I’d like to share some experiences from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where I was joined by my colleagues Marjorie Asturias, Deborah Beckett, Mo Carter, Rebecca Collins, Kelly Dwan, and Megan Marcel.

Picture an airplane hangar-sized space full of women bobbing to rhythmic pop music, neon glowing necklaces dotting the crowd. This was the closing party for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), a massive conference devoted to women studying or working in technology, and named in honor of the legendary computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.

It was an intense few October days in Houston, Texas, where the 16th edition of GHC drew 15,000 international participants, from computer-science and software-engineering college students to established professionals working at large technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Apple.

Automattic was proud to host a booth at the career fair, where we chatted with many young women getting started in their technology careers. We introduced a series of postcards featuring Automatticians, which you can see on our new Diversity and Inclusion page. The cards showcase the wide range of people working at Automattic from their home bases across the globe, in roles from Data Scientist to Happiness Engineer.

I also had an opportunity to attend some sessions at the conference itself. Highlights included a talk about how to negotiate more effectively, a skill a lot of women find rather challenging. According to the presenter, we tend to negotiate well on others’ behalves, but many of us — including me — find that negotiating for ourselves can be difficult! Another thought-provoking session was a panel discussion with women who have created tools to help bypass unconscious bias during the hiring and interviewing process. I also attended a public speaking workshop; since I also run public speaking workshops, it was useful to see one from a participant’s perspective. I picked up some good tips on how to handle a larger group — there were at least a hundred women at this one, in a huge ballroom.

My week at GHC was inspiring and exhausting, but more than anything, it was energizing to be around so many women passionate about technology.

Looking for your own adventure in tech? We’re hiring!

Filed under: Events

I’d like to share some experiences from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where I was joined by my colleagues Marjorie Asturias, Deborah Beckett, Mo Carter, Rebecca Collins, Kelly Dwan, and Megan Marcel.

Picture an airplane hangar-sized space full of women bobbing to rhythmic pop music, neon glowing necklaces dotting the crowd. This was the closing party for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), a massive conference devoted to women studying or working in technology, and named in honor of the legendary computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.

It was an intense few October days in Houston, Texas, where the 16th edition of GHC drew 15,000 international participants, from computer-science and software-engineering college students to established professionals working at large technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Apple.

Automattic was proud to host a booth at the career fair, where we chatted with many young women getting started in their technology careers. We introduced a series of postcards featuring Automatticians, which you can see on our new Diversity and Inclusion page. The cards showcase the wide range of people working at Automattic from their home bases across the globe, in roles from Data Scientist to Happiness Engineer.

I also had an opportunity to attend some sessions at the conference itself. Highlights included a talk about how to negotiate more effectively, a skill a lot of women find rather challenging. According to the presenter, we tend to negotiate well on others’ behalves, but many of us — including me — find that negotiating for ourselves can be difficult! Another thought-provoking session was a panel discussion with women who have created tools to help bypass unconscious bias during the hiring and interviewing process. I also attended a public speaking workshop; since I also run public speaking workshops, it was useful to see one from a participant’s perspective. I picked up some good tips on how to handle a larger group — there were at least a hundred women at this one, in a huge ballroom.

My week at GHC was inspiring and exhausting, but more than anything, it was energizing to be around so many women passionate about technology.

Looking for your own adventure in tech? We’re hiring!

Filed under: Events

I’d like to share some experiences from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where I was joined by my colleagues Marjorie Asturias, Deborah Beckett, Mo Carter, Rebecca Collins, Kelly Dwan, and Megan Marcel.

Picture an airplane hangar-sized space full of women bobbing to rhythmic pop music, neon glowing necklaces dotting the crowd. This was the closing party for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), a massive conference devoted to women studying or working in technology, and named in honor of the legendary computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.

It was an intense few October days in Houston, Texas, where the 16th edition of GHC drew 15,000 international participants, from computer-science and software-engineering college students to established professionals working at large technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Apple.

Automattic was proud to host a booth at the career fair, where we chatted with many young women getting started in their technology careers. We introduced a series of postcards featuring Automatticians, which you can see on our new Diversity and Inclusion page. The cards showcase the wide range of people working at Automattic from their home bases across the globe, in roles from Data Scientist to Happiness Engineer.

