My life at Automattic
When I posted previously about my plans, I was pretty “meh” about the whole idea of the sabbatical. I understood its advantages and everything else but, maybe because it was still a way off, I got no feels from it.
But that’s changed. I’m excited and I’m ready.
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Since becoming a Lead at WordPress VIP, Slack has become even more a distraction.
Based on feedback from fellows Leads, tips I read on LinkedIn and things I’ve simply just tried myself, I’ve got these down to a point where I’m happy. And I thought I’d share what I’ve learnt.
One thing we have to consider is which notifications we actually want. After all, as a Lead in a fully remote company, if a member of my team needs for something urgent, that’s the primary way for them to reach me.
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In a work environment, particularly in Customer Support, it’s easy to lay down rules and processes for people to follow, to ensure uniformity and that everybody does everything correctly. But my argument is that we should be doing far less of this. In fact, if left to me, I’d tear them all up.
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If you’re working in customer service, how you interact with the customer is critical from tone to the words you choose. One area often forgotten about is how to sign off your replies back to the customer.
This is particularly pertinent if a customer ticket is likely to not be worked on agnostically (i.e. the same person is going to respond more than once).
To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s an example of how a conversation in a ticket might go…
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The noun meaning “a year’s absence granted to researchers” (originally one year in seven, to university professors) is from 1934, short for sabbatical year, etc., which was recorded by 1886 (the thing itself is attested from 1880, at Harvard), a term perhaps suggested by the sabbatical year (1590s) in Mosaic law, the seventh year, in which land was to remain untilled and non-foreign debtors and slaves released.
Online Etymology Dictionary
These days a sabbatical is rarely a year but is still used to indicate a time away from work, sometimes paid and sometimes otherwise (and when not, it’s usually referred to as a career break).
I’m fortunate that at Automattic, every 5 years, we get a 3 month, fully-paid sabbatical. And mine is now due.
When to go and what shall I do?
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