Many employees at Automattic were what's called T-shaped, meaning they had one very deep skill set, and a wide range of moderate proficiencies. Although I was hired as a lead, my deep skill set in this sense was interaction design. Diversity of skill makes people self-sufficient. They didn't need much help to start projects and were unafraid to learn skills to finish them. This self-sufficiency prevented the need for paternalistic management. They did not want to be coddled. They weren't afraid to get their hands dirty in tasks that in a mature engineering company would span the turf of three
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