Podcast Awesome

Latest Episodes:

Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Jason Otero Oct 05, 2023

Show notes

🎸 Code, Kits, and Killer Guitar Riffs with Jason Otero

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Font Awesome software engineer Jason Otero to dive into the rhythms of code and chord progressions alike. Jason talks about what it’s like working on Font Awesome Kits, his experience with six-week splits (spoiler: better than two-week sprints), and why taking time to cool down after intense work sessions is chef’s kiss for productivity.

We also nerd out about loading Kits using only CSS, explore Jason’s thoughts on WebAssembly and Rust, and hear about his double life as a guitarist in two bands, one of which is Blister Soul. It’s an episode with strong tech, strong opinions, and strong guitar tones. Plug in and press play.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode

🧪 Six-week splits: why they beat sprints
🎛️ Jason’s clever new way of loading Font Awesome Kits
💅 CSS-only web font Kits? You bet!
🧠 Embracing “cool down” time for better tech work
🛠️ Rust, WebAssembly, and Jason’s programming faves
🎸 His guitar gear rabbit hole (you know the one)
🤘 Life in not one but two bands

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00:36 — Six week splits vs two week sprints
00:05:57 — New method of loading Kits
00:07:18 — CSS-only web font Kits
00:09:47 — Project management methods
00:12:41 — Full benefits of 'cool down' time
00:18:33 — WebAssembly and Rust technology
00:19:09 — Programming language preferences
00:22:14 — Favorite icons and hobbies
00:26:33 — Guitar gear obsession
00:31:38 — Music and Band Promotion

🎙️ Notable Quotes

“That process of logical deduction that you have to do whenever you're troubleshooting something I think kind of helped lead me toward the development side of things.”
(On how installing alarm systems shaped his dev skills)
“For people that just don't really want to use a lot of JavaScript... we now are getting ready to release a new way of loading the kit that is only using CSS.”
(Re: CSS-only Kits as a streamlined solution)
“The cool down, they're nice for many things... it's a great time for fixing bugs, putting on polish, trying out new things.”
(Explaining the value of Font Awesome’s Basecamp-style 6-week split + 2-week cooldown rhythm)
“It was a little hazardous. I used like a big old mixer... and to clean it, they would literally set it on fire.”
(Recalling his teenage glue-mixing job — the most pyro-nerdy flex ever!)
“I haven't counted up recently the number of guitars I have, but it's probably in the range of 15 or so.”
(Guitar gearhead status: confirmed)
“We want to give customers cool stuff because it's cool to have customers like to use our stuff.”
(Why he loves shipping features that solve problems)

🔗 Links & Resources

Blister Soul (Jason's band – rock on 🎶)
The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin
Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions

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Behind the Pixels: Designing Icons the Font Awesome Way Sep 18, 2023

Show notes

🎧 The Fine Art of Structure & Chaos — Inside Font Awesome’s Creative Process

What happens when you mix dinosaur icons, brain science, and a meticulous-yet-messy creative workflow? You get a peak behind the pixel curtain with icon maestros Jory Raphael and Noah Jacobus! In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt chats with the duo about their icon design process — equal parts strategy and serendipity.

From high-level sketches to final pixel perfection, Jory and Noah reveal how they balance structure with creative chaos using tools like Figma and a well-worn sketchpad. Along the way, we explore productivity hacks, the rhythm of creative flow, and yes — dinosaur design drama. 🦖💡

🎙️ What We Cover in This Episode:

🧠 Icon design as both art and science
✏️ Why sketching still matters in a digital world
🦕 The joy and struggle of designing dinosaur icons
🛠️ Why Figma makes their workflows less "rawr" and more "refined"
🧬 What brain science and music have to do with creativity
🗓️ Rebuilding your schedule to support creative energy
💥 How pressure impacts the design process—for better or worse

⏱️ Timestamps

[00:01:23] Design process
[00:05:01] High level sketching
[00:07:45] Figma for interface design
[00:10:39] Designing dinosaur icons
[00:14:08] Messy creative process
[00:17:13] Creative process and productivity
[00:20:31] Brain science in music
[00:23:38] Creating a new schedule
[00:26:52] Creative process and pressure

