Josh Update: 2021

Last week I shared some Josh news on twitter that it was my last week at Saturday Drive. To answer a common question: I work at 10up now.

Moving on From Saturday Drive

In 2019, we sold Caldera Forms to Saturday Drive, the developers of Ninja Forms. I joined Saturday Drive with several other members of our totally distributed team. We joined as Saturday Drive was transitioning to being mostly distributed.

I'm grateful to have been a part of the time and to have contributed to Ninja Forms, Caldera Forms, SendWP as well as internal applications. It's been a great opportunity and I've learned a ton about PHP, JavaScript, React, TypeScript and more while I've been there.

While I was at Saturday Drive I contributed to Ninja Forms, including new blocks, new architecture for add-ons, and I helped diagnose and fix a ton of bugs. I also worked on internal applications for Ninja Forms and oversaw a migration of NinjaForms.com in advance of Black Friday. While I wasn't able to continue the vision I had for Caldera Forms, I was able to complete Caldera Forms MailChimp 2.0, which was a complete rewrite and rewrote all of Caldera Forms' conditional logic editor in React to fix performance issues.

Ultimately, this wasn't the right fit, I know I made an impact, but it was time. Earlier this year everyone agreed it was time for me to find something new. I super appreciate the support of the Kevin, James, Jeremy and the whole Saturday Drive team during this transition.

I Work At 10up Now

Starting this week, my job title is "Lead Web Engineer" at 10up. 10up is a WordPress VIP partner, and works with top brands and some very high traffic sites. I've been working with the WordPress for awhile, but mainly on plugins and WordPress adjacent apps. While I've built sites, and dealt with scaling challenges for ecommerce sites, this is a bit different.

I'm really excited about a reset. It's a WordPress job, with a lot more WordPress development than my previous plugin development job. Moving to 10up is an opportunity to work on a team and use the skills I've developed over the last few years in new ways.

The process of interviewing was fairly quick and relatively low stress. I'm still onboarding, but I've been super impressed so far with the friendliness of the people and the quality of the documentation.

Also My Hair Got Long Again

I am super grateful that working with WordPress allows Alicia and I to stay home and stay safe during this pandemic. It has been great to spend more time together and we got a puppy. The puppy news isn't recent and if you have spoken to me or follow me on social media, you probably have seen this, but anyway here is a picture of Macy playing in the snow:

Oh shoot, this section was about me, not my dog. Sorry, that will happen. Anyway, my hair has gotten pretty long. It's been longer, but still I'm happy I had this opportunity to grow it out one last time before it's gone:

I'm going to keep growing it, but happy so far:

And here is another photo of Macy playing in the snow:

Long Distance Hugs And High Fives

Given everything, I'm doing pretty good right now. If you are friends, Roy or family enough that you just read a whole post about me, thank you for being awesome. I love you and hope to see you again soon. Hugs. Hi fives.