Recently my WordPress plugin, Artiss YouTube Embed, was bought by a third party – a company named Applian Technologies Inc. They wanted the existing user base to help promote their video software products.
What happened, unsurprisingly, was that the plugin was re-branded and released with links to their site. This included a “download bar” – a series of 3 links which appear under each video. This was switched on by default but could be easily switched off in the settings screen.
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Not many people are buying desktop PCs any more And that’s a shame – a large, quality keyboard and screen, whilst sat at a desk are ideal for any kind of computer-based work, particularly photo or video work.
However, less common than that are those who build their own PC. And that’s even more of a shame as it has so many advantages – you get exactly the computer you want at less of the price. And it’s a great learning exercise too. My desktop PC – a Dell Zino HD – was designed as a media PC and, hence, is small but not particularly quick. That was a number of years ago – now it’s even slower. And, because of the form factor, difficult or impossible to upgrade.
So, it’s time, I think, for a new PC.
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(You see, a nice riff on the REM song name)
Back in January I was a bit “offline” – Artiss.co.uk was certainly extremely quiet. There was a very good reason, though.
Back at the beginning of December I applied for a job at Automattic.I’d applied before but, this time, rather than just send my CV and a small, boring covering letter I thought I’d be a bit, I don’t know, dynamic. Here’s what I wrote…
Dear Automattic,
I’m David Artiss, a developer for 29 years (23 of those professionally, the rest as a teenager wrestling with 6510 assembly).
Although I write code for an antiquated IBM Point of Sale system during the day, my passion is for PHP, MySQL and, particularly, WordPress. The “Code is Poetry” mantra of WordPress is something I vehemently believe in. Coding is an art – it requires passion, imagination and creativity.
I have two blogs (a personal and a technology review blog), both of which are self-installed versions of WordPress. Although my technology blog uses a commercial theme it’s been heavily modified by myself (modifications which I’ve fed back to the theme’s author), including a complete re-write of their commenting system. I’ve also written bespoke competition and review software (which makes use of Rich Snippets to pass review details to search engines). Indeed, I am considering creating my own theme for distribution in the future.
However, it’s my work on WordPress plugins that I’m most proud of. I am the owner of 15 plugins (my username is dartiss), 14 of which I authored myself (the other I took over from the original author after he no longer wished to support it any further). My most recent plugin is Artiss Transients Cleaner, which I created after speaking to your own Andrew Nacin. I’d found an issue with the way transients are housekept within WordPress and confirmed with Andrew that this was a known problem. A change to Core is due, but with no current time-scales so I created this plugin to perform the suggested actions that will, eventually, be implemented within Core. Although I’ve not worked on Core, I believe this is a demonstration of the fact that I could do so ably.
I’m looking for a change in career and this is just the kind of role I’m craving. I’m more than happy working from home – it’s big, has lots of WiFi (I put extenders everywhere) and I’m on 80 Mbps fibre-optic. It would seem churlish to not make more use of it.
My CV is attached. It’s a bit dry, for which I apologise – I’m a bit more dynamic in person and even so more with my code.
I didn’t know if it was a bit too informal but my wife certainly liked it.
A couple of weeks later I was told I was to be interviewed but they had quite a queue so it might be a few weeks. That initial application was, I later came to find, stage 1 of a 5 stage induction process.
Stage 2 came a couple of weeks ago. I had an hour long Skype messaging (not video) conversation with one of their developers. This included some technical questions. I felt it went well, especially when I corrected him on a technicality. After the hour he was happy to move me to Stage 3 – a coding challenge.
I was given an existing plugin to improve in whatever way I felt. I had a week to do it. I turned it around in less than a week and spoke to my Automattic developer soon after. He seemed quite happy at what I’d done but there were a few issue he’s highlighted – security is particularly important to them. Again, I highlighted something he’d missed (he thought I’d not coded something and I had) so potentially gained some points for that (or annoyed him). He gave me a few days to change the code but I turned it around in a day and spoke to him the next night.
I was worried that rushing to make the changes I might have broken something. I didn’t. And the way I solved his issues had impressed him. I was now through to stage 4.
This is when it got exciting.
I was now officially working for Automattic as a contractor. The idea is that they pay you, per hour, to work on a project. The developer who you’d been assigned would keep an eye on how you’re getting on and let you continue on the project until they’d made a decision either way as to whether you’d failed or passed. This could be days or months.
Automattic employees, whether contractors or not, gain access to a site named “Matticspace”. As people are scattered throughout the world this gives a private “base” for everyone to congregate online. This includes an employee directory, on which I was listed. Matticspace, though, can only be access via a convoluted set-up process that involves generating and submitting security keys from command line.
However, it was at this stage that it all ended. Not by Automattic but by myself. Bearing in mind I still had a full time job, a family and social life there was no way I could realistically fit in the work that they wanted me to (which, by the way, was to make changes to the debug mechanism for Automattic developers within WordPress.com). So I told them I couldn’t do it.
Stage 5 would have been a meeting with Matt Mullenweg, founder and president of Automattic.
At the very least, though, I can say, if for only a brief time, I was working for Automattic. It looks good on my CV too.
Recently companies that are taking measures to avoid tax (legally) have been big news. The newspapers in particular, keen to take recent heat away from themselves, are making big issues about it. And it’s seen a rise in people rallying together and taking things into their own hands – in this case by often refusing to buy from such companies (a tactic that’s unlikely to work other than cause UK workers to lose their jobs).
But, frustraingly for me, it’s full of people who have some indignant sense of moral outrage – people I suspect are hardly in a position to throw stones themselves.
Have you ever been cut-up by another driver only for him to get angry with you? That’s them deflecting the anger at themselves elsewhere – in this case you. You’re seeing the same here – people who probably have a cupboard full of copied DVDs but complain that Vodafone might be trying to avoid some tax here or there.
All this came, for me, to a head when I read a story on PC Pro. Basically, Play.com are going to stop selling items themselves – they will rely instead on third parties. This is because the loophole that allowed them to sell cheaper products from Jersey has been closed. This means they’re having to compete with companies such as Amazon on the same level and, simply put, they can’t. What I wasn’t expecting was one of the comments…
Good ridance to Play.com and all companies whose only competitive advantage is a tax dodge. Tax havens are parasites and should face diplomatic and economic sanctions, or be nuked.
Extreme? Yes. But it’s not unusual
Photo credit: Alan Cleaver
Sometimes you don’t always want to know everything about your friends. Going out for a drink, have a laugh, etc, is all great but I suspect you don’t necessarily want to know their prejudices and the various other character skeletons that they may be hiding.
None-the-less, this is what Facebook does.
