Matt (00:09):
Welcome to Podcast Awesome, where we chat about icons, design, tech, business, and nerdery with members of the Font Awesome team.


Matt (00:30):
I'm your host, Matt Johnson. In this podcast, we catch up with members of the Font Awesome team to talk about our bi-annual company meetups, which are affectionately called The Snuggle. We talk about the purpose and origin of The Snuggle and the reason for its ridiculous name.


Matt (00:55):
One of the great things of keeping the positive vibes of the culture and the team intact and keeping people connected, we do these quarterly things or we try to, at least in non-COVID times. Quarterly, we get together and do The Snuggle. Love the name of The Snuggle. Travis, if I'm remembering... Well, you tell the story of The Snuggle, how the name came about. That's good stuff.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (01:24):
Oh, man. If I remember right, I think... Well, when it was just the four of us, we would get together, two people lived in Boston, two people lived in Missouri. Every other quarter, we would go spend time there and we'd go out to a place on the Cape and we called them the Cape Cuddles for a while and I don't remember how it became The Snuggle.

Dave (main interviewee) (01:43):
So, and partially, is that it is such an absurd word...

Travis (secondary interviewee) (01:46):
I think that's really what it is.

Dave (main interviewee) (01:47):
... for adults to use for something that is work related and very work...

Matt (01:54):
It should be the quarterly sync, people.

Dave (main interviewee) (01:57):
Right. And in an effort to make fun of and just make fun of businessyness to begin with, right? To make fun of businessing to begin with, let's go with an absolutely ridiculous name for this, right? Because here's why too, is that this ridiculousness is actually what this is about. That we know, from experience, from intuition and from experience that the best remote work happens when it is foundationally based on in-person human relationships, right? That you need to build those face-to-face. The way that we are wired as human beings, we need to be face-to-face for some amount of time, right? Introverted, extroverted, it might be a different thing that gives you energy or not, right? In the meantime, but the way that we actually connect and bond with other human beings, the way that we can actually have that trust when we're going to be working remotely. We think remote work enables so much.

Matt (02:59):
Here's Rob Madole, Font Awesome principal software engineer, reflecting on the trade-offs between remote and in-office work.

Rob (03:11):
Obvious thing we're comparing is remote work versus in-office work. Before COVID, it was more of a controversial thing. There was a lot of... And actually, why [inaudible 00:03:22] said that you can't do remote. They really discouraged that, but Dave and Travis did it anyway, despite what they said. What I think you gain from remote work and from studying up your company in that fashion is there is a level of focus that you can get by not being distracted in an office all day.

(03:42):
If you leverage that well, then you can accomplish a lot and you can move forward as a company. People can grow and get better in their craft. You can get work done. I truly think that remote work is a great way to enable that. The trade-off is that you now get disconnected from the people that you're working with. It's a lot easier for them to become a resource or someone that will do the thing you don't want to do or can't do.

(04:12):
And now, in the name of accomplishing work and getting stuff done, we're not getting that human thing. That thing that we have identified is so important. That's one of our core values is treating each other well and taking care of each other. Well, remote work, it works against that. It took me a while to realize Dave would always expound the value of those.

(04:35):
And then the first few, I would be annoyed because I want to get work done and Dave is making me come to wherever place we're doing this and I have to spend a week with everybody, away from my family and I hate... But eventually, I came to agree with him and realized that what we're doing is that we're reseeding the relationships and strengthening those so that we can actually go back and get work done without beginning to treat each other poorly. Because if we never saw each other, if we never got to empathize and care for each other and say, "How you doing and how are things going?" If that care wasn't there, then what are we? We're just another one of the soulless companies that use people to make money.

Dave (main interviewee) (05:23):
It enables me to live where I think is right. It enables me to live in the country, live in the city, live in San Francisco, live in the middle of nowhere, right where I grew up, and you get to make the choice for what you think is right. You get to... The way that we work, if you need to go and run an errand for anything, as long as somebody's not waiting on you for something, whatever, which is almost never, just let people know, and then, go do it. We don't worry about... Nobody's tracking how much you're there. We're seeing the product of what you do, right? So in order to do that work well, we know that we have to get together in person for these things. And so, calling them The Snuggle is also a way to make fun of and joke about and be ridiculous.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (06:09):
One of the things we like to think about ourselves is humility and sharing our nerd and another ones delivering the punchline and just being able to not take ourselves too seriously and to be able to laugh. And I remember calling it, we're going to have The Snuggle, and I remember my wife looking at me like, "Wait, what? What Did you call that?" I was like, "The Snuggle." And she's like, "Oh, you have to change that name." And that just told me that it was ridiculous enough...

