Automattic (the people behind WordPress, Akismet and other cool projects) are looking for something they call a happiness engineer. What’s that all about?

Happiness Engineer

Our software and services are far from perfect, and when things go wrong people aren’t shy about contacting us asking for help.

We consider the support side of the user experience to be vitally important because it’s the person who interacts with our customers most and makes the biggest impression in their time of need. In fact everyone who joins Automattic, regardless of position, does support for 3 weeks.

The customers range from the everyday blogger to VIPs like CNN, Flickr, and People Magazine. The job requires:

• Patience and grace.
• Excellent writing skills.
• Working knowledge of WordPress, HTML, and CSS.

That’s fantastic. First of all because of the title – Happiness Engineer is a cool job title.

Secondly for the admission that “our software is far from perfect” and that “it’s the person who interacts with our customers most and makes the biggest impression in their time of need.” Excellent point!

Thirdly, I’m crazy about the fact that “everyone who joins Automattic, regardless of position, does support for 3 weeks.” That is a great way to clue people in to what the company is really about and what the customers really think about them.

And lastly, advertising for someone who has “patience and grace” is just nifty.

This ad makes Automattic look cool, it makes them look like a fun workplace and it makes me like them all in one fell swoop.

Pretty good for a job ad, huh?

(Thx to Thomas Bo Christensen for telling me about this ad).