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Embracing Openness
An exciting part of working at Automattic is the open source philosophy. It’s thrilling to help open source projects like Calypso (the new WordPress.com), even in a small way. I spent a chunk of time...
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Report a Bug — Start a Conversation
Today at Automattic, I gave a presentation called Life Cycle of a Bug Report. Ostensibly, it was about the elements of an effective bug report and what happens to a bug report after it is opened....
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Building a career in support
We need to build our support teams to add value across the company. We’re all expert communicators. We know not just the ins-and-outs of our product but how to convey our expertise in a way that’s...
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Using Mental Models for Troubleshooting
When a user reports an issue they’re having with the product you support, how do you know what to do next? How do you identify the source of the issue? How do you know where to start investigating?...
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The Problem with Averages
If you’re interested in inclusive design, I’d recommend listening to “On Average” from the podcast 99% Invisible. From the episode: So in 1926, when the army was designing its first-ever fighter plane...
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The Josephus Problem: How math teaches us to solve problems
When I was in school, I always thought math word problems were a little funny. I understood that the point was for me to apply math to solve real-world problems, but the problems never felt real....
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Sharing User Feedback from App Reviews
Over the past year, I’ve been working fairly closely with the mobile app team at Automattic. As I got more involved, I tried to help close the feedback loop with the team by taking advantage of the...
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Innovation v. Maintenance
Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value, like love, fraternity, courage, beauty, dignity, or responsibility. Innovation-speak worships at the...
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Work, Time, & Capitalism
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that within a century, economic growth would mean that we would be working no more than 15 hours per week – whereupon humanity would face its greatest...
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How Providing Customer Support is Like Defusing a Bomb
I recently read How To Be Calm Under Pressure: 3 Secrets From A Bomb Disposal Expert (via Swiss Miss) and immediately connected its 3 secrets with 3 guiding principles for providing customer support. I...
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