A change of course

Today marks two years since I started at Automattic and on Monday, I’ll be doing something new.

Two years ago I knew WooCommerce was a plugin for WordPress sites which gave the site e-commerce functionality. That was it. I’d like to think I know a bit more about it now. To say I have “lived the creed” would be an understatement. I honestly can say that I have learned something new every day I have worked. I love my job but for now, my journey with WooCommerce.com Support will pause.

When I had the Slack chat with Matt, he asked at the end if I had any questions. Yes, I replied. What team am I on? He said I’d hear back in my official offer letter. I got the letter and looking up my new leads name, I found out I’d be in the WooCommerce.com division. I knew nothing about WooCommerce, I was so focused on WordPress.com during my trial, I didn’t think about going anywhere else. Going from WordPress.com when on the Trial, to WooCommerce.com Support, it was a change of course from what I expected.

So, what now?

One of the joys of working for Automattic which doesn’t often get much publicity is rotations. The core idea of a rotation, at least for Happiness, is that you spent time in another division or sub-teams, share knowledge, and bring learnings. This is separate from the yearly support rotations which all nonsupport teams take part in.

Some of these are six-week rotations such as to Risk & Safety or Public Support (social/forums/etc) and but for the most part, they are full three-month rotations when someone switches between our main WordPress.com/Jetpack/WooCommerce.

Why?

That is what I’m doing. No, I’m not leaving.

I’ll be heading over to one of the Jetpack Happiness teams from Monday until the first day of the Grand Meetup.

I think the timing is special. I hit two years on a Friday, I start this on a Monday which is also a new month, then I finish at the end of a month (September), which is also the first full day of our annual company meet-up.

I have a reputation for “being everywhere”.

Often there isn’t a week when someone directly says something like “I feel like Doug would know this”, so for my rotation, I’ll be not only taking my WooCommerce knowledge to the JPOP team but seeing how they communicate and how the two teams can learn from each other. It made sense that the guy who has meant to know everything happening in WooCommerce.com at any point to see how we can improve on this and anything from woosupport I can pass onto JPOP. And not just information exchange, but obviously the actual aspect of supporting our Jetpack customers – with WooCommerce Services and other things, having Jetpack installed along with WooCommerce makes a lot of sense so we often share customers. Having knowledge of Jetpack will help with improving WooCommerce integration in Rewind & Activity Log, supporting new iOS and Android WooCommerce app users.

As I said, the purpose of rotations is to increase your knowledge, improve processes, make cross-division connections, and to never stop learning.

How?

I’ll start like any new hire – fresh slate, and following the internal training course, although I have a slight head start than some of the recent new hires; I already know Jetpack peripherally.

On my personal p2 for the post scheduled today, I have a checklist to round up the quarter and ensure I’m set up for Monday morning.  I also have a Slack reminder set with a list of Slack channels to leave and internal blogs to unfollow. This will let me focus fully on Jetpack during my rotation.

Come Monday, the bots will do their thing and invite me to the correct Slack channels, move me to my new team on Matticspace, and add me as a user of the relevant tools. Very clever.

Job has been a fantastic team-lead, we work really well together, so I will miss working with him and the rest of Sirius but I’m excited to join Kraft and the Earth team.

Onwards!