🎯 Top Noteworthy Quotes from Jory & Noah on Design Process

On Messy Creativity:

“The creative process in general is so by its very nature, amorphous and all over the place.” — Jory Raphael

On Collaborating Across the Fence:

“Sometimes I will design something, take a kind of a first pass at it, kick it across the fence to Noah, and he'll go in and tweak it and add, improve it generally... it's kind of collaborative when it needs to be and isn't when it doesn't need to be.” — Jory Raphael

On Tool-Based Sketching:

“My sketching process is like digitally drawing right in the program itself.” — Noah Jacobus

On Dinosaur Design Woes:

“The Tyrannosaurus... it’s not done yet... you have to find a way. Like, you can bend, or is it squatting? Does it look like it's pooping instead of standing up?” — Jory Raphael

On Visual Rhythm in Workspaces:

“I often will put a movie or a TV show on my little side monitor... just something I can kind of pay half attention to... helps me just get into a zone where I can draw.” — Jory Raphael

On Brain Science and Structure:

“There’s got to be brain science to this stuff for sure.” — Matt Johnson
“We just draw small pictures, Matt.” — Jory Raphael

On Icon Design Pressure:

“We’re not on the hook to force anything to work. It can be much more freeform.” — Noah Jacobus

On Growing Process Needs:

“What works when there's a smaller group of people doesn't work necessarily as well when there are more... We put in as much process as we need to.” — Jory Raphael

🔗 Links & Resources

The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin

Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions

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Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Kelsey Jackson, Designer and Front-End Developer Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

🎧 Episode Summary: Design Systems, B-Grade Horror, and a Splash of Rum with Kelsey Jackson

In this episode of Nerd Show and Tell, Matt kicks back with Font Awesome’s (now a part of the Web Awesome team) Designer and Front-End Developer, Kelsey Jackson. If you’ve admired how snappy and stylish the Font Awesome site looks lately — yep, that’s Kelsey’s handiwork. From refining a slick internal design system to mixing tiki drinks and geeking out over B-horror classics, this convo serves up career insights and cult movie nerdery with a twist.

You'll hear how Kelsey conned "convinced" Dave Gandy to bring him onboard the FA crew, his high school art teacher’s pivotal advice, and why middle-shelf rum might just be the real MVP of mixology. Oh, and if you're into “Killer Klowns from Outer Space,” buckle up.

🔍 What We Cover in This Episode

🎨 Creating an internal design system that doesn’t suck
🍿 Kelsey’s wishlist for horror-themed icons
🧪 Drawing-to-design transitions and nerdy career pivots
👟 Bourbon, sneakers, and the legend of the Snuggle swag
🍔 Cooking inspo from The Bear and YouTube foodies
🍹 Why expensive rum is a scam (probably)

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00:16 – Creating an Internal Design System and More
00:02:43 – Kelsey’s Job at Waco Media as Developer/Designer
00:04:28 – Drawing vs. Design: The OG Connection
00:07:29 – Refining Font Awesome’s Design System
00:11:57 – Why Design System Consistency Matters
00:13:27 – Web Components, AI, and the Content Creation Game
00:15:34 – Horror Movie Icon Wishlist
00:17:32 – B-Horror and Bad Job Flashbacks
00:22:07 – Car Wash Reflections + Disaster Relief Vibes
00:27:49 – Bourbon at the Snuggle, Kicks, and Spirits
00:29:47 – Cooking Steak & Mixing Tiki Drinks
00:31:25 – Thoughts on The Bear
00:33:29 – Matty Matheson’s Culinary Comedy
00:35:18 – Resources for Building Design Systems

🎤 Noteworthy Quotes

🎨 On Becoming a Designer

“If you want to sort of stay connected to the art world and not be broke, you might want to look into design.” — on advice from his high school art teacher

🤝 On Meeting Dave Gandy

“It's weird how people were just afraid to walk up to the man and introduce themselves, and I was one of the few that did that... I’ve kind of been working that angle up since I met the guy. I wanted to work at Font Awesome.”

