doug dot blog…

Seven is my favourite number. I wouldn’t say lucky since I can’t tie any luck to it but it is a number I’m fond of.

Looking back on my blog posts, as someone who is often fond of anniversaries or milestones, I only found my one and two year anniversary posts of joining Automattic, and the mention of my booking in my Sabbatical but not of the actual event.

So, it’s apt that I post something here about seven years at Automattic.

A LOT has changed in that time. When I officially joined, I was the 474th (at that point) Automattician. Now an internal stat says: “You started on 2016-06-29. Of the 1,955 other a12s, 278 (14.22%) started before and 1,677 (85.78%) after you.”. I’ve written almost 8500 internal posts and comments, made up of ~470K words… and that’s just on p2, not including any other work-related contributions.

I joined as a Happiness Engineer and now I handle Product Operations. Both in Woo, but Woo wasn’t what I applied for initially. Back in 2016, Happiness had a job posting for each division – I applied for Happiness Engineer, the Woo HE role was separate. Once I’d had my chat with Matt, I got my my contract that mentioned the name of my lead. I looked them up internally and found “Alchemy – Woo Team Accounts”. I cursed Matt out loud. Why had he placed me in Woo?! As I told folks back then, I “knew it is a plugin to make a WordPress site into a shop, that’s it!”. Although I’ve done two rotations, I’m at home in Woo. I bleed #7F54B3. Who’d have thought that seven years ago.

I didn’t end up with the 4th Anniversary MacBook. After the changes to the MacBook body a few years back, they couldn’t be laser etched like before, and besides, I didn’t need a new machine -I’d been using an iMac since mid-2018 until January this year, replacing it with a base model 2022 M2 MacBook Air.

I did however take the 5th Anniversary Sabbatical; went on a short break, spent ~three weeks flat out with some form of illness that may or may not have been THAT THING, and did not much else apart from festive stuff.

Now, I need to decide which “…spiffy set of wireless headphones” I’m going to get.

And just as I’m hitting seven years, Donncha, (employee number one!) hit Eighteen Years at Automattic last week. Wild.