tom

Software Engineer working at @automattic, prev @atlassian

[Luigi Teschio @gigitux]

A small UX fix in WooCommerce: the Continue button on the product import screen is now disabled until a CSV file is selected.

https://t.co/iIc4VL9w7C

The original issue was opened in 2021. Small improvements like this reduce friction, prevent mistakes, and compound over time into a better WooCommerce.

Got an issue you’d like me to look at? Drop it below. Let’s make Woo better 💜

[tom @codebytom]

@gigitux ❤️

[Rich Tabor @richtabor]

Wow, this is special.

Code for the People is an upcoming documentary short about @WordPress and open source.

Coming July 9.

https://t.co/4BHNjSVjsg

[Danny van Kooten @dannyvankooten]

We just moved another one of our product sites back to WordPress after ~10 years of it being statically generated with Jekyll.

That’s 4 sites in 4 months back on WordPress. Not saying we’re single-handedly reversing the trend, but we’re doing what we can. 😉

It’s a 1:1 conversion for now, but we’ll start milking the fact that it’s dynamic again over the next few weeks.

Why the move back?

- Easier content management. The team can update knowledge base content again without going through a developer or Git workflow. Smaller edits are frictionless. Spotted a typo or outdated sentence while browsing the live site? Click edit, fix it, done.
- Dogfooding. We build WordPress products, so our own product sites should probably run on WordPress too. The results of @innerwebs’s poll last week surprised me in this regard.
- If a site can be static, its #WordPress version can be cached just as aggressively at the edge, but with more granular purging when individual pages change.

Obligatory Lighthouse score: 100/100/100/100.

[James Kemp @jamesckemp]

We’re having a bit of a GitHub cleanup for WooCommerce. Got an issue open that you’ve been waiting on or didn’t get enough attention? A PR that’s still pending? Let me know and let’s get it moving!

[tom @codebytom]

@RaminNasibov

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[tom @codebytom]

@destraynor Probably won't tho.

[Ronan Berder @hunvreus]

I've been complaining about AI-bros and their "20 agents working overnight" for a couple of weeks now.

That's getting old. So I thought I'd do the more productive thing and propose what I think is the Right Way™ to develop software with AI.

And I did that by stealing from the iconic agile manifesto.

https://t.co/Ktf1eZfp8T

[Emre Erkan @IzzetEmreErkan]

Copying a live WooCommerce site to staging shouldn't mean dumping 250k+ orders and real customer data into a dev environment.

So I built wp-stage-sync 🙌

Filters orders, anonymizes customers, and cuts sync time dramatically.

Open source, MIT licensed.

https://t.co/R9c6L9WZeY

[tom @codebytom]

@apeatling Probably shouldn't watch this then 😬

https://t.co/8oXa6vOcSX

[Theo - t3.gg @theo]

I'm scared to make this video, but I feel like I have to.

It's time to talk about Google.

[tom @codebytom]

@amix3k @yongfook I'm a big Todoist fan. The product has been great for me, and has been for years.

[David Cramer @zeeg]

Sentry Act 2: no layoffs, no axing random vendors (unless they suck obv), continued investment into AI and doing what we always do

imo its weak leadership to keep pushing out the same junk PR blaming random things vs saying what you're actually doing

[tom @codebytom]

@rwkyyy @gigitux I'm not sure the two are equivalent. You can have poor code pass tests. It also depends on what tests it is writing (or not writing) do you pay attention to those?

[batuhan @batuhan]

I moved Beeper’s website to WordPress recently to stop bothering with these.

[will brown @willccbb]

hey mind reviewing these real quick

[shadcn @shadcn]

Nope. The AI you use right now is UI that talks to APIs.

[tom @codebytom]

@gigitux Legend.

[tom @codebytom]

@JudahGabriel @metulev Brilliant, can also confirm it is. Thanks so much.

[tom @codebytom]

@metulev hey! https://t.co/qjWnjU3Qho looks like its down if there's anything you can do? 🙏