In May 2015, WooThemes announced that Automattic had acquired it. I had been working for Woo since October 2014 — so just under 8 months — and in July 2015 we officially started as Automatticians. That’s a decade ago this month. 🤯

Ownership

The time has gone incredibly fast, and I cannot emphasise enough how much I’ve valued the option to get 6 months of parental leave for each of my kids, and 3 months of sabbatical. It almost seems ungrateful to first talk about time off when reminiscing about a decade of work, but it sets the tone entirely for how I’ve been able to do the work. Even now that I lead a team of over 100 people, I never feel pushed to be available at all times, and I notice that time away from my laptop and from work very often contributes to my biggest impact.

It also relates closely to one of Automattic’s core values of autonomy. I can choose my own path — including when I take leave — and then rely on the people I work closely with to take over from me as they’re also capable of working autonomously. And this is a part of the job that I still enjoy the most. In my current role, I get to use my autonomy to focus on leading the way towards the future of support.

Just over a year ago, our support metrics weren’t in great shape. Yet, I had the autonomy to choose to allocate about 5 people full-time in focusing on enhancing our support (and support agent experience) with AI assistance. It was a big bet at the time, but one that has paid off tremendously. Our support metrics one year later are in the best shape they’ve been at since I joined Woo in 2014.

While this is a success, I had been redirecting some of our time towards AI for over a year before that, and that first year was no success at all. But again, as Automattic values autonomy and agency, I was able to pivot and turn this around.

The few things that lasted a decade

Hitting the 10-year mark made me realise how rare long-term commitments are in life, and how much they influence your person. That thought led me to reflect on which life choices have lasted for a decade or more.

As a matter of fact I could only think of four life choices that lasted longer than a decade, three of which are closely-related: I was a youth leader in the Evangelisch Jeugdverbond for 13 years, I’ve been together with Kim for almost 14 years, I’ve been in South Africa for 12 years, and I’ve been married for over 11 years.

The next thing in line is having worked at Automattic for 10 years.

After that I’ve spent:

• 6 years at high school
• 6 years at the Evangelical Theological Faculty as a student
• 5 years at the Evangelical Theological Faculty as staff, which overlapped entirely with my studies, to still only a max of 6 years
• 5 years at Ghent University, maybe 6 if you count the extra teaching degree I did but that was mostly remote
• 5 years as a member of the General Assembly of Tearfund
• 4 years at Ichtus as Project Manager
• 3 years cohabitating with a person with a disability
• 1 year at CTBC as lecturer
• And so on

What’s next? Maybe another decade, or more. The autonomy Automattic has given me together with the flexibility to be a present dad in the most formative years of my kids’ lives adds up to a mix that would be difficult to replace.