David ArtissMy life at Automattic
A year later and more desk changes! I took the opportunity of my sabbatical this year to move things around, particularly on the walls, whilst also removing a number of things from the desk itself. Add to that some new tech and it’s a different workspace for 2022.
Many years ago I wrote a post about my life as a Support Engineer at WordPress VIP and it’s been very popular, particularly for those interesting in applying. I kept it up to date but, some time ago, I stopped doing so. Why? Because in January 2021 I became a Support Lead.
I look after the EMEA Support Team (so, that’s people from Europe, Middle East and Africa. Right now, we don’t have anyone in the team from the Middle East). As I write this there are 8 people in the team (myself not included), consisting of 2 roles – Support Engineer (SE) and Customer Success Engineer (CSE), the latter being a developer role.
So, it’s time to tell you what my day is now like.
During this year’s VIP GM, I did a 4 minute “flash talk”. It was about my sabbatical. A lot of the talks were thought-provoking and educational. But not this one.
But, there are takeaways.
Here it is, presented in a blog format, with added pictures and content.
Yes, you read that correct – it’s the DM (DivisionMeetup) rather than a GM (Grand Meetup). Really, it’s just a rename. As Automattic gets larger the idea of getting everyone together in one place becomes less and less practical. VIP showed the way with their own GM but now as the idea of extending this further becomes a reality, making the name more representative is important.
That was the idea, based on something that Matt said, although on the first day of the DM, he then suggested that, due to its size, it’s really a GM. So this may be the only VIP DM that we have. Who knows?
But, that aside, this is the first all-VIP meetup since 2019. And we’re going to Denver, Colorado.
Only my second work trip since the pandemic, and I was off to the US again – to Seattle for a Support Leeds meetup.
There was 8 of us in total, so it was a relatively small group and, is often the case when it’s this small, we made use of Airbnbs – a main “house” and a secondary one. I stayed in the secondary one.
