I have a new job!
In 2021, after ten years of freelance web development, I applied for a web developer job at Delicious Brains. It was a dream job. Almost. I not-very-secretly hoped that at some point I would move from developing the Delicious Brains websites to developing the Delicious Brains products that the websites were selling.
In 2022, Delicious Brains was bought by WP Engine. And because I was in the web development team, I moved into the equivalent team. Which happened to be in the marketing department.
And so I’ve inhabited this strange role of being a highly technical engineer working in a department of not-engineers.
My team has been completely wonderful. My boss is awesome, and my colleagues are some of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with. They work hard, but they have fun too. They are a friendly and smart bunch of people who care a lot about their work and the team.
But the direction of the team is very much marketing and front-end. That’s not really a direction that suits me, and therefore I’m not really a person that suits the direction. Someone else will be better suited to this team’s future than I am.
If you’re a senior level developer who is experienced in WordPress and React, has experience of making custom blocks, and is looking for a remote role in a busy marketing team, you could backfill my role!
So when an engineering role came up in one of the Delicious Brains product teams, all these historic and future things combined into an obvious application. I apparently made a good impression. I got the job and started today.
It was a bittersweet decision to leave marketing and web dev – I’m sad to leave my friends and colleagues in the old team. But I know it’s the right thing for me to try this new thing!
Day one was good. I’m hoping to have made my first PRs on day two. And I’m looking forward to working on a set of products I’ve been a user of for over 10 years!
(My first WP Migrate DB Pro order was an order number less than 1800. My latest order number was over 111,100! I was an early customer, for sure!)