Jonathan Bossenger

It’s been a hell of a few weeks.

On Saturday 21 September I was checked into a very nice hotel in the Garden Route town of Plettenberg Bay, ready to start a week’s vacation with my family.

Meanwhile, half-way around the world, the WordPress world was about to change.

Last Friday I started my work day with 159 less colleagues than I did that Monday. Many of them I’d never met or worked with, some I knew from various places around the work Slack, and others were an important part of my personal WordPress story, or the the work I do. Each one of those last ones hurt when I saw it.

To say that I’ve had a rough time through all this is an understatement.

However, what’s been worse has been the fear of talking about it publicly. The fear of how the folks I interact with in the community would perceive my choices. What they would think of me? How would it affect their choice to start or continue to contribute to WordPress?

Social media was probably the worst place to hang out. The word doomscroll was never more accurate. I’ve seen colleagues get slammed because they shared their opinions publicly. I’ve seen inaccurate, inflammatory posts about Automattic by known bad actors in the community being shared as fact. I’ve seen individuals who I know would be in complete opposite camps politically aligned on social media (the enemy of my enemy and all that).

Yet still I found myself at a loss for the right words.

Last Thursday morning I woke up and got ready to face my work day, feeling a heavy weight on my heart. As I do every morning, I reached into my pile of WordPress/WordCamp/Automattic/Tech Conference T-shirts and found one of my favorites: the Automattic “Let’s make the web a better place” T-shirt.

It’s the same one I’m wearing in the photo my friend Tomaž Zaman took of me at WCEU in Athens in 2023, the first WCEU I attended as an Automattic employee.

Putting the T-shirt on reminded me not only of the photo, but how I felt at that WordCamp, what led me to wear that smile at almost every single moment of that trip.

Soon after, I shared a post with our entire division, and I said this about that shirt:

As I put it on, I reflected on the reasons I joined the WordPress community, dedicated myself to its growth and prosperity, and ultimately joined Automattic.

It’s because I want to use my skills to make the web a better place, far removed from the toxic environments of modern social media, with its online harassment and promotion of lies and deceit.

I want my kids to grow up with a web that nurtures and supports them, that provides them with avenues of learning, growth, entertainment, a stable career, and happy families, whatever those things might look like.

And I believe, as I ever have done, that Matt wants this too.

I love my job, and big part of why I love it is because of where I work. As my colleague and fellow WordCamp organiser so eloquently puts it:

The flexibility of freelancing with the stability of full-time employment.  The company that offers benefits that extend to my family. The company that prioritises mental health. The company that does so much good. My Automattic. My second home. The place I have fought exceptionally hard to be at.

Yes, it’s a job. But it’s so much more than that.   

I don’t always agree with every decision the leaders in my division make, including my team lead, their lead, my division lead, all the way up to and including the CEO. But I do think we’re all aligned with the mission of making the web a better place, even if we don’t always go about it in the same ways.

Jason Bahl said this better than I ever could in his post announcing that WPGraphQL was becoming a canonical WordPress plugin:

Leadership often involves making uncomfortable choices that others might not fully understand or agree with. His historical actions have led WordPress to its current success, and I believe that bold moves—though uncomfortable—are sometimes necessary to ensure the long-term future of WordPress. 

It’s the reason I personally will never be a lead or manager, I don’t have the mental fortitude to make uncomfortable choices. I need people to like me, it’s part of my personality.

I also know that when I’ve made mistakes, when I’ve said or done things that were considered wrong or harmful to others, the people in my division who lead me have guided with me with kindness and grace, and allowed me to both learn from my mistakes, and to grow from them.

And so, ultimately, the desire to make the web a better place, combined with an amazing work environment, supportive colleagues and some of the best benefits I’ve ever experiences, I chose to stay.

I still don’t fully understand all the things happening, and I won’t attempt to. I have enough drama in my own life to worry about. I’ve been involved in legal cases at companies I’ve worked for, was even expected to give testimony. It’s no fun, for anyone that’s involved.

All I do know is that I want to keep doing the work I do, and right now that’s right where I am.