🛠️ On Building a Design System

“A design system is a set of standards to help manage design at scale. It reduces redundancy and creates a shared visual language.”

📚 On Learning Design Systems

“I just jumped in... I landed on Brad Frost and his Atomic Design, and that helped me figure it out.”

🔗 Links & Resources

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Unlocking Figma's Rainbow Magic: How We Transformed Our Icon Design Process Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

Why Font Awesome Switched to Figma: Boolean Magic, Sharp Icons & Real-Time Design 🚀

In this fun and vector-loving episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt catches up with icon design duo Noah Jacobus and Jory Raphael to chat all things Figma. They unpack what makes Figma such a killer tool for collaborative design — hello, real-time editing and Boolean wizardry! We also peek into how it compares to Adobe Illustrator, get the scoop on Adobe’s acquisition of Figma, and daydream about a possible Font Awesome plugin in the future. Whether you're a vector nerd or just Fig-curious, there’s plenty to love here.

✨ What We Cover in This Episode

🌈 “Figma has rainbow magic.” (For real, it does.)
🤝 Real-time collab and why it rocks for icon design
🧮 Boolean operations and non-destructive editing, aka vector sorcery
🏢 Adobe's acquisition of Figma: friend or foe?
🧩 Plugins, problems, and finding fixes with the Figma community
💡 How Sharp icons + Figma = the dream team

⏱️ Timestamps

00:05:56 Tools don’t always matter (but sometimes they really do)
00:12:12 Adobe owns Figma now
00:12:31 Adobe acquisitions: the good, the bad, the ugly
00:24:22 Linking Font Awesome Pro accounts
00:27:09 Figma has rainbow magic 🌈✨

🔗 Links & Resources

-------------------
HIGHLIGHTS
"So Figma has rainbow magic." (00:26:57-00:27:19)"Figma is a central place where we can both work in the same file at the same time.
If I make a change, he sees it." (00:20:52-00:23:44)"Noah is entirely responsible for us moving to Figma." (00:00:00-00:03:29)
"And the ability to easily test things in the context of digital products is kind of where it found its place for me." (00:03:23-00:06:24)
"Being able to identify each of those, you know, every element of a stroke shape or path and make adjustments to it that way is pretty cool." (00:17:58-00:20:57)
"Boolean operations are one of the biggest ones... it's kind of a unique way of treating stroked objects like their actual shapes at the same time... that is something that it can't do. So it's a nice more unique feature." (00:15:08-00:18:08)
"I think that Figma is enough of a powerhouse kind of on its own that that's not going to happen with the employees there and the community, especially as such a huge force with a lot of momentum behind it that helps support the product and keeps it moving." (00:11:51-00:15:16)
"There are just tons of things that are out there that if you run into an issue, someone else likely has run into it already and there's probably a plugin that exists to fix it or address it, which is awesome." (00:23:38-00:27:07)
"But what started to become really appealing to me about Figma was, as Noah said, some of the, well, number one, the simplicity of collaboration, which is now super important because we have multiple icon designers at Fawn Awesome, but also some of their unique takes on doing things with vectors." (00:06:17-00:09:04)

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Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Joey Hensen Font Awesome's Controller Aug 08, 2023

Show notes

🎧 Episode Summary: Finance Wizards & Fitness Quests with Joey Henson

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Joey Henson, Controller at Font Awesome and low-key wizard of spreadsheets, startup survival, and Hogwarts-worthy metaphors. Joey opens up about his journey through the high-pressure world of startup finance, what burnout looked like after becoming a parent, and how Font Awesome’s uniquely human work culture has helped him reclaim balance and joy in his career.

We dive into how Font Awesome’s values around work-life balance, empathy, and thoughtful leadership created space for Joey to rediscover what matters: family, fitness, and—yes—fandom. From conjuring Harry Potter analogies to explain how Kits work, to lobbying for a wizarding icon set, Joey brings humor and heart to everything he does. He also talks about his recent health transformation, the joys of counting macros, and his budding love affair with Ruby on Rails.

