Subscribe to Distributed at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you like to listen. Are companies setting up their managers for success? What are BICEPS? How do you assemble your colleagues like a management Voltron? Lara Hogan is the founder of Wherewithall, a firm that specializes in management and leadership training — a company that Autom…

Subscribe to Distributed at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you like to listen. “We have introduced so many frictions to people’s lives by forcing them to move.” Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, the Lumry Family Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, studies the future of work — specifically the changing geography of work. What happen…

Subscribe to Distributed at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you like to listen. Is working from home a breakthrough for introverts? The answer, of course, is not so simple. Matt Mullenweg’s latest Distributed conversation is with Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever podcast for HBR Presents from Harvard Business Review, and fou…

Subscribe to Distributed at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you like to listen. Matt Mullenweg speaks with neuroscientist Dr. Adam Gazzaley, co-author of the 2016 book The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World, about how our brains work, particularly during times like the current pandemic. How does the brain handle internal…

Distributed host Matt Mullenweg recently appeared on Sam Harris’s excellent podcast, Making Sense, sharing the “five levels of autonomy” when it comes to distributed work. Listen to their wide-ranging conversation on how companies transition to remote work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We love Sam’s podcast, Making Sense, so for more go to …

Subscribe to Distributed at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you like to listen. The world has dramatically changed in just a few weeks. As companies around the world shift to remote work, how do we navigate this crisis? Distributed host Matt Mullenweg talks to Vanessa Van Edwards, bestselling author, speaker, and founder of Science of Peo…

Read more about Jason Fried in “Working Smaller, Slower, and Smarter.” For our first episode of the year, host Matt Mullenweg talks to Jason Fried, the CEO of Basecamp. Jason runs a semi-distributed company that’s been making project management software for 20 years. He’s accumulated a wealth of wisdom about how trusting employees and treating them…

Read more of our 2019 takeaways in “Eight Lessons from the Distributed Podcast So Far.” Distributed Podcast: Matt Mullenweg Reflects on Distributed Work in 2019. To close out the year, our host Matt Mullenweg is joined once again by Automattic’s Mark Armstrong to discuss the state of distributed work as we transition into a new decade. Matt discuss…

Read more about Anil Dash in “To Remake Tech, Remake the Tech Company“ Distributed Podcast: Hear Matt Mullenweg in conversation with Anil Dash. Anil Dash didn’t like the direction the web was going, so he joined a tech company that promised to take web development back to its indie roots. That company became Glitch, a semi-distributed company based…

Read more about the Grand Meetup in “The Importance of IRL in a World of Screens.” Distributed Podcast: Inside the 2019 Grand Meetup On this episode of the Distributed podcast, we get an insider’s look at the Grand Meetup, Automattic’s annual weeklong all-staff event, where employees have an opportunity to collaborate, learn from one another, and h…

Read more about Clark Valberg in “Building the Tools that Bring the Screen to Life.” Distributed Podcast: Hear Matt Mullenweg in conversation with Clark Valberg. InVision CEO Clark Valberg needed a tool to help his distributed team collaborate on design projects. So he created it — and it became the company’s flagship product, one that every Fortun…

Read more about Lydia X.Z. Brown in “Making Work Accessible, Wherever it Happens.” Because of their background in working with disabled and marginalized people, attorney and activist Lydia X. Z. Brown has a deep understanding of how different workplace environments can best serve diverse workforces. Today they join our host Matt Mullenweg to discus…

Read more about Taso Du Val in “Inside Toptal’s Distributed Screening Process.” When hiring managers interview a candidate for a high-level role, they want to be sure that the person they choose will be productive and able to work well with their prospective team. But what if the hiring process takes place over video chat? A growing number of compa…

Read more about Stephen Wolfram in “The Machine that Turns Ideas into Real Things.” Stephen Wolfram started out on an academic career path, but eventually realized that founding a company would allow him to pursue his scientific work more efficiently. He’s served as a remote CEO of Wolfram Research for the last 28 years. In this episode, Stephen sh…

Read more about Sonal Gupta in “Welcome to the Chaos.” Sonal Gupta leads Automattic’s Other Bets division, a team that builds products that aren’t yet core to Automattic’s business, but keep the company innovating and pushing it to explore new territory. In this episode, Sonal and our host Matt Mullenweg talk about how important communication is in…

Read more about Scott Berkun in “Observe, Don’t Surveil: Managing Distributed Teams with Respect.” Scott Berkun wrote the book on distributed teams. Literally. He spent a couple of years at Automattic and wrote about his experience as a manager in a distributed company. In this episode, Scott talks about that experience, discusses how things have c…

Read more about Cate Huston in “How to Build and Strengthen Distributed Engineering Teams.” Cate Huston is the Head of Developer Experience at Automattic, where her team is responsible for hiring, onboarding, and retaining some of the best software engineers in the world. In this episode, Cate talks with Matt about what kinds of people thrive on di…

Read more about Leo Widrich in “How to Stay Connected in a Distributed World.” Leo Widrich co-founded Buffer, the social media management software company, in 2010. But like many founders, the frantic pace and daily stresses of startup life caught up to him. After spending a couple of years in a Buddhist monastery studying mindfulness and learning …

Read more about John Maeda in “Helping Creativity Happen from a Distance.” John Maeda has spent the last three years leading Automattic’s design team, and on this episode of the Distributed podcast, he reflects on what he’s learned with our host, Matt Mullenweg. John shares how to facilitate collaborative creativity across a distributed team, expla…

Read more about Zoe Harte in “How to do HR in a Blended Company” and about Han Yuan in “Engineering with Empathy.” On today’s episode, two leaders at Upwork share how they do distributed. First up is Zoe Harte, Upwork’s Head of Human Resources and Talent Innovation, who speaks about her experience of overseeing a blended team of full-time and freel…

Read Matt’s history of Automattic: “On Building Automattic.” On today’s episode, Automattic editor Mark Armstrong interviews our usual host Matt Mullenweg to discuss the history of the company and how its distributed culture emerged from conditions that many startups face. They go deep on the tools and processes Automattic has developed to keep eve…

Read more about Arianna Simpson in “Is Remote Work Bull***t?” “Remote Work is Bull***t.” When venture capitalist Arianna Simpson tweeted this opinion, she never could have guessed the massive response she would receive. In this episode, Arianna has a chance to clarify her thoughts on remote work. Then she explains how “programmable money” on the bl…

Read more about John Vechey in “For Years, VR Promised to Replace the Office. Could It Really Happen Now?” Distributed Podcast: Hear Matt Mullenweg in conversation with John Vechey. “A new form of communication” After leading PopCap Games to a successful exit, cofounder John Vechey started Pluto VR to help humanity transcend physical location throu…

Read more about Stephane Kasriel in “The American Dream Is Broken, and I Think We Have a Shot at Fixing It.” “The American Dream is Broken, and I think we have a shot at fixing it.” Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork, thinks that most work, as we think of it today, is in need of an overhaul. In this episode, Stephane explains how changing the way …

Matt Mullenweg, cofounder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, embarks on a journey to understand the future of work. Having built his own 850-person company with no offices and employees scattered across 68 countries, Mullenweg examines the benefits and challenges of distributed work and recruiting talented people around the globe. Produced by Mark…