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Ok so.. It’s been 7 weeks since I started working at Automattic. To be completely honest – parts of it feel like I have been doing it since forever while others feel like I just started and have no clue what I am doing. That part of me lives in fear that the company realizes the mistake they made (note: this is called the Impostor Syndrome – I will get back to this on some future post). The even most interesting part of all this is that I can’t quite pinpoint which is which.
What happened on the first weeks at Automattic
In the past weeks I have learned a lot (this will probably become one of the ultimate truths of my life), went through the first part of the on-boarding process, got my Welcome Package and had the honour of meeting my team and amazing colleagues!
Those of you who know me are probably wondering how this trip went. For one – you know I was tired of travelling for work and had no interest in doing it again. You also know how I dislike (aka. hate) spending too much time with people I don’t know that well (or – in this case – never even met). Usually I managed to balance work trips by having a couple of meals alone and / or heading to my room to read or do yoga (and use the alone time to recharge energies).
Montreal – with the first live contact with my team
What if I tell you that this whole week I was surrounded with my colleagues, whom I met for the first time less than a week ago? What if I tell you that, agains all odds, I loved everyone and couldn’t get enough of it ? I’ll bet you don’t believe it – I couldn’t believe as well but it is true.
There is this festival in Portugal called the Boom Festival. If you like trance and/or psychadelic festivals, chances are you heard or came to Boom at least once. I am in love with this festival since the first time I went – in 2012 – and have been going ever since. The one thing that got me in Boom was how thousands (around 20K) of people could live in the same environment of respect and love for a whole week with no discussions or fights. It was kind of a Utopy coming to live. This was even more true as I saw that these were 20K humans from all over the world, from every religions and belief you can probably find. I usually describe it as Noah’s arc of the modern times.
Well, going back to Automattic: I believe it has a bit similar of sorts and that it also manages to have people from all over the world and get the unique and special ones that wouldn’t really fit in the roles society tries to make us live.
Either that or I was just plain lucky with my amazing team. I’m gonna go with both though: the company is great, the role is unique and the people are proud of who they genuinely are as there is no one to judge them there. Can you imagine this? Now I can!
The even most amazing thing here is that I am totally looking forward for the next week. Although I will be moving at the end of the week – am looking forward to starting back full time and rock this job!
Written from Philadelphia’s airport, on the way back to Lisbon – Home!
Some photos from this last week:
Note: I totally want to write more about my first month, my struggles and accomplishments. I will do it on it’s own time. For now – just know that these first weeks were awesome and our Jupiter team’s meeting was absolutely unique!
Meet Jupiter:
Jupiter Team in Montreal
