Matt Huston

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Breanna Mangels

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Aug 3, 2024, 1:07:49 PM8/3/24

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Cate Huston is the Head of Developer Experience at Automattic, where her team is responsible for hiring, onboarding, and retaining some of the best software engineers in the world. In this episode, Cate talks with Matt about what kinds of people thrive on distributed engineering teams, and how team leads can keep their engineers happy, productive, and connected to their colleagues.

After leading several engineering teams at places like Google and others, Cate became the Head of Developer Experience at Automattic, a team responsible for helping all our engineers at Automattic stay engaged, productive, and professionally fulfilled.

I knew we had to talk to Cate on this podcast because she lives out the distributed model so fully. She also has a comprehensive point of view on what kinds of engineers excel in distributed environments, and how companies can create the conditions that help engineers thrive.

That captures my aspiration for a great engineering culture because one, it suggests that everybody is additive and two, it suggests that everybody is allowed to be unique. And three, it suggests that everybody has the autonomy and the support to operate from a place of strength.

MATT: How much of this is specific to being distributed? How much of this was true when you were at Google versus what might be different now in a distributed company like Automattic?