Applying To Be a Happiness Engineer (Part 1)

Back in July of this year (2018) I knew I needed a change. I had sold my original WordPress theme business at the end of 2016 and I had felt a bit unsettled ever since. What I was doing wasn’t working. It was time for a real change.

One morning while out on a walk, I started thinking and praying about what options were out there. All the people who work at Automattic that I’ve met over the years shared one thing in common: they all seem to absolutely love their jobs. When you meet multiple people who are so happy with their employer, it tends to make a mark on you. On my walk, I started thinking about that and the opening at Automattic for a Happiness Engineer my wife had told me about. I decided I would jump in and apply.

automattic-glass-door

Getting started is pretty straightforward. You can find out which positions are currently open in the work with us page. Even though I have a background as a developer, I was interested in being a Happiness Engineer. In my previous theme business, I always loved interacting with my customers and trying to help them achieve their goals so being a Happiness Engineer was a good fit for me.

Each job has their own way to apply. Be aware that these instructions can change at a moment’s notice. I started planning out my application and the instructions under “How To Apply” changed to something related, but different a bit later. Just be aware and make sure you follow the current instructions.

I had read in several posts from a few years back that it took up to several months to hear back about an application. That left me a bit worried that I might not hear anything until November or so (this was in July remember). Thankfully it was only a few days before I heard back from the hiring team.

From here I was given a task to perform and no I’m not going to tell you what the task was. It wasn’t particularly difficult, but it did require attention to detail. After that task was complete I had my first chat with someone on the hiring team. Since Automattic is a completely distributed company most of our interactions are via text-based communications. When you consider that, it makes sense that the interview was conducted via Slack and not in person or over the phone.

Our initial chat interview took about an hour to complete. I was nervous going into it, but the person I chatted with was easy to talk to and engaging. They put me at ease quickly.

After that first chat interview, I was given another task to perform. This one was more a series of small tasks than one large one. After I submitted it I had a second chat interview with the hiring team lead. This one was also about an hour and the hiring team lead was encouraging and helpful. Not long after that, I received an email that I had been selected to join a trial.

My family had a vacation to Disney World planned for my kids’ fall break so I was a bit worried about that conflict. I didn’t want to interrupt the trial, but I also didn’t want to miss our vacation. Thankfully I was given two start date options for the trial so I picked the second one that started a week after we returned. Crisis averted.

So that left me with about two months to wait after my last chat before I would start the trial. To find out what happens there, you’ll need to read the next post. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them here as a comment and I’ll happily get back with you.

2 responses

Filipe Lopes

March 20, 2025 at 5:00 pm

Helloo ! I have been reading and learning everything I can to have the opportunity to be a Happiness Engineer in the Future, sounds like a dream job! I’ve applied but no answer so far, is there anything I can do to have at least opportunity to show what I’m capable of ?

Im really eager to learn and work.

Thank you very much for sharing your journey !

Bill Robbins

March 21, 2025 at 9:34 am

That’s a great question! I’m not on the hiring team so don’t take this as authoritative. That said, in my opinion you’ll want to show two main things to the people running hiring:
* You have amazing people skills. Especially in writing. Most of a HEs work involves some form of written communication with customers so you need to show you can effectively understand what the customer is saying, empathize with them, and respond.
* That second part, the response, needs to be accurate. So you’ll want to show you have the technical skills to help our customers. You’ll need to be able to guide the customer through the process of addressing whatever need brought them to you today.

Both skills are important, but the first one is one that is really hard to teach. It’s one of those things that people typically have or don’t have. You may not be expected to know everything about WordPress when applying but having amazing people skills is something you’ll want to be able to show you already have. Does that make sense?

For the technical side, if you don’t have much experience with WordPress, I would suggest spending a fair amount of time developing some. Try building a lot of sites to fit various needs. Pretend you’re an influencer and set up a site to showcase your content and provide affiliate links for the products you endorse.

Or think about what it’s like to run a floral shop and set up a WooCommerce store that sells flowers online for local pickup. The more obstacles you run into and overcome, the easier it will be to help people as an HE.

Back in July of 2022 I transitioned out of Happiness into software engineering so I’m a bit out of touch in regards to day to day things with HEs now. Things are always changing, but hopefully that’ll get you started.

Just make sure that your application clearly demonstrates those two things and that should help you get noticed a bit more. In the past, applications often took a while and that may be the case currently.

Sometimes they also aren’t hiring at a particular moment in time. You’ll still hear back from them at some point, but in times past, they have paused hiring HEs for a while for various reasons.

Best of luck to you!

Loading…

Reply

Filipe Lopes

March 20, 2025 at 5:00 pm

Helloo ! I have been reading and learning everything I can to have the opportunity to be a Happiness Engineer in the Future, sounds like a dream job! I’ve applied but no answer so far, is there anything I can do to have at least opportunity to show what I’m capable of ?

Im really eager to learn and work.

Thank you very much for sharing your journey !

Loading…

1. Bill Robbins
  
  March 21, 2025 at 9:34 am
  
  That’s a great question! I’m not on the hiring team so don’t take this as authoritative. That said, in my opinion you’ll want to show two main things to the people running hiring:
  * You have amazing people skills. Especially in writing. Most of a HEs work involves some form of written communication with customers so you need to show you can effectively understand what the customer is saying, empathize with them, and respond.
  * That second part, the response, needs to be accurate. So you’ll want to show you have the technical skills to help our customers. You’ll need to be able to guide the customer through the process of addressing whatever need brought them to you today.
  
  Both skills are important, but the first one is one that is really hard to teach. It’s one of those things that people typically have or don’t have. You may not be expected to know everything about WordPress when applying but having amazing people skills is something you’ll want to be able to show you already have. Does that make sense?
  
  For the technical side, if you don’t have much experience with WordPress, I would suggest spending a fair amount of time developing some. Try building a lot of sites to fit various needs. Pretend you’re an influencer and set up a site to showcase your content and provide affiliate links for the products you endorse.
  
  Or think about what it’s like to run a floral shop and set up a WooCommerce store that sells flowers online for local pickup. The more obstacles you run into and overcome, the easier it will be to help people as an HE.
  
  Back in July of 2022 I transitioned out of Happiness into software engineering so I’m a bit out of touch in regards to day to day things with HEs now. Things are always changing, but hopefully that’ll get you started.
  
  Just make sure that your application clearly demonstrates those two things and that should help you get noticed a bit more. In the past, applications often took a while and that may be the case currently.
  
  Sometimes they also aren’t hiring at a particular moment in time. You’ll still hear back from them at some point, but in times past, they have paused hiring HEs for a while for various reasons.
  
  Best of luck to you!
  
  Loading…