Whether you're a finance pro, a budding dev, or a wand-wielding D&D nerd, this episode’s got something magical for you.

✨ What We Cover in This Episode

💼 Burnout in the startup finance world
🧘 Work-life balance at Font Awesome
🧙 A Harry Potter metaphor for Kits (Hermione’s bag FTW!)
🧮 Learning SQL, Ruby, and Rails for fun
🍳 Why Joey counts macros and how it changed his life
🧙‍♂️ Dungeons & Dragons meets nutrition tracking

🕒 Timestamps

00:03:50 Reflection on the Challenges of Working Long Hours
00:05:27 Self-Development and Quality of Life at Font Awesome
00:08:43 Tech, Finance, and Harry Potter Icon Pack at Font Awesome
00:11:13 Exploring Harry Potter Lore to Explain Kits
00:18:34 Dungeons & Dragons and Nutrition Habits
00:20:20 Counting Macros for Optimal Health and Fitness

🔗 Links & Resources

-----------------------
HIGHLIGHTS
In a previous Snuggle, we were talking about metaphors or some way to describe how a kit works. And I seem to remember an allusion to Harry Potter lore would maybe be a good way to explain it. I think we discovered that there was confusion among folks between whether a kit is populated like it's a container that's full of something, or if it's empty and you add to it. And what we came around to say was more accurate is that a kit comes fully loaded with everything you might want to use.
Yeah, it is. So Hermione, the beaded bag, it had an undetectable extension charm on it. They used that multiple times in the books and the movies. And it is it's kind of like the DND bag of holding where you can pull out a lot of stuff if you know what's in there. And it comes pre loaded. That works. So, like with Hermiones, the best analogy I could think of was they needed a ton of books and they needed clothes, and when they needed that, Hermione said, oh, let me grab that. Let me just get that out of this bag here. And that's kind of how the kits work, too. You're 100% right. I remember that conversation now where it's, hey, you don't have to worry about it. We've already got it handled for you, and we're going to make it super easy for you to get that out of there.

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Font Awesome Takes the Stage: A Recap of Config 2023 Aug 03, 2023

Show notes

Behind the Scenes at Config: Icon Design, Figma Variables, and Public Speaking Tips | Podcast Awesome
In this episode of Podcast Awesome, host Matt Johnson gets the post-Config download from Font Awesome’s resident icon heroes, Jory Raphael and Noah Jacobus. They dish on their experiences at the legendary Config design conference, spill the beans on what it’s like to speak in front of a crowd (or an empty room 😅), and reflect on the power of Figma’s tools—especially variables. They also talk about Adobe’s acquisition of Figma and why designer-led storytelling still reigns supreme. Whether you’re a Figma fanatic or just love a good nerdy confab, this one’s for you.

Spoiler: They also reveal the secret sauce behind prepping a slick design talk... and it’s not just coffee. ☕

💬 What We Cover in This Episode

✨ Figma’s future post-Adobe acquisition
🇮🇸 Insights from Halli Thorleifsson’s keynote (and that viral Elon moment)
🎤 What it’s really like to speak at Config
🧠 How structure helps defeat public speaking nerves
💻 Variables in Figma—big win or major whoa?
🎨 Icon design wisdom from the stage to your screen

⏱️ Timestamps

00:02:23 — Figma's acquisition by Adobe
00:06:06 — Keynote by Icelandic entrepreneur Halli Thorleifsson
00:10:28 — The awkwardness of speaking to an empty room
00:14:14 — Structuring a conference talk (with some serious prep tips)
00:17:25 — Virtual presentations & why feedback matters
00:22:07 — Exploring variables in Figma (🎉 design nerd gold!)
00:24:18 — Outro & reflection

🎤 Quotable Highlights from the Episode

On Conference Impressions

“It’s kind of poop-your-pants big.” – Jory Raphael

On Speaking Prep

“We got a couple little tee-hees out of our stage manager… we’re hoping for some good guffaws and chortles when we actually get people in the room.” – Jory Raphael

