My life at Automattic
Yes, after over 2 years (due to some pesky pandemic), I’m finally travelling again for work. I’m off to Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, for some leadership training, courtesy of Reboot.
Like most of my travelling diaries, this is mainly going to be about the travel, food and lack of sleep, rather than the actual training which is pretty personalised and a lot less exciting for anybody not in attendance.
(more…)
For various reasons I’ve changed my email address. For people, this could happen for various reasons – a change to a vanity domain, moving email providers or loss of access for some reason.
When this happens, you’re left with a mountain of online accounts, which you now need to change. In my case, because I use a password manager, it was easy to identify the accounts, so I set out to do it. As well as password change I’ve taken the opportunity to get accounts closed that I no longer use (and, for retail sites, I have no order history). However, it’s all been made incredibly tricky by a large number of sites with bizarre rules or, simply, a lack of functionality.
Let me take you through what I found…
(more…)
At Automattic, you get to change your work laptop after 18 months. The old one can be bought by yourself or your family or friends, or you send it for resell. You then spec your own replacement and get it ordered. It’s an Apple, unless you have a good reason for choosing differently.
At my previous employer, they had a policy of doing it every 5 years. It was usually 7. Even by 5 years, it’s slow and buggy and really impacted your work capability.
Anyway, once you’ve been at the company for 4 years, you get a special “anniversary” laptop (assuming you order a laptop) – this goes away to a third party company to have one of the company logos (you choose which one) etched into the lid, with a backlight put behind it, much like the old Apple Mac lids of yore. When it’s due for replacement 18 months later, it’s yours to keep.
(more…)
It’s only been 4 months since I last did this, but so much has changed since it seemed appropriate to repeat the exercise.
I’ve been working from home now for over 4.5 years now and this is my most spartan set-up yet, but also my tidiest, in terms of cable management.
(more…)
The new iPhone 13 became available yesterday and, for the first time, I was in the queue to get one. I’m on the iPhone Upgrade Programme, which means I get a sparkly new one each year (technically, every 11 months). This year’s iPhone launched early so I was due for a new phone on… Thursday. Great timing.
(more…)