The right time: Returning to Automattic

Eight months ago today, I left Automattic. It was the right time for me. Opus 4.5 had just come out, and, selfishly, all I wanted to do was build and explore with AI. Getting to spend 12 hours a day turning your own vision into reality is a gift, and I didn't want to pass it up.

Today, I'm going back. And once again, it feels like the right time.

The last eight months have been a personal sabbatical of sorts. I traveled. I spent a lot of time with family. I launched a Magic: The Gathering platform, Spellbinder, with my brother. I helped build a medical research app for my wife's work in Africa. And I churned through billions of tokens along the way.

For the first time in well over a decade, I didn't touch WordPress.

I always planned to come back to the WordPress community in some form. I just didn't expect that to mean returning to Automattic. But tuning back in over the last few weeks, between the constant negativity aimed at WordPress on social media and the latest situation with the Automattic board, I found myself fired up and missing the work.

Figuring out what WordPress looks like as AI changes everything is one of the hardest and most interesting problems out there. There's no group of people I'd rather be working on it with.

That also means diving back into the WordPress project. I'll be spending my time contributing to the Meta, Core AI, and Core teams, and I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone I've missed over the past eight months. If you're working on anything at the intersection of WordPress and AI, I'd love to hear about it. Reach out on X or LinkedIn, or find me in WordPress Slack.

When I left, I wrote that it wasn't an ending. Turns out it was closer to a detour. Automattic is a special place, and I'm excited to be back.