Dave (main interviewee) (06:32):
That's right.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (06:33):
... that it needed to stay. And yes, we know it could have different connotations. We know that snuggling... We're not actually getting together and snuggling and that's not what this thing means. We're just basically making fun of ourselves and it then seemed to resonate with the team. It's just like, "We're going to go to the..." And when you tell, it's become a commonplace that you'll start... I start hearing people talk about their friends like, "Oh, I got to go. We're going to go meet for our snuggle." And everybody's like, "Wait, what? What is this?" [inaudible 00:07:05]

Dave (main interviewee) (07:05):
It's such a ridiculous name. [inaudible 00:07:08] It's got this great side effect where you kind of now have to tell the story.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (07:11):
Yeah, you got to tell the story.

Dave (main interviewee) (07:12):
You have to tell the story. Now

Matt (07:14):
Here's Rob again.

Rob (07:15):
Yeah, it's a slightly embarrassing word, right? Once you joined Font Awesome and you're part of the crew, you internalize it really quickly. From an outside perspective, and I've explained this to people before and I'm always hesitant to use the word snuggle, because it sounds a little creepy, honestly, right? I don't know how you felt when you first heard it, but...

Matt (07:37):
I thought I was really funny.

Rob (07:38):
You thought it was?

Matt (07:38):
Oh, yeah.

Rob (07:39):
Yeah, so... And humor is a very big part of what we are at Font Awesome. Everybody has got a sense of humor. We love humor. Delivering the punchline is kind of one of our core values, but from the outside, it sounds weird. When we explain it, it's a short period, a week, when we all come together and we get to do these things, we get to reconnect. The reason it's called the snuggle is a bit tongue in cheek, because we want to recognize that this is not a normal thing. We don't do these like "normal companies" do them. It's not just a hotel lobby and hotel conference room where we get together and the CEO stands up and tells everybody what to do or...

Matt (08:21):
Charts and graphs.

Rob (08:22):
Yeah. Charts and graphs. It really is a investment in our relationships and checking in just to see how everybody's doing and really form those bonds that keep things going like we think they should.

Matt (08:36):
Mm-hmm.

Dave (main interviewee) (08:37):
Right. You said we don't get together and actually snuggle, right? But what we do is, we get together. It's a way of recognizing that when we get together, we're obviously going to do lots of work stuff. We're going to do planning, we're going to do, "How's the company doing?" Right? We're going to do and talk about all these things. We're going to get together and do the things that you can do best in person. Collaboration, brainstorming, a whole bunch of stuff that you can do pretty well remotely, but you can really do well with everybody in the room to look in the eyes and see what people are like.

(09:06):
Is somebody really sharing? Are they holding back? What's the body language? All that kind of stuff. We can do that better there, so we're going to do that, but it's the recognizing that the priority here is not that. The priority here is the other person sitting across the room from you, actually genuinely hearing them and making sure that... Just paying attention all along the way, having side conversations.

(09:28):
So much of this is downtime too, between stuff. We don't have the water cooler, right? And so, when we all get together, the whole share your nerd way. What are the things outside of work that you've been doing? I'm convinced that most substantive pieces of company culture come from everything somebody is outside of the workplace. Everything that they do and they bring with them from home is where the richness and depth of culture at a company can come from. So we've got cycling nerds, right? We've got nutrition nerds. We've got, as you might expect, Lord of the Rings nerds. We've got Star Wars nerds, we've got people who are design nerds, right? What was it?

Travis (secondary interviewee) (10:03):
Marvel nerds. Keyboard nerds.

Dave (main interviewee) (10:05):
Oh, keyboard nerds. That's a fun one.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (10:07):
D&D nerds. I mean, we got...

Matt (10:08):
Harry Potter nerds.

Dave (main interviewee) (10:09):
Harry Potter nerds. Some of these are expected, right? But you might not expect that somebody could be an exercise or a nutrition nerd, right? But it's the same process of going deep and learning everything about something to figure out how to do it best. How to do this better and better and better and better every single day. Not because it's like this, "Oh, I'm not a good enough person unless I do it, but because it's there and it's exciting and it's fascinating at all. How do I do it better?"

Matt (10:32):
Right.

