At the end of September, I was invited to a very, very spontaneous video call. This short call was followed by many long conversations and finally a big decision.
I’m taking a new step and, after more than four years as a Senior WordPress developer at Ströer Online Marketing, I’m going to explore new ground and take on new, exciting challenges. In a few days, I will therefore be working in my new role with the great team at YITH for the first time.
What I left behind
I left behind a young and creative team that has given me a lot to think about over the last few years and has almost grown on me a bit. 🙃 Colleagues became friends over time, so my decision to look for new challenges was definitely not an easy one.
Along with Tilman, who called me in 2016 for some unfathomable reason and lured me into a surprise job interview with the promise of free drinks, my heartfelt thanks go to Dennis, Jo, Pia, Nadine, and Matze. They were all more than colleagues. And many of them have found their own unique path into the WordPress community in one way or another over the past few years, which makes me especially proud.
So what’s next
It is this community that I will be able to do more for and with in the future. At a time when e-commerce is more important than ever for both sellers and customers around the world, my focus is also shifting a bit more towards this part of the WordPress ecosystem.
After all, the Tenerife-based YITH is currently the largest independent provider of WooCommerce plugins worldwide and manages an impressive portfolio of plugins. A portfolio that will become even more attractive for customers from German-speaking countries in the future. That, at least, is one of the goals I’ll be working on more in the coming months.
This step is really exciting for me. I was explicitly looking for a position that would allow me more interaction with the community. But I was not expecting to come across an international team with such exciting products as YITH.
This is great news! I must confess that I always avoid the topic of e-commerce whenever possible. But it’s good to know that YITH’s themes and plugins will work even better for the German market in the future. I already knew YITH for a few years as a sponsor of various WordCamps and now I will take a closer look at what they have to offer.
I hope you’ll find many new colleagues there to work with for the next couple of years and I look forward to seeing you hopefully next year at the WCEU in Porto. I assume that many people from Tenerife will simply come there 🙂
Again: Congratulations to YITH! And to you, too, of course. 😉 E-commerce needs people with your brains. 👏👏👏