I work at Replicated, a platform built to modernize the delivery and management of enterprise software. I am a Technical Content Manager within Replicated’s marketing org. I am responsible for delivering technical, developer-focused content.

How big is it?‍

The marketing team is made up of 17 positions. Within the content marketing org, there are three of us - my manager (director of content), and a content manager.‍

Where are your teammates located?‍

My teammates are distributed across the US and the two people on my team are based in California. I live in Ridgewood, New Jersey.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

The director of content is responsible for overseeing the execution of content on a variety of levels, whether it be product, executive and technical thought leadership, or branding. He ensures that the company’s content strategy is created and fulfilled throughout the year. He’s been a great ally and advocate for my growth.

The content manager is responsible for sales- and customer-related content. I am responsible for executing content on multiple levels, including branding, product, SME thought leadership, and developer-focused content.

A strong remote culture does not let the walls of separation get between us. We thrive on teamwork, communication, and fostering a positive culture where we are not distracted by limitations. Rather, we work to overcome them in a consistent, aggressive way where we advocate for the RIGHT outcomes.

‍The strong remote culture that we have is also transparent, candid, and celebratory of victories. We recognize people’s strengths and push through the boundaries that remote work brings. We stand for each other at our weekly all hands and also talk about life outside of work.

I have a weekly check-in with my manager, a standup with the content team, then a week-end standup. That’s where the fun starts. We start by talking about life outside of work, then dive into our accomplishments, ongoing projects, and tactical steps to complete our projects.

Our VP of Marketing has a fostering attitude, while staying steadfast on the mission. She facilitates communication during our standups and pushes us to troubleshoot on issues, while still having fun and socializing. She recently introduced a weekly coffee meetup and it was a lot of fun.

We have multiple channels on Slack and are encouraged to ask for help where needed. If I need technical support from engineers or customer success, I just drop a line in their channel. The team overall has been really good with responsiveness and I think that’s really important.

Don’t get siloed. Foster a community of openness and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Figure out what is working from a remote perspective, what you can make better, and what the ideal outcomes are. What makes you comfortable? What doesn’t make you comfortable, and why? Map it all out then see how you can reach that comfort zone of productivity and achievability.

Communication is key. I’m fortunate to have a manager that instilled a culture of trust, openness, and relationship building. The extra level of trust helps us to attain rapid fire results.

We have virtual events such as a magician, and a session with a real detective who walked us though a murder mystery. The team has been on in-person retreats. The company had its sixth annual Replicated Holiday Party where we broke out into groups, did a little socializing, then watched The Goonies. At the end of the movie, Sean Astin popped into our Zoom meeting and we played a game.

We have played two truths and a lie. Sean Astin even participated.

The Range app has a spinning wheel icebreaker feature, which we use at our content end-of-week standup. I have foodies on my team. They live on the West Coast so they have unique stories about food and I have unique foodie experience to share on the East Coast. We agree that next time we meet up in person, we will certainly be going out to try some food together.

Asana helps us to manage projects. Range helps us with our end-of-week check ins. On Slack we have our own marketing channel where we get stuff done, put out fires, and talk about random stuff that we’re into.

Growing as a leader in my role entails becoming more deeply technical. I am not a developer by trade but have started using command line interfaces (CLI) to code. It helps me to understand the intricacies of our product and communicate more effectively with our audiences. I’ve been taking courses on Udemy. Whenever I hit a blocker in code, I will research what to do. I find StackOverflow.com a viable resource, and GitHub, where we hold all of our content. 

I like to stay updated on what Gartner is talking about. Replicated just achieved Gartner Cool Vendor status in cloud computing, which is a big win for us.