Dave (main interviewee) (10:33):
That's what a nerd is. When we say nerd, that's what we mean. It's this kind of passion that if you meet somebody, you meet a stranger, you have learned in life not to talk about those things with them. You've learned not to share that. We want to be a company where you are comfortable to share those things right off the bat.

(10:52):
And normally in society, you get somebody else you're talking to and they might actually start asking and you kind of lean back a little bit, right? You're leaned back and if they keep asking enough, then they hit that breaking point where you lean in and you tell them all about this amazing thing and isn't it amazing? And isn't it so great? And look at this. Look how amazing and wonderful and beautiful this thing is, and how can you not appreciate this, right? That's what art is, right? That's what going to a museum is, where you can go and you can look and share this thing of beauty with somebody else. It's awesome.

Matt (11:25):
Yeah. It's meant to be shared.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (11:26):
And we get together and we get to rebuild relationships and give people the benefit of the doubt. And when a lot of your medium is through a tech server face, maybe you lose some context or you're not quite sure what somebody meant. You can get together and go, "Oh yeah, I remember. These people are awesome and I love working with them." And you get to rebuild that. So it's almost like we emotionally snuggle.

Matt (11:49):
Right? Yeah. You can't really grind an ax when you're standing next to somebody making chocolate chip cookies.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (11:54):
Absolutely.

Dave (main interviewee) (11:55):
I mean, honestly, it's the problem of technology and social media, right? The lack of looking somebody else in the eyes and having any sort of history whatsoever to soften it and to recognize this is another human that you're talking to here.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (12:09):
Yeah. We love snuggles.

Dave (main interviewee) (12:10):
We love snuggling. It's lovely. We're doing one right now.

Matt (12:12):
We love the snuggles.

Dave (main interviewee) (12:13):
You just can't see it.

Matt (12:14):
Yeah. I mean, how's it going this time? We had to cancel a few of them because we're in COVID times. You want to make sure it was a safe time to meet. How did they start? How are they going now? Is it still a good cadence for Font Awesome?

Travis (secondary interviewee) (12:29):
Yeah. We often look at that and revisit that, and when you're in a worldwide pandemic, what does that mean? And so, yeah. We had to miss some and you could definitely could feel it.

Matt (12:38):
Yeah.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (12:39):
There was a lot of... It's like, "Oh man, I was really looking forward to that. I really needed to see these people again. I missed them." And then, when you finally get to do it, and we made sure we just kept on top of things, made sure we could make it as safe as possible for everybody. And then, we got to meet and then, it was just like, "Oh, this is amazing." So much so that by the end, you're probably the most exhausted in work versus the other times when we don't meet, just because there's just a lot of emotion and just a lot of goodwill. We have two late night hangout times where we just play games or...

Dave (main interviewee) (13:19):
D&D.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (13:21):
D&D or we do cocktails or smoke cigars and talk around the fire. I mean, we just do whatever and...

Dave (main interviewee) (13:30):
Share in something.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (13:31):
Yeah, share.

Dave (main interviewee) (13:32):
Somebody finds [inaudible 00:13:33]

Travis (secondary interviewee) (13:33):
Interesting conversations. Deep conversations. Light conversations.

Dave (main interviewee) (13:36):
We may or may not have some of the world's best chocolate chip cookies coming tonight.

Matt (13:40):
Yeah.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (13:40):
Yeah, possibly.

Matt (13:41):
Yeah. I think it's coming our way.

(13:43):
Just taking a quick moment here to allow the rest of the Font awesome team to reflect on the awesomeness of Brian's cookies. Here's just a few reflections.

Mike (13:52):
Oh my goodness, these cookies are so amazing. To me, Brian's cookies, they have the kind of care and craft in them, like his UI/UX design.

Matt (14:02):
What do you think about Brian's cookies?

Speaker 7 (14:04):
I imagine that if there's a cookie in heaven, this is it.

Matt (14:11):
All right, Kelsey, so what do you think of Brian's chocolate chip cookie?

Speaker 8 (14:15):
They taste like what I imagine heaven is like.

Speaker 9 (14:18):
They're soft, gooey, warm and absolutely delicious.

Rob (14:24):
You need to wear your sweatpants and that one or two cigar a year, I save them for the snuggles.

Matt (14:32):
Oh, yeah.

Rob (14:33):
Sometimes, we'll have a celebratory bottle of alcohol of spirit and all these kind of little tiny things we do. Yeah, we play games. We play D&D games. We've had one that's been ongoing for, at this point, years. It only happens at The Snuggle. We each have D&D characters that are special for just this snuggle game, and we do those things just purely fun and it's just... We're hanging out with friends at that point.