On the Power of Good Talks

“The ability to explain these concepts… and make it understandable and clear and funny and silly and memorable… it lingers.” – Bonnie Kate Wolf

On Conference Support

“They gave us a designer advocate, Miggy, who was our support throughout the whole process… it made the process a lot less scary.” – Jory Raphael

On Audience Energy

“By the 10th time through it… you wonder if any of it still makes sense. Actually being able to receive that validation from the crowd… was amazing.” – Noah Jacobus

🔗 Links & Resources

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Icon Designers Jory Raphael and Noah Jacobus Discuss the History and Future of Font Awesome Icons Jul 25, 2023

Show notes

Inside Icon Design: Jory Raphael & Noah Jacobus on Font Awesome’s Creative Evolution

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Font Awesome’s pixel-pushing power duo, Jory Raphael and Noah Jacobus. It’s a deep dive into the art and nerdery of icon design, from the origins of Font Awesome to the philosophy behind its newest visual frontier: the Sharp family of styles.

Jory lets us in on how a longtime “designer crush” led to hiring Noah, and the two get real about what makes an icon actually, well...iconic. Along the way, they share design secrets, reminisce on the Kickstarter days, and explain how constraint is the mother of creativity.

Whether you're a seasoned designer or someone who just really likes a well-drawn pencil icon, this episode's got you covered with smart takes, strong opinions, and a whole lotta SVG love.

💬 What We Cover in This Episode

🎨 Designer Crush Confessions – how admiration turned into collaboration
💼 From Symbolset to Font Awesome – the acquisition that made sense
🎥 Kickstarter Chaos – behind the scenes of the big launch video
🧠 Designing for Clarity – what makes an icon communicate well
🖼️ Icons as Fine Art – yep, they're basically the cave paintings of the digital age
📏 Embracing Constraints – why limits fuel creativity
🔄 Font Awesome 6 Makeover – the redesign that refreshed the whole brand
🎯 Tips for Budding Designers – how to train your eye and your pencil tool

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00:39 – Designer Crushes
00:05:57 – Font Awesome acquires Symbolset
00:08:19 – Creating a video for Kickstarter
00:11:20 – Designing niche icons
00:12:10 – Design icons to convey meaning
00:13:40 – The power of icons
00:17:02 – Icons as a continuation of art
00:18:12 – Creativity thrives with constraints
00:23:36 – Font Awesome 6 redesign
00:24:45 – Icon design tips
00:28:49 – Developing artistic taste
00:30:29 – Practice makes perfect
00:33:00 – Constantly improving design quality
🔥 Top Noteworthy Quotes

🎨 On Creative Admiration and Hiring

"Noah for a while now has been one of my designer crushes." – Jory
(Followed by:)
"All the work he creates is beautiful and engaging and lovely. The way I got over my jealousy of Noah’s work was to hire him."

🕶️ On Good Design Being Invisible

"Good design is invisible, right? If we’re doing our jobs correctly, people aren’t noticing it." – Jory

🎯 On the Joy of Constraints

"I really like constraints. They engender creativity." – Noah
"Knowing the box you’re trying to fill in lets you reroute your decisions in more creative ways."

💾 On the Real Impact of Their Work

"I love being able to say: oh yeah, that’s one of our icons right there. You’ve seen our stuff—you just didn’t know it." – Jory

💡 On Artistic Growth and Imperfection

🤯 On Self-Awareness (and Icon Designer Humor)

"I fooled you all and you’ll eventually discover I have no idea what I’m doing." – Noah

🔗 Links & Resources

Font Awesome – Icons you love (and some you didn’t know you needed)
Symbolset – The icon font predecessor acquired by FA
🎵 Theme song by Ronnie Martin
🎚️ Audio mastered by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

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Appreciating the Virtuous Cycle of Nerdery with Mike Wilkerson Jul 11, 2023

Show notes

🧠 From Walmart to Wobbly Circles: Mike Wilkerson Talks Code, Creativity, and Curves

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, host Matt Johnson chats with Mike Wilkerson, lead programmer at Font Awesome, about the beautiful overlap of programming, design tools, and quirky obsessions like the Marble Machine X.

