Defeating AIs with a screwdriver

Working at Automattic part 1/2

Written in

,

I work at A8C. Here summarize a lot of “long” words. I’ve used such words before like i18n1, l10n2, or similar but here we are at the next level.

In my previous job, I was a “senior software engineer.” In Italy, when you reach the highest level of national contract, you obtain new-level names. Such as MMORPG. Same salary. But you are a:

  • Architect
  • Engineer
  • Engineer Manager
  • Engineer Director
  • Master of the Universe?

What pop up in my mind is a quote of the best salesman around:

Which is higher, assistant regional manager or regional director in charge of sales?

Dwight Schrute

In Automattic, you are a Code Wrangler. But you can change your title to whatever you want—even magical creatures if you are brave enough.

I must confess that I needed to search for the meaning of the “to wrangle” verb. I’ve never used it before. I’m not a colloquial English person. 70% of my English was that useful for Turing completeness.

A JSON email signature

I needed to crawl my inbox to find this. Mail.app isn’t great at searching old stuff. Probably the SQLite table is pruned every now and then.

I tried to enter A8C on Jan 5, 2015, with one email. Matt (CEO) answered me back. It was a “wow” moment. It was also a “we don’t think there’s a great fit at this very moment”, but this is another story. I had a JSON kind of email signature. Very hacky:

{
 "name": "Francesco Bigiarini",
 "email": "francesco.bigiarini@gmail.com",
 "phone": "REDACTED"
 "twitter": "@zaerl"
}

A strange ping by LinkedIn

Fast move six years later, I received a ping from a Head Hunter. I always give them an opportunity and not write a rant post on a barely social job-related site about “how annoying I am lucky enough to have too many job offers.”

Do you want to be a Code Wrangler?

My first reaction was “meh”. Typically i11l3 Head Hunter checks your old Github history, Tweets, etc. And then nothing more. But it was true. Many “are you mad” after I started as a11n4. Why mad? Because taxes in Italy are complex. And taxes derived by working for a US company are an order of magnitude more complicated.

It’s the chaos

Chaos in A8C, if you are reading this probably you sniffed around the same info. During my first “weekly meeting” (a team group together in a video call once a week) I was nervous. When I am not calm I need to translate the phrases in my mind too many times. But the main problem is that I start speaking about something, but I don’t finish.

My team lead told me to don’t worry. The company offers Lingo English lessons, Grammarly, Coursera, ProWritingAid, etc. Lingo helped me a lot.

The various kinds of Meetups

Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the world. Around the world, around the… world.

Daft Punk

I worked remotely for many years before joining A8C (and before COVID-19). During the first period, people around my tiny middle-aged fortress town always asked me if I found a job. And they can help me. And when I answered back, “I work from home,” I only got cringe smiles. You know, that kind of smile you receive when you say that you playing Minecraft for your 30 viewers is a full-time job.

We meet at least 2-3 times here. Hack together, smash bugs, help customers, drink something, and get a response to whatever question you do to Matt.

Sometimes you are together with your team, sometimes more people if it’s your Division. And even more, if you put a “Grand” before “Meeting”.

I’ve been in:

  • Porto
  • Madrid
  • Denver
  • Las Vegas
  • Munich

But this is another story. See you next time!

  1. Internationalization ↩︎
  2. Localization ↩︎
  3. International ↩︎
  4. Automattician ↩︎
@online{zaerl2024-working-at-automattic-part-1-2,
  author = {Francesco Bigiarini},
  title = {Working at Automattic part 1/2},
  date = {2024-02-04},
  url = {https://zaerl.com/2024/02/04/working-at-automattic-part-1-2/},
  urldate = {2024-02-04}
}

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