Ten years at Automattic

Today marks ten years from when I officially started at Automattic. Before I joined this company I switched jobs often. I guess I’ve still switched roles fairly often, but I’ve stayed with the same company. Being able to switch roles is one of the things I love and value about Automattic. I can try new things, but still stay with a great company.

December seems to be a time for change for me as well. December 2014 is when I joined Automattic. December 2020 is when I joined the Developer Apprenticeship program. December 2021 is when I finished the Developer Apprenticeship program.

Now in December 2024 I have another change. I’m moving away from working on the Day One app that I’ve been working on for the past three years. I’ve really enjoyed my time working to help create the web client for Day One. When I joined it was a basic prototype and I was lucky enough to help take it to a beta launch, and then full launch as what I think is a really nice experience.

There were lots of challenges and things to learn along the way, but I’m happy with what we accomplished, and I’m excited to see it continue to grow and evolve with the awesome team.

I’m staying at Automattic, but I’m moving back to the Happiness Division where I started here. This time as a Software Engineer on the Happiness Operations team. I’ll get to help with the tools that we use to interact with our customers, as well as internal tools that our awesome Happiness Engineers use to help customers.

This seems like a perfect fit for me. It combines my experience with Happiness as a long time Happiness Engineer, and what started me writing code to begin with. Way back in a previous job I was working in a Call Center doing technical support. It was a small company and I wasn’t always happy with the internal tools we had. So I started learning to code so I could make tools and improve them to make our jobs easier while talking with customers.

Recently I had the opportunity to join the HappOps team on their meetup before I officially joined. We met up in New Orleans, a city I’m forever connected to, and got to know the team, and start planning out our work. Some of the team I’ve known for a long time, while some I hadn’t met before. They are all great and I’m super excited to start with them tomorrow.

Here’s some pictures from our time in New Orleans.