Mike walks us through his journey from an unexpected start in tech (thanks, Walmart!) to becoming the mastermind behind the internal tools our design team uses every day. Ever wonder what makes an icon wiggle just right? Mike’s got a thing for circles, curves, and SVG perfection — and he explains how even the simplest shapes require complex problem-solving.

🎧 What We Cover in This Episode

🛠️ The origin story of Font Awesome’s custom design tools
🔵 The mystery of SVG circles and their natural imperfections
🌀 Mike's obsession with getting the "wobble" just right
🧘 His approach to mindfulness and how it improves his work
🥁 Why Martin Molin’s Marble Machine X is his creative muse
💡 How loving your work can emerge from the mundane

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00:36 – Design Tools for Font Awesome’s Icon Team
00:07:24 – SVG Circles That Just Won’t Behave
00:07:48 – The Art of Perfecting Imperfections
00:12:12 – Mike’s Favorite Font Awesome Icons
00:16:57 – Meditation as a Developer Superpower
00:19:30 – Fanboying Over the Marble Machine X
00:23:40 – Finding Joy in the Everyday Tasks
00:26:17 – Loving Good Curves (In Code and Life)

Noteworthy Quotes

🎯 On Falling in Love with Code

“I didn’t really fall in love with computer programming until after college. I had to be at my desk at Walmart at 7:30 a.m. in a tie… so I’d wake up earlier just to get a couple hours of coding in for fun.”
— Mike Wilkerson

🛠️ On Font Awesome’s Internal Design Tool (The Factory)

“The factory is what I worked on this past split… It's the tool that our icon designers use to import their designs and convert them into the right format. Everything from naming and unicodes to search tags — it all flows from there.”
— Mike Wilkerson“

🔵 On Perfect Circles & SVG Wobble

“Some of the icons are supposed to be circles… but the design tool was approximating circles from the start. By the time they get to font glyphs, you end up with something that looks a little bit wobbly — if you look close enough.”
— Mike Wilkerson“

🎼 On Marble Machine X & Creative Nerdiness

“It’s both art and engineering… music and engineering. And I’ve lived in both of those worlds. So seeing all that come together in one project — that’s pretty great.”
— Mike Wilkerson“

💡 On What Makes Great Work

“That’s the thing about nerding out — it’s appreciating, caring, and loving what you do. That kind of love makes a better product… and it makes creating it more enjoyable.”
— Mike Wilkerson

“Circles gotta be curvy.” — Mike Wilkerson

🔗 Links & Resources

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When Failure Isn’t Failure: Hard Lessons in Business and Life with Dave Gandy Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

🎙️ The Beautiful Catastrophe: Lessons from Failing Forward with Dave Gandy

What if failure wasn’t the end — but the beginning of something awesome?

In this introspective and surprisingly funny episode of Podcast Awesome, host Matt Johnson sits down with Font Awesome founder Dave Gandy to get real about the stumbles, scrapes, and hard-earned wisdom that came from flunking out of MIT — twice. Yep, twice.

From crashing through academia to launching one of the most successful tech Kickstarters of all time, Dave opens up about the not-so-straight path to building something meaningful, and the strange truth that sometimes... believing the lie is part of what makes it real.

This one’s a goldmine for startup dreamers, believers in second (and third) chances, and anyone who’s failed their way into something better.

🔹 What We Cover in This Episode

🎓 Dave’s two-time flunk from MIT and what it taught him
🔄 How failure can be rebranded as feedback
🚀 Behind-the-scenes chaos (and hope!) of the Font Awesome 5 Kickstarter
🔮 The psychology of self-fulfilling prophecies
🤝 Finding the right co-founders and learning to trust again
🧠 Why doing hard things is the ultimate learning machine

⏱️ Timestamps

00:04:54 Failure is not final.
00:07:30 Embrace reality and grow.
00:10:06 Failure is an opportunity for growth.
00:18:56 Nothing is ever truly failure.
00:23:25 Find trustworthy partners for success.
00:27:05 Trust your teammates.
00:29:09 Try hard things and learn.

