Six Apart

At tonight's BlogOn mixer, we had the chance to announce the winners of our Plug In To Movable Type 3.0 Developer's contest. You can read more about the winners and the entries here.

This was actually the first event that people who work at Six Apart attended intermixed with our community. It has always been "Ben and Mena" or Anil at these events despite the fact that we've grown into a relatively larger company.

Seeing many of the folks from Six Apart (sadly, not everyone could be there -- particularly Shelley and Kristine) in Berkeley tonight was amazing and surreal. We see these people everyday but never in this context. We're incredibly lucky to have these people working at Six Apart and, as cliched as it may seem, I'm very protective and proud of them.

I've debated in the past whether I should write individual posts about everyone at the company. As we grow and we begin departmentalizing, it becomes harder to know everyone in the same way that I know the core team now. But still, I feel that our community should know the people behind the tools since it's no longer just the Ben and Mena show anymore.

I'd be interested to hear what people think about this. Would you like to know more about the people at Six Apart? In what ways?

If you know me on a personal basis, you'll know that I'm loud and often quite obnoxious. I've always been the jokester and find it hard to be completely serious in tone -- I can be serious in my message but just deliver it in bizarre ways.

Whenever I complement someone at work, I do it in such a way that makes it seem like I'm being sarcastic. Over-enthusiasm coupled with my jokes aren't the standard way for management to behave. The fact is, when I'm displeased I let it show and when I'm pleased, I really let it show.

I really love our team. On the drive home, Ben and I talked about how amazing it is to have so many smart and devoted people working for us (we're always looking for more). We beat ourselves up about the fact that the start-up environment is responsible for a lack of structure and process that is found in more established companies; it's frustrating to play so much by ear. On the other hand, we're all building this stuff together and I think each day our processes get better.

When the whole licensing thing happened, many people called the pricing a personal betrayal on Ben and my part. In three years, I've become thicker-skinned. I can handle people insulting me personally, but I've learned that I can't tolerate people fud-ing and insulting our company.

It's the sort of moment of seeing our team together and realizing how hard they work that makes me want to be more defensive and less apologetic. We're good people. We're not going to say things like "we're not evil," and we're not going to waste cycles participating in online fights. Instead we're going to keep building tools for our community that supports us and build our company in such a way that Six Apart employees are happy to come to work. It's not all sunshine and rainbows and a lot of us are outright dysfunctional, but it's that fun sort of dysfunction that at least makes work interesting.