Matt (15:06):
Yeah.

Travis (secondary interviewee) (15:07):
We eat good, we have fun. We reconnect, we rebuild, and...

Dave (main interviewee) (15:13):
It's the place to see where we...

Travis (secondary interviewee) (15:14):
It's amazing, but exhausting.

Dave (main interviewee) (15:15):
We make up for a lot of the water cooler stuff that we miss, right? We make up for those shared experiences on a daily basis. We try to make up for that, a lot of that here and compare it. I'm so excited that we got together. That we got to get together right now.

Matt (15:28):
Oh, It's been awesome. I think what you said Travis about it's exhausting in a sense. I was actually talking to somebody else about this where it's like I come prepared to... I mean, I'm an introvert, so I need the times to... I have to find the right balance to where I'm not completely taxed by the end of the day, but I also push myself where it's like this connection time's really good. So I'm going to push myself to that limit a little bit just to where I'm not completely wiped out.

(15:56):
I mean, I go home feeling kind of tired but filled up at the same time, where it's like I made the most of that time to connect with folks and you hit the ground feeling goodwill towards the other person, at the other folks that you work with and you're ready to work hard and build something great and you feel like you're connected and it's a great time.

Dave (main interviewee) (16:19):
I mean, I'm an extrovert and I am exhausted.

Matt (16:27):
Yeah, yeah.

Dave (main interviewee) (16:27):
[inaudible 00:16:27] So we've got normal working days, 9:00 to 4:30 or 8:30 to 4:30 or whatever we end up doing for The Snuggle. And then, two of the nights... So people come in on Sunday. So Sunday's a travel day and then, they fly back out on Friday. That's a travel day. So we've got four days in the middle there for the actual snuggle. Two of the nights, we have... We expect everybody to be there hanging out two of the nights and we've got two nights that are in some ways kind of recovery nights.

Matt (16:51):
Right.

Dave (main interviewee) (16:53):
And so, just because of that, we also know that there's an amount that is a lot. So we try to figure that balance out too.

Matt (17:02):
Yeah, that's good times.

(17:17):
So clearly, The Snuggle is about as serious as its name, and yet, the effect is that it helps build goodwill and trust among the Font Awesome team so we can work together better. While the remote work versus in-office work debate will likely continue, Font Awesome has found a way to make the best of both worlds. And once you start working remote, you may never want to go back to the office again.

Mike (17:43):
Yeah, it'd be hard for me to go back to a all the time in the office situation.

Matt (17:50):
This is lead programmer, Mike Wilkerson.

Mike (17:53):
And it seems silly in retrospect that that was ever, not just a requirement, but a sort of a management bias that if people are going to really get their work done, they're going to be here in the office. I think about how many hours I spent commuting, when I would get on a bus at a park and ride and then, ride to downtown Seattle, and then, I would work. And then, there would be a lunch break at some point. And then, I would have to navigate the bus system to get back home and I'm just thinking, "I don't know, was there two hours a day that was just going back and forth? And I tried to use the time on the bus productively for myself, reading or I did some songwriting on those bus rides, but still, I just think of all that time and then, when you're in the office, I do think there's more interruption and that sort of thing.

(18:43):
Some of those interruptions can be part of the relational, collaborative and all of that, but sometimes, it's just interruption that is undermining productivity. So working mostly remotely, I can be very productive. I work from home, but then, doing some collaboration in person enhances productivity, because you've got that relational, just smoothness working with your collaborators, so it ends up being the best of both worlds, I think, to just have the going back and forth between remote work and occasional in person. It would be hard to just go back to go to the office every day. I don't know if I could ever do it again.

Matt (19:30):
Thanks for listening in to Podcast Awesome. A special thank you to Dave Gandy, Travis Chase, Mike Wilkerson, and Rob Madole for coming on the show. If you'd like what you've heard, please give us a rating and review and share this episode with your nerd friends. This episode was produced and edited by yours truly, Matt Johnson. The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin and audio mastering was done by Chris Ends at Lemon Production.

(20:04):
And Brian, if you're listening, we don't expect the cookies every time, but we really do like them, but... Yeah, we don't expect them.

Mike (20:12):
It. It's just a wonderful memory. If I never have another one again, it's still part of Font Awesome to me.

Matt (20:17):
That's right.