When you become a Woo Happiness Engineer, you embark on a journey filled with unique and fulfilling experiences. Each day brings something new and exciting. Allow me to walk you through what I do and a bit of what I’ve done already to give you a glimpse into this role.

Typical day

My morning starts with checking my email and Slack to see what I need to know, act on, or respond to, and then I prioritize all these. 

After organizing my tasks, I refer to my flexible four-day workweek schedule. I am one of a few HEs with this preference. I work 10 hours a day, four days a week. This schedule allows me to savor a refreshing three-day weekend. I usually break my day into two halves with a 1-hour lunch break, during which I often indulge in a power nap to recharge!

What do I work on?

Direct Support Work

Since the Woo ecosystem is so diverse, Woo HEs can choose a specific area of direct support to work in. I chose to specialize in Payments-related issues. This means I spend my day sorting out payment queries and ensuring that money flows smoothly to merchants using our payment extensions. When I come across issues that are particularly challenging, I turn to Slack for support from other HEs or consult with our developers. This specialization area is crucial as we want to ensure that all ecommerce sites process payments properly. The satisfaction of resolving any issues is a key part of what makes this role so rewarding.

Citizenship Time

Since I work four days a week, I get 2.5hrs of citizenship time per day. I use this time to catch up with items I prioritized that morning, catch up with posts, support colleagues on Slack, undertake further training, attend meetings and do other indirect support tasks like guild work or projects. Speaking of guilds, what are they? 

Guilds

Guilds comprise a small group of HEs working together to tackle or improve a specific area of support. For a while, I was part of the Testing Guild, where I helped developers test calls for pre-release versions of our products to see if all worked as expected before going public. I also worked through the backlog of bugs for our different extensions by testing, updating the bug reports, and closing those that were no longer relevant. Later, I became a WooCommerce core Product Ambassador on a call basis. That means I get to see some pre-release WooCommerce features and work on documenting anything that is not documented before they go live!

Projects

I’m usually happy to jump into projects as they come up, as they offer new challenges, learning opportunities, and time to meet other folks at Automattic. I recently got entrusted with a rather significant project to work with Automatticians in different divisions to see how we HEs in Woo Happiness could help collaborate with agencies, developers, and hosts that have WooCommerce as part of their offering! Next, I’ll work on implementing some of the outcomes of this project. Another project I’ve participated in was making documentation videos for our products to make it easier for users to jump straight into using them.

Training

At Automattic, we value continuous learning and growth. There are numerous training opportunities available, and I’ve taken advantage of some of them to build up my skills. Recently, I completed a two-month leadership training program and a two-month on-camera speaking course. I plan to take a few more courses this year. 

Other Work

There’s usually some other work that you can apply for while you’re still a HE. For instance, I was previously a Woo Happiness Mentor (Division Onboarder) on a 6-month tenure. Woo Happiness Mentors onboard new Woo HEs, walking with them from their first day until they learn the ropes and are impactful, full-standing HEs. It’s an incredible experience to walk this journey with them.

Apart from this, I volunteer a lot for WordCamps. Automattic is usually a Global Gold-Level Sponsor for WordCamps. So far, I’ve volunteered to staff our WordPress.com and Woo booths at WordCamps in Africa and Europe. From this work, I’ve met many people from all over the world who are passionate about WordPress.   

The HE role entails a lot more than what I’ve covered here, and the fun part is that you get to choose your adventure based on the impact you want to make!