After a run of almost 3 years, this is my final day as at Paylocity. As I was chatting with one of my squads about the transition last week, someone noted that I’ve always been the team optimist. To avoid getting choked up, I asked, “Do you know what the plural of y’all is?” I knew that nobody in that group was from the South, so I let the pause linger for a moment and then replied, “I’m going to miss all y’all.”
A Decade in Product
Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe the 2020s have already arrived. As I reflect on my career journey so far, the theme for the last decade was product and user experience.
UX in Remote-First Organizations
It’s fair to say that remote work is a hot topic. A growing number of visionary organizations like Zapier, Automattic, and Buffer have demonstrated for years how successful a remote-only model can be. On the other hand, many product companies have doubled down on maintaining centrally located, in-office teams.
The (Initially) Reluctant Manager
It’s hard to believe, but today is officially my 4th anniversary working at MailChimp HQ here in Atlanta. Before that, I spent a year working remote, so I’ve actually been with the company for over 5 years now. In that time, MailChimp has more than septupled in size, we’ve been through 3 major redesigns, and we just moved into a rad new office at Ponce City Market. Until recently though, my primary responsibilities remained the same…
The Rise of the UX Developer
The engineers call us designers. The UI designers call us developers. The research team calls us when they uncover changes to make in the application. When I started at MailChimp 4½ years ago, my job title was User Experience Designer.