I also had an opportunity to attend some sessions at the conference itself. Highlights included a talk about how to negotiate more effectively, a skill a lot of women find rather challenging. According to the presenter, we tend to negotiate well on others’ behalves, but many of us — including me — find that negotiating for ourselves can be difficult! Another thought-provoking session was a panel discussion with women who have created tools to help bypass unconscious bias during the hiring and interviewing process. I also attended a public speaking workshop; since I also run public speaking workshops, it was useful to see one from a participant’s perspective. I picked up some good tips on how to handle a larger group — there were at least a hundred women at this one, in a huge ballroom.

My week at GHC was inspiring and exhausting, but more than anything, it was energizing to be around so many women passionate about technology.

Looking for your own adventure in tech? We’re hiring!

Filed under: Events

I’d like to share some experiences from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where I was joined by my colleagues Marjorie Asturias, Deborah Beckett, Mo Carter, Rebecca Collins, Kelly Dwan, and Megan Marcel.

Picture an airplane hangar-sized space full of women bobbing to rhythmic pop music, neon glowing necklaces dotting the crowd. This was the closing party for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), a massive conference devoted to women studying or working in technology, and named in honor of the legendary computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.

It was an intense few October days in Houston, Texas, where the 16th edition of GHC drew 15,000 international participants, from computer-science and software-engineering college students to established professionals working at large technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Apple.

Automattic was proud to host a booth at the career fair, where we chatted with many young women getting started in their technology careers. We introduced a series of postcards featuring Automatticians, which you can see on our new Diversity and Inclusion page. The cards showcase the wide range of people working at Automattic from their home bases across the globe, in roles from Data Scientist to Happiness Engineer.

I also had an opportunity to attend some sessions at the conference itself. Highlights included a talk about how to negotiate more effectively, a skill a lot of women find rather challenging. According to the presenter, we tend to negotiate well on others’ behalves, but many of us — including me — find that negotiating for ourselves can be difficult! Another thought-provoking session was a panel discussion with women who have created tools to help bypass unconscious bias during the hiring and interviewing process. I also attended a public speaking workshop; since I also run public speaking workshops, it was useful to see one from a participant’s perspective. I picked up some good tips on how to handle a larger group — there were at least a hundred women at this one, in a huge ballroom.

My week at GHC was inspiring and exhausting, but more than anything, it was energizing to be around so many women passionate about technology.

Looking for your own adventure in tech? We’re hiring!

Filed under: Events

Last year at Automattic, we built a localized Brazilian Portuguese-speaking support team to help provide support to a subset of the WordPress.com community in their primary language. We strongly believe in the power of an excellent customer support culture — after all, that’s why we call our support team members Happiness Engineers! Customer service isn’t just about answering questions, but making an educational experience memorable and empowering.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working to provide the same level of localized support to Spanish-speaking customers on WordPress.com. We’ve promoted the Happiness Engineer (ES) role through blog posts, Twitter, and Facebook, but we decided to reach out to local Argentine and Spanish WordPress communities in person as well.

“Connecting with Spanish-speaking WordPress communities is invaluable for both sharing our experience with customer support and letting others know what it’s like to work on our support team at Automattic.”

—Karen Arnold, a member of the Happiness Hiring team

Connecting with the Argentine Community

The WordPress community is global, spread across many cities, states, and countries. This decentralized aspect of the WordPress.org open source project plays a large part in Automattic’s philosophy of distributed work. It’s better to have the best candidate for the job, period, than the best candidate in your city.

What’s the difference between Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, and the WordPress.org project? Learn more about .com vs .org.

Karen, along with Deborah Beckett, another member of the Happiness Hiring team, connected with the WordPress community in Argentina to set up events around customer support. On their visit, they spoke with members of the WordPress Buenos Aires Meetup, WordPress Córdoba Meetup, and the new WordPress La Plata Meetup, as well as members of the local tech community through their networking event at Sugar Bar in Buenos Aires and various co-working and incubator spaces, such as Co-Innova and The Tech Pub.