WooCommerce
-
1–2 minutes
Tackling commerce emails
Jon and I are enhancing the understanding of transactional emails in WooCommerce. Two of our logged-related pull requests have been merged for WooCommerce 10.9, enabling merchants to see logs for sent and unsent emails. This improvement will provide clearer information and warnings for email-related issues. Excited for the upcoming announcement.
-
1–2 minutes
Applying coaching lessons
Using AI has transformed my coaching experience, making discussions more impactful and actionable. With the help of Claude, I can prepare for and debrief meetings effectively, allowing me to implement feedback quickly. This support system helps my growth as a leader.
-
2–3 minutes
Chat to your mom, and to us
At Automattic, we prioritise respectful, customer-centred support, blending AI with human interactions. Unlike Zendesk’s approach, we aim to enhance, not eliminate, human connection. Our AI assistant, Odie, in some cases provides the best help, but it’s also learnt to identify when to straight away send a customer to a Happiness Engineer. Our ultimate focus is…
-
1–2 minutes
Creating a local test environment has never been easier
I set up a local Woo environment with our Studio app and got help from Claude Code. I shared a GitHub repo, and Claude installed the dev setup for me. In no time, I had a dev environment running with sample data specifically to test our focus.
-
1–2 minutes
Radical Speed Month at Automattic
At Automattic, we’re kicking off a month-long experiment where teams team up to tackle problems. I teamed up with Jon to fix the annoying issue of Woo emails landing in spam folders. We’ve got plans for better logging, alerts for unsent emails, and helping merchants choose reliable delivery services.
-
1–2 minutes
Constructive rejections
In a large team, when vacancies arise, I respond to all applicants with constructive feedback. Instead of vague rejections, I focus on areas for improvement and emphasize growth opportunities. This approach encourages enthusiasm and career development, enabling applicants to better their skills with guidance from their leads for future success.
-
1–2 minutes
Strasbourg
Last July, I visited Strasbourg for the first time in the context of a work trip. While the weather wasn’t great, Strasbourg was the perfect context for a meetup with my team: very walkable, great food options, and a hotel that had the coziness of a bnb with the advantages of a hotel. The city…
-
2–3 minutes
Lessons about work from the movie Speed
In the action movie Speed — can we call it a cult classic? — Annie (Sandra Bullock) and Jack (Keanu Reeves) end up together after a rather thrilling bus ride. With prophetic words, Jack admonishes Annie: I have to warn you, I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work. The movie clearly shows they…
-
2–4 minutes
10 years at Automattic
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…
-
2–4 minutes
Change my mind
The piece emphasizes the importance of being open to changing one’s mind in leadership, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of shared understanding. Effective leaders invite early feedback, focus on arguments rather than opinions, and encourage exploration of diverse viewpoints to foster stronger strategies and collaborative decision-making, ultimately enhancing organizational outcomes.
-
1–2 minutes
WordCamp Europe in Turin
Even though I’ve attended several WordCamps and have been part of the WordPress community for almost 20 years now—of which more than a decade professionally—I’d only attended one flagship WordCamp: Paris. Since our family was going to be in Europe in June, I signed up for WordCamp Europe in Turin. Here are some of the…
-
1–2 minutes
Getting started with Woo and Paystack
Today, I presented at the Paystack bootcamp in Cape Town and gave an introduction to Woo. Since today is also the day of the rugby world cup finals, and both South Africa and New Zealand sell their fan gear with Woo, I went a bit overboard with rugby references. The scoring Both the Springboks and…
-
3–4 minutes
Everyone does support
One of the elements people find really quirky when hearing about Automattic is that everyone starts their job at the company with two weeks of doing support. When you join full-time, you’ll do customer support for WordPress.com for your first two weeks and spend a week in support annually, for evermore, regardless of your position.…
-
4–6 minutes
Running WooCommerce on job.blog
Note: I’ve removed WooCommerce again (July ’25, so almost 3y after writing this post). It was unnecessarily distracting on my personal site. I’ve been working with and for WooCommerce for over eight years now, but I’ve never sold something with the most popular eCommerce software in the world. I honestly had no idea what to…
-
3–5 minutes
Raycast as Alfred alternative
For the last several years, I’ve been using Alfred, a macOS app that allows me to create a more efficient workflow. In an ideal world, I want to create a shortcut for every action that I repeat and that requires me to take more steps than it needs to. It’s not an ideal world because…
-
2–3 minutes
Sabbatical
Today my sabbatical starts. Three months of fully paid leave, a perk every employee at Automattic gets every five years. A few months ago, I was brainstorming with Kim when I last had been on a three-month holiday without any obligations. Given the length of school holidays, I know that it must have been before…
-
2–3 minutes
Great leaders have a sense of humour
Our Woo Happy division has grown from 6 to (I think) about 13 leads in less than 2 years. Of the original 6, only 4 are left. That’s resulted in us welcoming many new leads. Next to looking into how to do that (which I wrote about here), it’s prompted me also to regularly think…
-
1–2 minutes
Guest on Do The Woo Podcast
A few months ago, I was a guest on the Do The Woo Podcast talking about some of the challenges and changes we’ve experienced in WooCommerce Happiness and looking at what has worked really well with an organisation that is growing fast. If you’re interested in support, podcasts, or even better, a combination of the…
-
7–10 minutes
New lead onboarding
This is a summary of the presentation I gave at the CMS Africa Summit 2021, a virtual event. In the wake of COVID-19, lots of businesses took their stores online. That resulted in a boom for our product, but also one for our support load. One of the ways we addressed this increased influx of…
-
1–2 minutes
P2: Distributed communcation
Automattic has been fully distributed since its start in 2005. There are many elements that played a role in being able to do this, but one of the most important ones is P2, a WordPress.com-powered communication tool. Pretty much every team or project has its own P2; a website where rather than CCing everyone on…