My first day as a full time employee at Automattic was July 29, 2013.

I would have missed it, except I was working on a spreadsheet that contained start dates, and calculated peoples’ number-of-years with the company, out to six decimal places or something. Naturally, the one whole number stood out, and sure enough, it was me. It felt like I forgot my own birthday.

Working at Automattic has brought me to many things I would not have found otherwise. I found a real appreciation for in-person brainstorming, with post-it notes and everything. I had the opportunity to run a multi day brainstorming session with some of our Happiness Engineers in Barcelona.

I’ve gone to two Grand Meetups, one in Santa Cruz, and one in Park City Utah. I’ve been a team lead and a team member. I’ve worked on hospitality teams, I’ve worked on a product team. I have been consistently impressed by the ingenuity and generosity of my coworkers.

I’ve had times I wanted to quit. I’ve looked at job listings and sighed wistfully out the window. I’ve gotten unsolicited job offers. What has kept me on board the Automattic train has been the realization that my frustrations with the job were not coming from Automattic as an organization, but from my own approach, from my own assumptions about how the job should be, rather than finding positive and productive ways to navigate the sometimes bizarre and fluid world of remote tech work that is Automattic.

That, and the knowledge that even though it can be insane, it’s insane like me. It’s my preferred flavor of madness. Being able to set my own course, both in terms of where I’m working and what I’m working on, has been so valuable  to my personal growth and my ability to be impactful within the company.

Here’s to two more. At the very least!

(Yes we’re hiring. Yes I’ll talk to you about the job.)