My WordPress Career: Timothy Jacobs
From performing in operas to writing code for WordPress.
My WordPress Career is an employee spotlight on the StellarWP blog. Each week we highlight a different team member’s professional journey.
While each story is unique, they all demonstrate that there isn’t one single way to arrive at a career in WordPress. Our team members come from different backgrounds, and each person brings a different type of expertise to their role. And we think that’s pretty stellar.
Today, we’re talking to Timothy Jacobs, a developer at iThemes.
StellarWP: What was your very first job? Tell us what your duties entailed.
Timothy Jacobs: I started working at iThemes when I was 19, so that would have been my first “real” job. Before that, I worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as a kid. I was part of the children’s chorus for five years, so that was technically my first job.
Whoa! What was that like? How did you get started as a child performer?
TJ: It was really great, really fun. I auditioned with a friend. His mom was a viola player in the orchestra and let us know about it. I did it from about third grade to eighth grade.
If you were part of an opera, you would be paid for all of that time. You would have to cut out school for some things because if you’re doing rehearsals, those happen during the day.
Did you have any favorite shows or performances?
TJ: “La Bohème” is a big one. The setting of the opera is the nineteenth century. Act two is set during a street parade and the stage is completely full. There were street vendor-type people that had bagels and gigantic oversized candy pieces. You could actually get those, as a kid; you could make your way throughout the stage and pick up pieces of food. I also did a couple of understudies for other roles and non-singing solo roles.
“On time is late. Fifteen minutes early is considered on time.” That kind of discipline was required to be on stage.
What’s your current job at StellarWP? What do your duties include now?
TJ: I’ve been at iThemes for about seven years. I first started working on iThemes Exchange, which was an iThemes ecommerce plugin. After we shuttered iThemes Exchange, I started working on iThemes Security. Then a few years ago I started doing lead development for iThemes Security.
How did you first get into developing and WordPress?
TJ: I liked both video and tech stuff and ended up gravitating more to the tech side of things. I did a lot of exploring early tech stuff on the web. I wasn’t really able to write code when I started. I was a self-taught developer, and I think a large aspect of being able to be a self-taught developer is the open source ecosystem in WordPress. That’s really conducive to learning.
Before I started working at iThemes Exchange, I was one of the devs building on top of iThemes Exchange. I built a classes add-on for people to sell and manage enrollment for online courses. I also worked on an umbrella membership plugin, which I was really proud of. I’d build solutions for client sites, typically, then figure out how to build that into a plugin that anyone could use.
Is there anything you learned from your first job with the Metropolitan Opera that you carried with you to your current role at StellarWP?
TJ: Elena Doria was the director of the children’s chorus. She passed away, but one of the things she drilled into our heads was, “On time is late. Fifteen minutes early is considered on time.” That kind of discipline was required to be on stage.
There was also a lot of time management to ensure my schoolwork didn’t slip. You’d have two or three performances a week and have to make sure you get your homework done before that. There’s probably a connection between that kind of discipline that has translated into work today.
How is working in WordPress different from other jobs you’ve had? What do you like best?
TJ: My favorite thing about WordPress is that it’s open-source. It fosters collaboration even with competitors. You’re both working in the open-source ecosystem and in some way helping each other. You’re collaborating actively with developers who might be making a product that is in the same niche as you.
Today, there’s even more content out there to help people learn to code. But 10 years ago when I taught myself to code, WordPress felt like a pioneer in that regard. I remember reading Pippin’s blog posts and all the professional WordPress development books that Brad Williams and Justin Tadlock worked on, and all these different resources that were available. I think the open-source aspect is a big factor in that.
What’s the biggest challenge of working in WordPress?
TJ: The community drama is probably the biggest thing. I wonder how much more effective we would be if we were all better at communicating with one another. The strength of WordPress is its community, but that’s also its weakness. Sometimes that’s exhausting.
What do you wish you had known when you first started working in the WordPress world?
TJ: My biggest recommendation to people who are looking to get involved in WordPress is to contribute to core or to Gutenberg. Contributing through writing a patch or writing good bug reports is a really good way to learn. I think that’s an underappreciated approach. I know I learned a lot that way.
On one of the early tickets and patches that I worked on, I got feedback from really awesome core developers who were volunteering their time to say, “Here are all the ways that you can make this code better.”
I have to ask: Do you still sing or perform?
TJ: Not really, no. It’s “the career that couldn’t,” I guess you could say. Even being a developer in the WordPress space pays a lot better than being a starving artist.
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