Automattic on The Dangling Pointer

Farewell, Automattic!

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 20:05:07 +0000

On April 3, 2013, I was sitting in the #devmke Freenode IRC channel talking to other developers in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA) area. I saw a conversation about one of the people working from home and thought, what an incredible place this must be to work! For some reason, I had heard the name Automattic before – and after landing on the homepage, I realized why! It was because of WordPress and specifically signing up for WordPress.com to get an Akismet API key to prevent comment spam. When I saw a Mobile Wrangler job posting, I immediately applied. I got the offer in May and started near the end of July 2013.

Ninety days of getting paid to not work

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 19:41:34 +0000

Yesterday began day one of 90 that I'll be taking as a sabbatical from work.

Every five years at Automattic we're given an awesome gift of a paid sabbatical - something I've never dreamt possible in our current age. The word "sabbatical" is heavily laden with teaching references. Even dictionaries reference education in its definition:

sabbatical | səˈbadək(ə)l | noun a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel, traditionally one year for every seven years worked: she's away on sabbatical | he requested permission to take a sabbatical in Istanbul | he took a three-month sabbatical from his job as CEO of a family business.

My Two Favorite Logos

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 15:05:00 +0000

Here is a photo of my two favorite logos - the Jetpack logo and the That Conference logo.

Jetpack is a plugin you can install on your WordPress site to give it super powers that WordPress.com sites have but still self-hosted on your own servers.

That Conference is an awesome community tech conference that I've blogged about before. I've spoken there a number of years and really enjoy the mix of people and personalities it brings. Plus it's at a waterpark and families are not only welcome but integrated into the conference itself. I've seen some pretty smart children giving awesome talks!

This is what 400 Automatticians in one place looks like from a drone

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:14:57 +0000

Watch the drone video below taken at our annual Grand Meetup in Park City, Utah October 2015:

https://videopress.com/v/MYKeey35

https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

Tater Tots Through Time

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 15:00:45 +0000

Every year at the Automattic Grand Meetup the entire company gets together in one place for a little over a week to work and have fun. Part of that meetup requires everyone to give a four minute flash talk on any subject. This year my coworker Carolyn Sonnek and I decided to team up on our flash talk.

Carolyn and I are Tater Tot experts. EXPERTS. We dug deep and found some interesting facts on Tater Tots and even a conspiracy!

WordPress.com Supports (RED).org

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 18:58:10 +0000

I'm proud to say that Automattic / WordPress.com is a supporter of RED.org - the foundation started by Bono and Bonny Shriver to help prevent and cure AIDS.

Red.org recently moved over to WordPress.com VIP hosting and we partnered with them on producing an official (RED) WordPress.com shirt for all Automatticians. This is definitely my favorite piece of Automattic swag :).

The Compression of 400 Teammates

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:30:13 +0000

I work for Automattic, a 100% distributed company. We rely upon meetups with our teammates to power the social aspect of our jobs and to work on short-duration high-velocity projects. Every year we also partake in a Grand Meetup where everyone gets together in one place to work and socialize. This year we were back in Park City Utah at the Canyons Resort. Here's a wrap-up of what I did during the eight days there.

2014 Automattic Grand Meetup

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:22:36 +0000

At Automattic we all are a distributed workforce - we all work from all over the world. Every few months we meet up with our teammates and work on projects designed to be started and finished within the week. Once a year the entire company gets together in one place and we affectionally dub it the "Grand Meetup" (abbreviated GM). This year, we all met up in Park City, Utah USA at the Grand Summit Canyons Resort.

Tokyo Mobile Meetup January 2014

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 12:58:09 +0000

In January 2014, the Mobile Team at Automattic met in Tokyo Japan for our quarterly face to face meetup. Here are some of the pictures I took from the meetup. It was a great experience and I would definitely go back to Japan!

Working at Automattic

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 20:42:49 +0000

Some people have asked me what it's like working for Automattic. Every employee of Automattic has a different perspective on what it means to work here. Here are a few things I feel are important to me.

Work Wherever, Whenever

Automattic is a completely distributed company. We have a headquarters in San Francisco, CA USA but only a small percentage of us work out that office. Most of us work from home, some of us work on the road, others work from a coworking space. Sometimes it's nice being able to change your location once in a while - I pretty much like working from my home office. I like working a regular day, usually 7am - 4pm my local time and I fit some sort of exercise routine in there half way through. We have flexibility to make our own hours and take the time off we need to. We're adults and we're treated as such.

Paying Attention at Automattic

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 13:48:44 +0000

All of my teen and adult life I realized that I perceive the world a little differently than most. I’d like to think I’m a smart guy but I never did very well in high school on exams especially for topics that weren’t science/math/computer related. I couldn’t read textbooks very well; my eyes would gloss over the details and I’d realize after reading a page I retained none of it. I hated research papers the most. In my early teens I discovered electronic music (at the time everything was called techno) and I realized listening to it while doing homework would keep that part of my brain busy so I could somewhat focus. I never put a name to the condition and just moved forward.