In the decade that I’ve been designing for Automattic, my job has taken many shapes. As the first designer working for the company, I was a generalist—I designed everything from the company logo to the WordPress.org website and the interfaces for our first products. While my time in college taught me a lot about art and design, almost everything I know about my career, I’ve learned here. Our company creed begins with those five words, I will never stop learning. It’s not aspirational—it’s a statement of fact. It’s impossible to work here for very long without being constantly inspired and challenged.
This year I’ve learned an incredible amount about something I’ve never thought I was good at—hiring. Earlier this year we formed the Design Hiring group at Automattic, a team of designers who, in addition to our regular duties, review portfolios, interview candidates, oversee trials, and recommend designers to our CEO. It’s a giant task, and deeply influential in how our company grows and our products evolve. If you apply for one of Automattic’s product or marketing design jobs, you’ll probably hear from one of us along the way.
When I started working on hiring, I was on my own, and I was pretty sure I was terrible at it. I didn’t cause any major meltdowns, but I had a complete awareness of how out of my element I was, and how much I had to learn. I knew I’d only get better with some help, so I asked a few of my colleagues to join and together, we have leveled up quickly, learning how to be comfortable in an environment that, as designers, none of us were all that familiar with. (I went through my fair number of job interviews after college, but my last one was in 2005!) Our efforts are already paying dividends, as we’ve gotten to see some tremendous designers join Automattic as a result of our recommendation.
Along the way, I’ve gotten to help with two major pieces of news we get to announce today. This summer, the hiring group assisted with the monumental task of finding someone to become Automattic’s head of design. If hiring designers was intimidating, talking with some of the greatest minds in the industry about Automattic’s design was ten times so. But through that process, we learned an incredible amount about what we aspire to, and what we should do to get there. And as a result, we now have an amazing leader in John Maeda, our new Global Head of Computational Design and Inclusion.
One of John’s first ideas was to let the world know about the design culture we’ve been building, and today that idea has gone public in the form of Design.blog, a new publication from Automattic designers & friends. We’ll use it to profile the people who make design happen at Automattic (here’s mine), and to feature the voices of designers who inspire us to keep pushing ourselves to do more, and be better. Our first pieces are from Jessica Helfand, Cassidy Blackwell, and Alice Rawsthorn. Each are thought-provoking and inspiring, and I hope you’ll check them out.
In the decade I’ve been here, I’ve never been more excited about the state of design at Automattic. If you love design and are interested in what we’re doing, we hope you’ll join us.
