Shifting into Automattic

In October of this year – after eight years, six months, and five days with the Bodleian Libraries – I’ll be leaving for pastures new. Owing to a combination of my current work schedule, holidays, childcare commitments and conferences, I’ve got fewer than 29 days left in the office.

Dan's whiteboard: "You have [29] work days left to ask Dan that awkward question". — I’ve been keeping a countdown on my whiteboard to remind my colleagues to hurry up and ask me anything they need in order to survive in my absence.

Instead, I’ll be starting work with Automattic Inc.. You might not have heard of them, but you’ve definitely used some of their products, either directly or indirectly. Ever hear of WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Gravatar or Longreads? Yeah; that’s the guys.

Automatic gear stick. — It’s a gear stick. For an automatic car. ‘Cos I’m “shifting into Automattic”. D’you get it? Do you? Do you?

I’m filled with a mixture of joyous excitement and mild trepidation. It’s mostly the former, thankfully, but there’s still a little nervousness there too. Mostly it’s a kind of imposter syndrome, I guess: Automattic have for many, many years been on my “list of companies I’d love to work for, someday”, and the nature of their organisation means that they have their pick of many of the smartest and most-talented geeks in the world. How do I measure up?

Dan in the Rewley Library at the University of Oxford. — During my final months I’m taking the opportunity to explore bits of the libraries I’ve not been to before. Y’know, before they revoke my keycard.

It’s funny: early in my career, I never had any issue of imposter syndrome. I guess that when I was young and still thought I knew everything – fuelled by a little talent and a lot of good fortune in getting a head-start on my peers – I couldn’t yet conceive of how much further I had to go. It took until I was well-established in my industry before I could begin to know quite how much I didn’t know. I’d like to think that the second decade of my work as a developer has been dominated by unlearning all of the things that I did wrong, while flying by the seat of my pants, in the first decade.

Roof of the Clarenon Building, Broad Street, University of Oxford, showing the Muses. — I’ll be mostly remote-working for Automattic, so I can guarantee that my office won’t be as pretty as my one at the Bod was. Far fewer Muses on the roof, too.

I’m sure I’ll have lots more to share about my post-Bodleian life in due course, but for now I’ve got lots of projects to wrap up and a job description to rewrite (I’m recommending that I’m not replaced “like-for-like”, and in any case: my job description at the Bodleian does not lately describe even-remotely what I actually do), and a lot of documentation to bring up-to-date. Perhaps then this upcoming change will feel “real”.