Author: Andy Affleck

Day 1

Published on by Andy Affleck

I am an Automattician. That is to say that today is my first day working at Automattic. It’s been a long road getting here and I’m thrilled it’s finally arrived.

Automattic is the company behind WordPress. WordPress itself is an open source project but there are a lot of services behind it and that’s where Automattic comes in. My role, specifically, is Technical Account Engineer on the Special Projects team. It’s like a Project Manager but more. If you follow the link just above, you will see that they we work on some pretty amazing sites for some pretty amazing people. (And if you know what sites I’ve managed the last four years you will know how desperately I need to work on positive sites like these!)

I have known about Automattic for years as I have worked with WordPress in one form or another for over a decade now. They were always on my radar as a place I would love to work. And when I was laid off from my last job in October, I took a look at it again. And got encouragement from someone I met at a WordPress Meetup here in Rhode Island who works there. And the rest is history.

Today I train for my first two weeks working as part of the support team as a “Happiness Engineer” and then, two weeks from today, I begin my new role.

These last four months have been rough. Job searching is never fun and doing it around the holidays is a terrible time of year as no one really hires then. But my family has been fantastically supportive and we got through it and I have not only landed on my feet, but I feel like I landed with style.

2019

Published on by Andy Affleck

I think I am done with the whole, 201x was awful, let’s make 201x + 1 better, trope. It hasn’t been working. So I am going to shift my focus to making life better regardless of the date. There are only so many things within my control but I have to keep reminding myself that I have more control than I give myself credit for.

I’m still working on the job search. I have a few promising leads and am hoping that hiring will pick up in general now that it’s a new budget year for many places. Meanwhile, there’s always client work to keep the lights on and occasional stints hosting Geeks Who Drink (though I have nothing on the calendar until late February at this point).

The big thing this year is on May 15, Ann and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary. We’ve not been able to do anything major for either of our recent milestone birthdays so maybe we will be able to to for this anniversary? We haven’t been to Italy since our honeymoon 20 years ago… I’m just saying…

Anyway, like I said, I’m not going to say 2019 will be a good year or that I have x and y resolutions. Instead, I am going to say that there are improvements I want to make and changes that need changing in general and it’s time to get to work on all of it.