🎙️ Noteworthy Quotes from Dave Gandy on Failure, Reality, and Resilience

"A startup is nothing more than believing a lie long enough that it becomes the truth."
"Failure is really nothing more than reality attempting to introduce itself to us."
"Most companies don’t ever recognize that this will almost certainly not be the last place you ever work. Climbing somebody else’s ladder is always a form of failure."
"The only real failure is giving up, giving in… not making a conscious choice."
"Nothing is ever failure if you’ve done it the right way — the way you think is right and healthy."
"If we're only ever succeeding in life, that means we're never trying anything hard enough that truly challenges us."
"Humility is one of the things we look for most in people we hire."
"I can always come up with a reason why something is somebody else's fault. That’s why humility is such a key component."
"Try hard things and find the right person to do them alongside."
"There are two kinds of successful failures: choosing to stop because it’s wise, and choosing to go on because it’s wise. The only truly awful one is stopping without making the choice."

📎 Links & Resources

Y Combinator
MIT
Make Some People Want: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Font Awesome's 2017 Kickstarter
The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin
Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

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Character First: Why Font Awesome Doesn’t Hire “Rock Stars” and “A Players” Jun 13, 2023

Show notes

🎙️ Why We Hire for Humility (Over Skill) — Building a People-First Culture at Font Awesome

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt, Dave Gandy, and Travis Chase get real about what makes a company culture thrive — and it starts with hiring the right humans. Not “rock stars.” Not “ninjas.” Not “10x devs.” Just humble, collaborative people who love to learn and do great work.

Dave and Travis share how they took inspiration from 37signals’ books and blog, decided to ditch the ego-heavy hiring tropes, and chose instead to build a people-first culture at Font Awesome. That meant rethinking how they assess new team members — with a focus on character over clout.

This episode unpacks lessons they've learned, mistakes they avoided, and what it means to work with folks you'd actually want to build things (and grab tacos) with.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:13 – Creating a Unique Work Culture
02:26 – Exploring the Possibilities of Entrepreneurship
04:07 – How Basecamp Found Success Through Dignity
05:32 – Hiring Practices That Actually Work
07:06 – The Rock Star Myth and Its Fallout
08:26 – Work Product vs. Character Fit
12:05 – Hiring for Humility and Growth
14:19 – Trust-Building and Healthy Disagreements
15:53 – Humility: The Culture Code

🔗 Links & Resources

37signals
Company Culture: Why We Hire for Humility (Over Skill)
Theme song composed by Ronnie Martin
Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

—------------------------

Highlights

🎯 Culture & Vision

“Basecamp for me... most of what they write to me is sense: to look at the things that are obviously just nonsense and ask, what if you ran it a different way?” — Dave“
We really tried to talk the way humans talk... Does it sound like a human wrote it, or does it sound like a marketer wrote it?” — Dave“
Can we help bring dignity in some small way through software to what people make?” — Dave“We once described our company as engineers who like people.” — Dave

💼 Hiring & Team Fit

“Most companies will hire for skill or competency first and then fire for issues of character — and that’s completely backwards.” — Matt“
What if we hired adults and treated them that way?” — Dave“
So many of what other companies define as ‘rock stars’ are terrible employees. But so often the employees they deem ‘B or C players’ are actually just A players under bad management.” — Dave

“We hire for character first. We believe most anything in software or design can be learned.” — Travis“
We want to spend some time working on a project with you... is this someone I want to build stuff with, and spend my life working with?” — Dave

🧠 Growth & Humility

“To be someone who is a learner — that implicitly requires you to know: I don’t already know everything.” — Dave“
Character is when who you think you are, who you say you are, who you actually are, and who you want to be... become the same thing.” — Dave“
Maybe I don’t know everything. And maybe — for people like Travis, who are unfortunately right more often than they should be — to still have humility and say, ‘I don’t know.’” — Dave

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