There have been a number of day in the life posts that all provide a unique perspective on being a Happiness Engineer at Automattic. This week there are going to be even more!
So what’s a Happiness Engineer (HE)?
An HE is essentially a support person guru. You might also be wondering what Automattic is… it’s not a diagnostic device for your car! Automattic owns WordPress.com, as well as Akismet, VaultPress, Simplenote, CloudUp, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and some other things.
A notable aspect of work at Automattic is that it’s a distributed company and we all work remotely. So depending on how you set yourself up, each day can be as similar or different as you choose.
Today, Tuesday Feb 21, 2017, is by no means a regular day for me, but I thought that might make it all the more fun to post about.
07:00 – Tuesday is not a running day (we run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), so my husband let me sleep in a bit and woke me up at 7. He gives me a summary of our pet rabbits’ exploits for the morning and then goes off to work. I chill out on the couch for a while checking Facebook, Instagram, listening to a book on Audible. Sometimes I check the news, but I wasn’t feeling brave this morning.
08:20 – I officially started the day with some Bircher Muesli that I made in bulk on the weekend.
08:40 – Headed out to grab a huge coffee from my favourite cafe in my WordPress Klean Kanteen
09:00 – Arrived at the hair dresser for a cut and colour. Set up my wifi and laptop to work while being pruned & preened.
While getting my hair coloured I am on live chat helping WordPress.com customers with things like getting their domains set up, setting up themes, refunds when they want to move to WordPress.org. I also chat with work mates via Slack about WordCamps, work strategies, HE training and the like.
11:55 – Finished at the hair dresser just in time to rush home for the next part of the day. I think it takes so long because I have so much hair!
12:00 – Training our latest HE trial in Sydney.
Automattic’s hiring process includes a 4-6 week trial, which is essentially doing the job of an HE on a paid-per-hour basis. It’s a great opportunity for both the applicant and the company to figure out if they are the right fit for each other.
While my trainee reads the material we need to discuss and answers sample questions I grab some lunch (a bagel and fruit) and reply to some support emails (we call them tickets).
I work from a variety of locations, including cafes, the couch, my low-rider camping chair, the dining table and maybe one day I’ll use my office again when I get the desk tidied up!
14:00 – Back on live chat. I usually chat for about 3 hours in the afternoon and if chat isn’t too busy I’ll reply to tickets too. Today I’m still training, so I’m going to try to chat and train at the same time.
During these three hours I’ll take a couple of short breaks for a cup of tea or something like that.
15:30 – Training is done for the day, so now I’m back to chat and tickets.
17:00 – Time to wrap up my remaining chats, finish off any tickets I assigned to myself earlier and follow-up on any chats that I couldn’t solve during the chat (none of those today though!).
17:40 – Finished work for the day. Time to think about cooking dinner.
18:30 – My husband and I eat dinner and watch an episode of Alias (or whichever show we’re into at the time).
19:30 – Tuesday is our group bible study night, so we head out to our group leader’s home.
21:30 – Home time, bed time.
Does this sound like a work day you could get into? Work with us!
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