Lead Time Chats

Beau Lebens on Distributed Team Meetups

Episode Summary

In Season 2, Episode 8 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Beau Lebens, Head of Engineering of WooCommerce at Automattic, about meetups for distributed teams.

Episode Notes

In Season 2, Episode 8 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Beau Lebens, Head of Engineering of WooCommerce at Automattic, about meetups for distributed teams. 

Beau has been at Automattic for over 12 years, a company which has been fully distributed and pre-pandemic, had regular in-person team meetups for team bonding and alignment.

Beau and Jean discuss:

• The purpose and structure of a standard Automattic in-person team meetup
• Different ways Automattic teams have connected socially this past year, including a zoom cocktail class, escape rooms
• BBC Dad and now normalized it is now to see a more personal glimpse into people’s family lives
• How distributed teams can find a mix of NIRL (not in real life) events and physical meetups to build culture and belonging

Additional Resources

• Inside the Grand Meetup - Hear from Automattic's CEO Matt Mullenweg and other Automatticians about the annual all-company meetup
• How We Work - More from Automattic's blog about how the company works
• Beau's Blog - More insights from Beau about his work at Automattic