I started attending Saginaw Valley State University in 1998. A year and a half later, I got a job in the IT Services Support Center as a Student Technician. In 2002 I was hired as a Help Desk Analyst and graduated with my Bachelor’s a few months later. A little over a year ago I took a job as Microlab Technology Specialist. After nearly 10 years, Wednesday was my last day working for SVSU.
During my time with the school, I made a lot of friends and gained great experience. I’m sad to leave the people and a place that has been good for me, but I’m happy to be moving onto something new.
For the past 6 weeks, whenever I wasn’t at SVSU, I was working for Automattic. Thursday was my first day as Happiness Engineer for the company. My main focus is to provide support for WordPress.com but I also get my hands a little dirty with WordPress and other things. Automattic is a young company with a bright future. I’m thrilled to join a very talented team.
How did this come about?
Late in 2003 I was looking for some software to run a blog. I landed at Photo Matt and liked the way the site was setup, so I shot Matt an email. He suggested I give WordPress a try and I’ve been using it ever since. Over the years, I’ve contacted Matt a few times and earlier this year at the MacWorld WordPress meetup I had a chance to meet him in person. A week later I was browsing around the Automattic web site and noticed some jobs openings, so I applied. Now here I am…it’s my job to work with WordPress. Somebody pinch me!
Nick Momrik 
Wow that’s quiet the job, maybe you can help me with my site…j/k :). No as someone else said it is very intuitive.
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Wow, that’s a pretty amazing story. Working at WordPress sounds like an awesome job, look at all of the cool functions you’ll get to attend. Plus your job title of a happiness engineer is really cool. On a side not when I first was learning about WordPress I stumbled upon PhotoMatt as well. I remember thinking what a nice site, I wonder who designed it for this guy. Eventually I figured out that the site belonged to Matt Mullenweg and who he was.
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That’s pretty cool. While at automattic, do you know what they are doing with Akismet? It is a great spam tool. but on of the things is the false positives, and how a blogger can just send you to hell with one click. You must spend lots of time digging legit sites out of the box!
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[…] working for SVSU, I went to Macworld in San Francisco. I attended a WordPress meetup, met Matt, and ended up getting a job with Automattic. Without Macworld I wouldn’t be where I am […]
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[…] years ago I left my job at SVSU and joined a team of just over 20 people at Automattic. We now employ over 540! Some days it still doesn’t seem […]
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[…] years ago I left SVSU and started working for Automattic. I still remember discussing the risks of joining a startup with my parents. I think I made the […]
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