn’t hold for more than 5 minutes, I had put them away and forgot about them.

Before I went out to mow the lawn yesterday I pulled them back out again. This time I brought out my soldering iron, got an old tip for it, and melted the plastic causing the two sided to bond back together. Now I don’t think this will hold for a really long time, but they held up yesterday while mowing the lawn and today out in the yard!

Today was un-fun yard work. Last year we had a strip down the side of the house which we had turned into a bit of a vegetable garden. It worked really well so we decided to expand it this year. We decided to use the whole piece of land on the side of the house. The sod has been all dug up and Jen poured the bags of mushroom compost my sister picked up for us all over, now it had to be tilled up and the compost mixed in.

We looked into renting a tiller to do it, but it would have cost more to rent it then to hire someone who had one to do it for us. So instead I went out with the garden claw and turned up the soil that way mixing in the compost at the same time. It’s times like this where it is obvious the only work I do with my hands, is really with my finger tips on the keyboard. My right hand especially feels like just one big blister.

Although there are a bunch of little projects I would like to do to the yard, the only other one I really want to tackle this year for sure is along the back of the property. We had planted a bunch of little boxwood plants. We were in a hurry to get them in the ground so all we did was dig a hole for each one and put the in. This makes it really hard to mow around, and in behind especially weeds end up growing really tall. So this year I want to make it like a long strip flower bed along the back. Where we dig up the sod again and cover it with mulch in between the bushes. We will also likely plant some flowers in between and around to give it a bit more life.

That won’t happen this weekend though, but hopefully I’ll make time coming up sometime soon.

Playing on the Shore

It was a nice warm day in the Valley today, so the kids and I went to visit the shore for a while. There is a neat little spot up in Black Rock I really like so that’s where we went. The Bay of Fundy has such huge tides though and it was in pretty far so we didn’t have a lot of shore to take advantage of.

The kids wanted to grab some rocks to bring home to make a foot print for each of them in the garden. You can see the results in the pictures. It turned out pretty neat.

Hermes Team Meetup

Two weeks ago our team (Hermes) at work got together in Durham North Carolina to spend time together and plan our coming months. As I’m sure most readers of my blog know, Automattic is a fully distributed company. So while we communicate all the time, it’s rare we get to spend time in person together. That makes the time we do get all the more important.

Even though I’ve only been on a couple meetups, one team, and one company wide, I don’t think it will ever cease to amaze me the awesome people I work with. Since the last team meetup we went on our team has changed a great deal. In fact there are a number of people on the team who weren’t at the Grand Meetup in October so I hadn’t met them yet, so I was really excited for this one.

While I was excited I was also pretty nervous. I volunteered to organize and plan the work we would be doing while together. With the help of my colleague Simon who introduced me to it at our last team meetup, I came up with different activities using Game Storming. This was something out of my comfort zone but very was really fun and seemed to go pretty well for my first attempt. We spent our work days exploring different questions to help bring our large team together and come up with a shared understanding of what our teams contribution to the company goals over all should be, and what we can do to get there.

Although we accomplished a lot work wise during the week,  I think my favourite part are the connections we build. When you spend a week working closely, eating meals, and spending fun time together outside of your normal day to day routine, it really seems to speed up this bonding process. A couple team mates have said that after returning from meetups they can now hear the persons voice when reading things they’ve written. It just helps add that extra bit of context to written communication when you have a better feeling for the personality behind the words.

Durham is a neat city. It is really easy to get around, which is great, as it gave us the opportunity to explore it by walking. In the mornings some of us would get together and go wandering. It’s also how we went to most meals as well. The weather was beautiful just about the whole time we where there and I miss my early morning runs and being able to wear shorts and t-shirt.

We were staying right beside the beautiful Duke campus which we walked around. A group of us also spent a lot of time one day taking in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Coming from a place barely hitting spring and seeing all the flowers in bloom and all the green trees made for a memorable time.

Things are in the planning stage for this years company wide meetup and I’m already looking forward to seeing all these folks again.

Here are some pictures from my iPhone of Durham and the people I’m fortunate enough to call team mates!

Always Performing

Even when she isn’t on stage for dance, she’ll find and make her own.