Meet Wrikers: Clayton Weeks, UX Writing Manager
Before coming to Wrike, Clayton taught English, designed high-school language exams, worked as a newspaper copy editor, and worked on marketing and UX teams at a global tech company. Check out his personal journey of becoming a UX writing manager, and why he decided to join Wrike! 👇
Hi! My name’s Clayton, and I joined Wrike as a UX writing manager in March 2022. I’ve lived half my life in the United States and the other half in Europe, so I don’t feel like I truly fit in anywhere. My motto is “Keep it simple.”
What made you want to join Wrike?
The truth is, at first I didn’t. I’d been working at another company for 10 years, and I was afraid of giving up the stability and inside knowledge I had there to join Wrike. And I was honest about that during my interview process. “It’s a big risk,” I said. “What if I leave my job and then fail at Wrike? Where would I be then?”
It felt almost like a family!
But Wrike was persistent, and the company culture won me over. Everyone I’d met — recruiters, designers, PMs, etc. — was very down to earth and friendly. It felt almost like a family. And Umberto Abate (Head of Product Design at Wrike and my current boss) finally convinced me to join. I really appreciated his calm, measured way of explaining things, and I liked his vision for how the design team could grow.
How did you become a UX writer/UX writing manager?
I’ve always loved words. I’d studied literature and creative writing at university, but never had any idea how to use that practically. At the end of my studies, I won a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship, which allowed me to move to Europe and begin teaching English as a foreign language. This helped me to think more logically about language, and I began to see language as a puzzle.
I later worked as a copy editor at a newspaper, which gave me the experience to laser-focus on details and rewrite sentences and paragraphs for maximum clarity. My years as a copy editor made me truly appreciate the importance of brevity and simplicity.
Eventually, I found myself doing both marketing copywriting and UX writing for a global antivirus company. I soon realized that I preferred the UX side of things and turned my focus to that. I later convinced my boss that we needed more UX writers, and I was able to hire a small team. I’d never set out to become a manager, but that’s how I became one.
As a UX writing manager at Wrike, I want to help my team avoid the pitfalls I experienced throughout my career and guide them to make their own decisions.
How does Wrike support your career goals?
I’m not looking to climb any corporate ladders. I prefer to keep my feet on the ground, and I enjoy having the ability to manage a team of talented UX writers while continuing to write myself.
I was doing UX writing before it had a name. Now it’s “the next big thing” that everyone’s talking about, and a lot of writers are looking to get into the profession. As a UX writing manager at Wrike, I want to help my team avoid the pitfalls I experienced throughout my career and guide them to make their own decisions.
Basically, it’s not really about me. I’m happy where I am. I want my team to be happy, too — whether they choose to continue on the UX writing path or switch to other challenges.
The other design-team leaders help me achieve this with their constant support, and so far it’s been easy to obtain the necessary training to help my team grow even more.
What is the hardest part of your job? What is the most rewarding one?
Wrike is a very complicated product. Everyone told me this before I joined the company, but I honestly thought they were exaggerating. I’d worked on complex products before, so I didn’t quite understand at the time how Wrike could be so difficult.
But the fact is that Wrike is extremely customizable, and this makes it a challenge for my team to write for. There isn’t a single customer flow. People can pretty much use the product however they want. It’s basically a giant spider web: every part of the product is somehow connected to the rest. Tug on one thread, and you’ll more than likely shake the entire web. This makes it a real challenge to maintain consistency.
Because of this challenge, when I manage to solve a problem, it feels great. That’s the rewarding part for me: conquering the complexities.
We give each other advice and bounce ideas off each other every day. I’m not a micromanager, and I want my team to be free to make their own decisions — and even their own mistakes.
How would you describe Wrike’s UX writing team and culture?
Our team is quite small. I’ve got two writers now, and I hope to get a third sometime next year. So I’ve been helping out with writing as much as possible, too, and it’s great to have a team that’s truly focused on doing what’s best for the customer. We give each other advice and bounce ideas off each other every day. I’m not a micromanager, and I want my team to be free to make their own decisions — and even their own mistakes. I firmly believe that there’s no replacement for experience, and mistakes are part of that.
How do you think the team will continue to grow and mature?
We’re looking for a tool now to help us better manage our content. I think this will be a game changer for us, because it will allow us to spend less time searching through previous copy and free up our time to think about bigger things and participate in more research.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
During the school year, I wake up early and take my 6-year-old daughter to school. Then I either go to the office or return home to work. (A great thing about Wrike is that you can work from home if you like.) I try to keep my mornings free of meetings, so I can focus on my own work. I have lunch around noon, and then my afternoons are often full of meetings.
I always have dozens of tabs open across multiple browser windows. (I do have a tab manager, but I guess I’m just terrible at using it correctly.) Figma, Slack, and Wrike are always open, too. I bounce from one to the other throughout the day, and I try to be available as much as possible for my team to answer their questions and help with any problems they might be having.
What’s something that people would be surprised to learn about you?
I suffer from imposter syndrome. I work with a lot of talented people, and I often feel that they know a lot more than I do. The problem with working with words is that there’s a hundred different ways to say something. Nothing is ever simple, and writers love to debate how to best write something. But this can lead to a lot of self-doubt. I have to remind myself that nothing is perfect, and it’s foolish to strive for perfection. We should be striving for “better.”
Be yourself. Wrike is a very open, tolerant company. The people here are human. And that’s what I love about it.
If you were going to give someone who just decided to join Wrike one piece of advice, what would it be?
Be yourself. Wrike is a very open, tolerant company. The people here are human. And that’s what I love about it.
