Why you’re here 🏅 My message to the team.

André Oliveira
Pixelmatters
Published in
4 min readMay 4, 2021

Every once in a while, you gotta stop to think. To reflect. Why I’m here and not there? Why I’m doing this and not that? Where am I going?

More often than not, through a journey of years or even decades, there’s a tendency to lose perspective. To forget where you are, where you’re going, and why you’ve decided to *be there* in the first place. Within this mindset and hoping it somehow inspires other leaders, we’re sharing a copy of this internal communication made to the Pixelmatters team on April 29, 2021.

It’s titled “Why you’re here” and you’ll understand why. Have a read! ⤵

Team,

As we keep living in these strange times, at a professional level things are going well, with this solid start to 2021. We’re quickly approaching the record-breaking number of 50 pixelmasters (better naming suggestions are welcomed)!

That means there are several new faces, which are still getting accustomed to new processes, colleagues, tools, and our culture. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good time to share… a reminder. A reminder of why you’re here. ✨ Some of you joined a couple of weeks ago, while others have kept up with us for 5+ incredible years, which these days is pretty remarkable.

I’d like to invite you on a trip to where it all started. The moment you decided to apply or accept to work at Pixelmatters.

Surely you’ll all have different reasons, but I’m confident I may be able to hit on a few. Here are my guesses…

  • You identified yourself with our mission, “to empower businesses to achieve their full potential by creating top-quality digital products, while fostering great relationships along the way”.
  • You wanted to work at a company that has people-oriented principles. Pixelmatters isn’t perfect, far from it, but even from the outside, you could see that we care.
  • You decided to give it a try independently on your level of experience or previous roles, as you understood that it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, how you look, or any other aspect about yourself. Pixelmatters is a place for everyone that loves what they do.
  • You looked at Pixelmatters as a reference. Like many other candidates we’re seeing these days, you weren’t actually looking to make a switch, but you decided our invitation to chat because it was Pixelmatters. In an alternative, but similar scenario, you were looking for a new professional challenge…but you only applied to work at Pixelmatters.
  • As a detail-oriented geek, you aim to live in “a world where great user experience is the norm, not the exception” while hoping to have a chance to “inspire businesses and people to be at their best.
  • You found our approach, posture, cultural vision, and work quality to be quite refreshing and inspiring, and simply wanted to be part of it.
  • You were looking to work at a company that isn’t afraid of showing vulnerability, that makes mistakes but wants to learn from them, with the help and input from the team. A company that looks at itself as an iterative evolving product.
  • A healthy work environment is key for you, as you “don’t take yourself too seriously.” You’re passionate about your work, yes, but you also like to “have fun, otherwise, it’s not worth it.”

Again, while I hope these somehow resonate with you, they’re just my guesses. I may be totally wrong, so feel free to leave your reason(s) in the comments, whatever they are. 🙂 Super curious to read them all, and to join your trip on how you felt when you met or joined Pixelmatters.

To wrap things up, a final note. Despite the crazy good first quarter of 2021, make no mistake: the next few months will be quite challenging for us. When it comes to the team size, we’re entering uncharted waters that we never navigated before. So, yes, there will be growing pains, probably a lot of them. As always, despite the mistakes that we may make or adjustments that may be needed, you can be sure of one thing: we’ll do our best, and not let you down.

It’s a privilege to have you all on the team and I’m proud we were able to make you all come together. Let’s keep rocking! 🚀

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André Oliveira
Pixelmatters

Dad. Entrepreneur. Designer. Thinker. Doer. Founder & CEO of Pixelmatters