I work for Automattic, which hosts, among other products, WordPress.com (which this blog is hosted on). Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, and my manager, requested blog posts for his birthday, which is today.

Matt, we’ve worked together for over thirteen years. That’s over a quarter of your life! And over a fifth of mine! Here are a few things that I’m grateful for, which you are directly responsible for. I want you to understand the impact that you’ve had on my life.

The first line of Automattic’s creed is “I will never stop learning.” This was scary in the beginning. Didn’t you hire me because of my expertise? Over time, I embraced this in both my professional and personal life, and my team jokes that my favorite phrase is, “I’m curious…” This mindset has helped me navigate caring for my mother with Alzheimer’s. Instead of insisting on “right,” I’ve instead approached situations with “Tell me more about that.” It’s not scary to be wrong anymore. I appreciate the learning that comes with each mistake I make. I find myself saying, “strong opinion, loosely held” much more often and encouraging folks to tell me what I’ve missed.

I am blown away by the people you hired to work at Automattic. I had worked in tech before I joined Automattic, and had worked with many geniuses that weren’t very kind. When I joined Automattic, there weren’t many of us, and every person I met was incredibly smart, interesting, and kind. It was somewhat intimidating, and then oh so rewarding. I value the relationships with people I’ve met while working at Automattic – those who still work there, and those who don’t.

Thank you for championing a distributed workforce before it was in vogue. This allowed me to move back to North Carolina when I was ready to leave the city life of San Francisco. It allowed me to temporarily live with my parents when my father was going through treatment for cancer. It opened so many opportunities to share our successes (and speed bumps) during the pandemic to others who were forced to adopt a remote working environment, perhaps before they were ready to. In the spirit of open source, you encourage us to share openly. I shared policies, practices, snafus, and posts with colleagues at other companies. They were grateful for the help, and I was grateful I could help. 

Thank you for caring about Automatticians. You have been incredibly supportive as I have taken the last few months to focus on my mother. This may be the greatest gift I’ve ever received. I have been able to hold her hand, spend precious days with her, and assure her that it’s okay to join Dad, that we’ll be okay here. And without the pressure of knowing that I have hundreds of emails to respond to, or meetings to schedule my visits with her around. 

There have been rough spots during our thirteen years together. There have been times when we have vehemently disagreed on an approach. There have been times when words have cut. I have no doubt we will continue to disagree in the future. And we will continue to learn from each other. And I look forward to what you will accomplish in your next forty years. Happy birthday. ❤