For most of my career I was unaware of the full extent of the value of HR. This all changed about two years ago. As is the case with many things, this was the result of a screw-up on my part. Some would call it a failure, but you know — I don’t buy into failure. Before we get to that story, though, let me sketch my understanding of what HR entailed up to that point.

Writing about the detrimental effects of rewards in No More Rewards, one thing kept nagging at me. A few weeks earlier we had held a virtual conference for our company and community called MatterCon. One of the highlights for me was a video prepared by our community team. In the video they interviewed some of the top Mattermost contributors. People not employed by the company, but contributing at a purely volunteer basis.