Automattic

I’ve previously written articles about becoming a code wrangler and my experience�of�working at Automattic.

If you happened across my article but were more interested in what it meant to be a happiness engineer at Automattic,�Olark recently wrote an article about customer service at WordPress.com.

My favorite part of the article was this paragraph where Andrew Spittle talked about a memorable encounter that he had with a customer.

Then the other experience for me personally that stands out is talking with a customer, and ultimately, the issue they were running into was not something we could fix. They were going to have to go contact their domain registrar. When we broke this news to them, they said, “Oh. I don’t want to go contact my domain registrar, because they don’t have Happiness Engineers. They have Gestapos of Grief.”

Source: Olark Live Chat – Engineering Customer Service at WordPress.com

A reader of Man of Hustle emailed me last night and asked for some advice before applying to Automattic:

Hi Eric,

I came across your Man of Hustle blog while researching about working for Automattic.� Thank you for your blog by the way; I really appreciate your openness and passion. � I’m interested in applying for the Code Wrangler position at Automattic and I was wondering if could trouble you for some advice.

First, some background about myself.� I currently work as a web developer for [redacted] where I’m doing Ruby on Rails development for [redacted] web application.� I’ve also had solid experience with Java, Perl and PHP in prior jobs.� I’m more of a back end developer, but of course I’m comfortable with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.� Here’s summary of my career history. �[redacted link]

So I have extensive professional web development experience and use alot of open source libraries and tools on the job.� However, �I’m lacking in open source contributions. I love programming but that manifests itself more in my professional life.� I do want to get more involved in contributing to open source projects.� I just need to squeeze in the time among my other responsibilities and commitments outside of work.

Also, although I have solid experience with PHP, I don’t have much experience with WordPress.� That is about to change as I have volunteered to rebuild a friend’s non-profit organization’s website on WordPress.

And now finally my question.� Do you think I should go ahead and apply for the Code Wrangler position now or should I wait a few months to build up my WordPress experience and open source contributions and then apply?� Which choice would maximize my chances of getting the job?

Well, Should This Person Apply to Automattic?

First, I don’t�ever�mind giving advice when asked. That being said, one should always understand that advice is very much an opinion and can be wrong.

In this specific case, I would recommend that the reader go ahead and apply to Automattic, based off of the following:

• Many Automatticians weren’t hired their first time.
• I believe that a no from Automattic is often more like a “not right now“
• The application review process takes a while

And while you’re waiting for a response, I would go ahead and:

• Get some experience with WordPress
• Get active in open source
• Deep dive into JavaScript

JavaScript is quickly becoming an essential skill at Automattic as well as in web development in general. I would suggest that you get at least some experience with Backbone JS and/or Facebook React to get started.

Disclaimer: �I have no input on the hiring process, so am, unfortunately, not the best person to ask. So, take this with a grain of salt.

My 6 month anniversary of working at Automattic was just a few days ago on January 14th.

I had started this post that day, but surprisingly, I found it very hard to come up with the words to describe what I think and feel about working at Automattic.

But, now I’ve had a few days to think about what to say, and here are a few topics I’d like to talk about to give you a better idea about what working at Automattic means to me.

My Team

The thing I truly love the most about working at Automattic is Team Mercury.

Mercury has recently grown as of a week ago, so for the first part of this, let’s consider the team members that went to Rome.

• Beau Lebens
• Allen Snook
• Jennifer Dodd
• Kevin Conboy
• Oguz Kocer

Even though we work primarily through text, I catch myself laughing out loud randomly throughout the day.

I also have a huge amount of respect for each one of them, and in some way, each one of them has taught me something in the past 6 months. Sometimes I catch myself feeling like I’m the dumbest one on the team � which is a great place to be in and learn.

Recently we took on a few other members from another team, including:

• Enej Bajgoric
• Michael Arestad
• Miguel Lezama
• Rocco Tripaldi

While I’ve only been working with this second group of team members for about a week, I feel like they bring a lot to the team in terms of knowledge and personality. So, it’ll be great to get to know them better over the next several months.

Typical Work Day

I’m not sure that I have a true “typical” work day, but one day of work might look something a bit like this for me:

• Wake up between 8:30 – 9:30
• Start looking at posts/messages/Slack/etc. to catch up on previous day/night stuff
• Be at coffee shop some time between 10 and 11 am at the latest
• Watercooler with team mates as well as replying to messages/posts/Slack messages
• Start programming at about 11:30
• Take a break between 2-3 pm and head to Mom’s or home to keep working. (I’ve found that a change of scenery really helps when working on tough problems that are frustrating me)
• Work until about 5:30 pm when I pick up Hero from the Boys and Girls club
• Figure out dinner and then program a few more hours starting at 7-8 pm

Interestingly, I have no clue how many hours a week that I work, and these times above are really just guesses. I don’t often think much about how many hours I’m working. Instead, I set a goal(s) for the day and try to achieve that.

Ultimately, my daily work schedule is very flexible and changes through the day to fit in my life. Note that I said that the work schedule fits in my life, instead of the opposite where people try to fit their lives into their work schedules.

Travel

I think that travel is the best perk of working at Automattic. As linked in my 2014 review post, here are the places that I traveled to for work.

• New York City
• Dallas
• Park City/Salt Lake City
• Orlando
• Rome

As of September 15th, I have been at Automatic for 9 weeks! The first three weeks were spent on support rotation and the last six weeks have been spent actually working on Team Mercury.

The annual Grand Meetup is also currently happening, during my 10th week, and it’s been great to play paintball, learn some Android development, experiment with the Dvorak keyboard, and much more with my coworkers. I’ve added a coworker selfie with fellow Automatticians that played paintball as the featured image for this post.

I’d like to share my thoughts about Automattic after actually being with the company and on my team for a small period of time.

I Will Never Stop Learning

This is currently the first statement of the Automattic creed. I believe that work at Automattic embodies this concept very much.

For starters, we work on very exciting projects and are always pushing to make better software. Not only that,�but there are so many different projects at our company that use exciting tools/frameworks/languages, that any person can truly learn whatever they want. In short, there is no shortage of things to learn.

Further, the fact that Automattic allows employees to do rotations and temporarily work on other teams is great because it allows Automatticians to expand their knowledge as well as determine if they are on the correct them for themselves.

I Will Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Help Out a Colleague

Automatticians are generally very happy and helpful people. To all of the Happiness Engineers that answered my questions when getting familiar with the various support interfaces – Thank you for much for your help.

To Team Mercury who has been so helpful, thanks for putting up with my general lack of knowledge in all things JavaScript.

Enjoying the Hard Stuff

My Mom often praises me for how “smart” I am, even though that I believe I am of average intelligence. That being said, I do think the one thing that sets me apart from many others is my general fearlessness in regards learning new things.

I feel that the best opportunities for growth and learning are in doing the hard tasks.

At Automattic, I feel that our company does a great job of embracing hard tasks. For example, taking P2 and making it better with O2 and Backbone. Or, the new Tinker team whose goal is to build new and exciting things (per my understanding).

I also feel that Automatticians generally try to get things “right” as opposed to just getting things “working”. This is a key paradigm shift from working at a design agency where it was more important to just getting things working.

Dream Job

Overall,�Automattic is a dream job and I enjoy working here!