Fifth in our Meet the Team series, Matt was the first person I hired at UB and has had to deal with the consequences of my inexperience on more than one occasion! Nonetheless, since joining in 2022 his role has grown significantly alongside the company and we rely heavily on him day to day. Despite his claims of being a huge introvert, he’s turned out to be an excellent people manager, a skill that’s proved invaluable as we’ve grown.
Jem Turner, Managing Director
Hi, I’m Matt and I’m Head of People and Projects here at UB. I’m proud to say I was the first person Jem hired back in 2022 after a year or so of freelancing, and I’m almost certain it was because of my exemplary credentials and not that we’d been friends for almost a decade beforehand…
My job now is almost unrecognisable from when I started – Jem was finding she was spending more time doing extraneous tasks than development and had become a victim of her own success, continually having to turn away work due to a lack of capacity. I came in to free her up from admin hell and help her focus on what she does best, creating bespoke performant WordPress sites. Over time my responsibilities shifted and expanded as the company has grown, and despite being a huge introvert and never really considering myself a people person, I’ve somehow ended up with the privilege of managing a small but mighty team of dedicated and talented individuals who are a delight to work with. I’m definitely the odd one out!
It’s a far cry from 2017, having left a huge global IT mega-corp partly due to burnout. I told myself I would never work in the sector again, so in the five years following I tried all sorts of jobs, including freelance editor, postman and car delivery driver! However, when Jem came calling it was too good of an opportunity with a company with such great potential for greatness. Being able to flexibly work fully remote part-time in order to maintain a good work/life balance was huge for me, as my wife has a mentally draining job working full-time for the NHS so I try to do the majority of our domestic chores on my day off.
In addition to managing our team of both technical and non-technical specialists, I also oversee our ongoing projects and processes. This means I get to liaise with our lovely clients on a regular basis and ensure things are on track. Again as with people management, I never thought I’d see myself enjoying such a customer-facing role, but it seems to be working!
Of course, working for a small company means that sometimes responsibilities overlap and we need to pitch in doing all sorts of things, which means I even end up doing some junior development work sometimes, which I’m sure nobody wants in an ideal world… but hey, I haven’t broken anything major – yet.
We really try to instil a company ethos of flexibility and fitting work around your life rather than the other way around at Ultimately Better. I’m proud that we’ve managed to find some great employees who due to various life reasons may otherwise be overlooked by the technology industry, while also increasing diversity during a time when it is seemingly becoming a dirty word. In my somewhat unimportant opinion, the more diverse your workforce, the more diverse your company’s experience, knowledge, thoughts and ideas are.
Outside of work I love spending time with my wife and three very needy cats. I used to play baseball and softball, but stopped during the pandemic and then took up running instead, and have completed a couple of half-marathons in the last few years. I enjoy playing video games (especially retro gaming, which upsettingly now seems to include the PlayStation 3), watching good TV and reading books when I have the energy. I also sing, play guitar and bass – having been in a few bands – and enjoy going to live gigs and festivals!