Five Minutes with Lori McLeese

Every couple weeks, we’re sitting down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to build new features, keep Automattic running, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. This week, we’re very pleased to introduce you to Ms. Lori McLeese. Everybody, meet Lori!

What’s your role at Automattic?

Lori McLeese

I’m the Human Resources Lead. Once an Automattician is hired, I work with them so that they’re ready to start on their first day. That means getting them set up so that they’ll be paid on time, helping them set up a home office, and encouraging them to introduce themselves to the rest of the team through a bio on our About page or a video introduction on one of our internal P2s. I work with our team leads to help them provide feedback to team members on a regular basis and also focus on some “behind the scenes” projects like researching global compensation and benefits to make sure we’re paying Automatticians competitively.

Tell us about a project you’ve worked on recently.

I just returned from a meetup in Lisbon, Portugal, with our Happiness team. (The Happiness team does technical support for WordPress.com users.) I worked with several Happiness Engineers to redefine the initial training that Happiness Engineer trials and/or new Automatticians go through for their support rotation. It was fun discussing how people learn, what tools are available to Happiness Engineers, and what’s most important for new Automatticians to learn.

What have you learned that you can share with WordPress.com users?

Did you know that you can follow non-WP.com blogs in your Reader? I didn’t, until recently. Now all the blogs that I love to read are in one spot — no more opening multiple tabs each day when I boot up my computer. To follow a non-WP.com blog, click on “Edit” next to Blogs I Follow in the sidebar of your Reader, enter the URL of the blog and click on Follow.

What do you love most about working at Automattic?

The opportunity to interact with so many interesting and smart people around the world. I love connecting with other Automatticians — whether that’s at team meetups, our grand meetup once a year, co-working, or over IRC or Skype. I’ve never walked away from a conversation with another Automattician and not learned something.

What do you love to do in your spare time?

I love to travel and explore. I live in San Francisco and we’re lucky to have so many hiking trails nearby, both in the city and just across the Golden Gate and Bay bridges. I love being able to drive just thirty minutes and be completely surrounded by nature — giant redwood trees and sweeping vistas of the San Francisco Bay.

I also love to host dinner parties. There’s something very satisfying about making a meal then having friends over to enjoy it in the comfort of your home.

And read. I start each day poring over stories in the Reader, seeing what other people have written about on WordPress.com. For books, I prefer fiction to non-fiction. I love a story that takes me to another time and place, so that I forget when and where I’m living.

And laugh. That’s probably my favorite thing. If you’ve got a funny (or maybe not so funny) joke, send it my way. Chances are, I’ll laugh at it.

When Lori says she loves to laugh, she’s not kidding. We love to see her laugh and we think you will, too. Did we mention that Lori leads HR at Automattic? Maybe you’d like to work with us.

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