Life at Automattic: The Automattic Trial  So in this episode, I want to talk a little bit about the Automattic trial process. Now if you don't know what the trial process is, it's part of the steps that you might follow if you apply for a job at Automattic. There's a couple of steps in the process. You'll have an interview, which will generally be via Slack. Then you might have a small take-home task, depending on what type of team you apply for. But then eventually, if you get through all of that, then you become part of a trial. Now I've had the opportunity to apply for a number of different positions of an Automattic. The first one where I got through to the coding exercises and I applied as a code wrangler. The first one that I got through to the trial was the first time I applied as a developer advocate. So I've done the trial twice now. So I have a pretty good understanding of what happens in the trial, how the trial works. And so I wanted to talk about that process because a trial at Automattic is not something I've ever experienced anywhere else. I don't know any other companies that are doing it, but you are basically, you are hired to work part-time with generally the team that you're probably going to work for if you get hired in the company. And that comes with a couple of pros, a couple of cons, but it's a really unique experience because number one, the team that you're applying to work for that you might end up working with actually gets an opportunity to work with you. And so they get to see whether what you bring fits in with what the team needs. They get to see how you work, how you communicate, how you do things. And so it gives them a good opportunity to go, Hey, this person is great, or we're not so sure, maybe try someone else. It also gives you the opportunity to experience what it's like working at Automattic. Now it's not exactly 100% the same, and I'll talk in a second about why, but it gives you a good idea about how Automattic works, how communication works. you get a feel for that sort of cross time zone communication with different people in different time zones. You get to work in a P2 environment. You've never done that before. You get to communicate via Slack if you've never done that before. So you get a good feel for whether, and you get a good experience of the kind of work that you're going to do, because you actually work on quote unquote an actual project. And I'll talk about that in a second as well. The downsides for you as somebody going through that process is if you already have a full-time job, you now have to find time to work on the trial project outside of it. For some people, that's problematic. So you might need to do a little bit of nights and weekends work. But what's great about it is you can determine how much time you have available, let the team know, and then work according to that. So the first trial that I went through, I tried to put in about an hour every day at the end of my day. At the time I was, I think, yeah, at the time I was employed full time, so I was working a roughly nine to five job. It was a remote position, so I had flexibility of my day, but I had to put in time outside of work. The second time I did the trial, I actually said to them, "I don't have a lot of time. I might do an hour every day, but I can't guarantee it, but I will do one to two hours on the weekend." So, it did mean having to give up a little bit of my spare time. But I was able to make it work and I was able to communicate when changes happen. I have my wife and I have two then two young boys, one of them is a little bit older now, but it does mean we have parental responsibilities and things that need to get done outside of work. And the big piece of advice that I would give to anybody going through the trial is to communicate all of that clearly and upfront. So everybody knows where you're coming from, what your situation is, what your position is. get paid for the trial, it's not exorbitant amounts of money, but you do get paid that time. So you're not going to be doing it for free, it's not a free project. And then essentially, you get given the project, you get given a task, and you work on that task. However long that takes, sometimes if you can get it done in two weeks, it's over in two weeks, it might take you three weeks depending on how much time you have. But you work on a specific task, you get to work with the team, you get to see how the autonomy works, how the communication works, and all that kind of thing. As for the project itself, the two experiences that I had was that it was not actually specifically something that the team needed right then and there, so it wasn't like, as an example, when I joined as a developer educator, the task was to create a series of videos about a developer topic that I chose. That work never got published as is, even when I joined the company. After I joined the company, I at a later stage decided to repackage those videos and republish them and put them somewhere. But it wasn't like I was giving free work away. The experience I had with the developer advocate trial period was similar. I had to put together a project for executing some task and that project never really happened to the best of my knowledge. So it's not like I'm giving free labor away. I'm getting paid for it. But it's just a great example about how the teams work, you are given access to practically the entire company. I think the only thing that I couldn't access was like financial information about the company's financials, but I could pretty much access the whole Slack instance. I pinged people in Slack that I knew at Automattic and I said hi to them. I had full access to the internal documentation, internal company handbook, so they really do open up the doors essentially and give you access to everything and you can ask questions. You're assigned a trial buddy. And so essentially that person is somebody who works with you. You can ask them questions. You can ask them where this information is. How do I do that? You have a trial lead, if you will. So this person is the person you interact with and give feedback to you. And they give you the project and the task. There is a member of HR part of your trial. So there's a number of people that you can interact with and communicate with. You're not on your own. You almost are in this like little custom team that's put together for you for your trial. So you really get that feeling of what it's like to work in an Automattic team. Your trial body is not necessarily on the same time zone as you, so you have to manage communication, but it's really, it's the closest experience you can get to working at Automattic without actually being employed by Automattic. If you are going to apply, if you are thinking about joining the company and you want to make the best of your trial. My pieces of advice are this, communicate early and often about any changes in your life or your planning around the trial. Let them know upfront how much time you can spare, how much time you practically can spare, but if anything changes communicate those changes. Read everything thoroughly, all the communication that you have with your team, with your trial buddy, whoever's leading your trial, and ask questions if anything is unclear. Clarify everything. One of the biggest tenants of working at Automattic is to overcommunicate, to make sure you have all the knowledge, to ask questions if you need to, to not feel bad about asking questions. And so in your trial, use that time to ask questions and make sure that you understand things. Then, and then treat it like you're working, then bring your best to that trial. So don't see it as I'm gonna, I'm gonna 75% this. Whatever time you decide to dedicate, be it one hour on a Saturday, one hour on a Friday or two hours on a weekend, whatever it's going to be, treat it as if you are, that is your job and this is how you will work every day because that's what they're looking for. They're looking at how you show up in the trial because the assumption is that's how you will show up at work every day. And don't feel scared to reach out and ask questions of people. Be it the trial people, be it people within the company, they even say, you can speak to this person, that person, they will apply like one of my trials had a technical person applied as well that I could ask technical questions of if I wasn't sure of. Don't be afraid to ask for that support. Every day at work, I ask my team questions about how would they recommend this and that and the next thing. Working remotely, working autonomously means working collaboratively. So you can't just be the kind of person who just runs off all the time and does your own thing and doesn't work in a team. So be as communicative as possible, treat it with the best of your capabilities as possible. If the trial, ask for it. If you need something to complete the job, ask for it. Don't feel like you have to give up on your own, but show up how you plan to show up at work. And then have fun with it. Bring your best work, do your best thing, do bring your uniqueness to the trial and you will find it to be a very rewarding and positive experience. And then if you don't make it through after the trial, I highly recommend you will have an HR person working with you. I highly recommend asking them for feedback, saying to them, them, what could I have done better? What were you looking for that I didn't have? When I did the developer advocate trial, one of the pieces of feedback I got was around how I managed projects and my project management skills. And so that's something that I spent time working on, and I've spent time, at Automattic, working on those things. So use the opportunity to get feedback from the people that you trial with and say, what did I do well? What could I have done differently? What could I have done better so that you can learn and grow through the process? Don't, I say this to anybody who I meet. Don't pass up an opportunity to learn from a process. Okay, so that's my bit about the Automattic trial. If you found this interesting or if you have any questions around it, please feel free to leave them in the comments or find me on social media or wherever. And I'll see you again maybe in about two weeks time where I'll talk about something else about working in Automattic. Bye., Life at Automattic: The Automattic Trial, YouTube, 01kgfvy9a96fd3kcgqwym6am5k.