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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Eric Karkovack (00:00)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm Eric Karkovack. Today's episode is all about the changing job market for web professionals. The reality is that many of us are struggling to find gainful employment at the moment. And AI isn't making anything easier. My guest is Andrew Norcross.
A developer with over two decades in this space. He's run his own agency, worked for other agencies, and even served as the lead application developer for NASA's transition to WordPress. Currently, he's looking for his next big opportunity and has a compelling story to tell. Andrew, welcome to the WP Minute.
Andrew Norcross (00:39)
Hey Eric, thanks for having me.
Eric Karkovack (00:41)
And so I I thank you for coming on because you know, i the the struggle in the job market is something that it's hard to discuss. ⁓ but I wanted to start out with a little story about the first time I saw you, and this was way back in WordCamp Philadelphia, twenty eleven. I looked it up. you were giving a talk about ⁓ customizing the WordPress backend. And it was my first WordCamp.
And I saw this guy standing up there with all these tattoos, very smart, very casual, and it was like I realized at that moment this was a community I wanted to be a part of because it wasn't some salesman in a suit trying to push something I didn't need. It was real people sharing real knowledge. So I wanted to thank you for that. I've never forgotten that. ⁓ and again I'll sh share it in the show notes, so but do you remember giving that talk at all?
Andrew Norcross (01:40)
yeah. And the funny thing is, I gave that talk in San Diego I believe that year as well. And I dressed in a Ron Burgundy costume, like the cover of the movie. So it was the boxer short, you know, it was like the white boxers, the tall socks, you know, th the fake mu at the I had no facial, you know, fake mustache. and
I gave the entire talk dressed as Ron Burgundy. At no point did I mention or reference the fact that I was dressed like Ron Burgundy. I gave the same talk that I gave in Philly. the only thing difference was is I added a f couple images from the movie into the slides, but again, at no point. I I didn't do a voice, I didn't do a gimm yeah. Just dead pan. and Mark Benzac, ⁓ that was his first WordCamp.
And he had no idea who I was either and he left that feeling very confused. and we didn't find that out until maybe ten years later. or maybe I maybe not ten years, yeah, we were at a dinner after WordCamp many, many, many years later. And somehow that story came up and he was like, I was there and I was like, yeah, that was me. so yeah, I mean I've it's it's funny, you know, like I've taken
I've taken this very seriously in some aspects. But in other aspects in no way do I take it seriously. like it like the work that I've done and you know, like the effort that I've put into what I've actually produced and and put out there, like is I've taken incredibly seriously. You know, and and again, yeah, the r the relationships that I've built over two decades of work at this point, like I take those very seriously. ⁓
Being proper and showing you know like showing up in a suit. Like no, like almost any time I've had a suit on, I feel like I'm going to a court date that I didn't ask for. and you know, it's it's what like I have one suit that was like tailored and that was the only time I've ever been like, All right, I get it now. but yeah, otherwise, yeah, I'm a casual guy. Like I live in Florida. It's hot. I don't want to be all, you know, bound up and like that. Just more stuff to sweat in. So Yeah
Eric Karkovack (03:58)
Yeah, it's
I can I can understand that.
Andrew Norcross (04:00)
Yeah, I've I've I've
worked I worked in finance for about ten years before I got into software and and not in the IT side, I was a money man yeah, at the end I held a lot of roles, but at the end I was a money manager for a trust company and very, very uptight. Everybody had s you know, like I I did not thankfully did not have to wear a suit every day, but it was one step below that, ⁓ every day. And ⁓ unless it was casual Friday once a month. I
So yeah, this was this was the late nineties, early two thousands. so you know, it i it's one of those situations where after coming out of that, I'm like, I'm never doing that again. Like it was just so it made everything way more uncomfortable than it needed to be. ⁓ you know, it made it harder t to show your personality and see what other people were like as everybody was so stoic trying to, you know, just be there.
Eric Karkovack (04:57)
Yeah, I I can remember my first job out of high school was at a newspaper and I I I didn't have to dress in anywhere near a suit, but I did have to wear khakis and things like that. I just felt very uncomfortable and it just like you ha it it kind of strips away the humanity a little bit, I think. I don't know. That's why I love WordPress and I love web development because I can sit here and dress in a band t-shirt for and no one cares.
Andrew Norcross (05:19)
I mean
half of my half the t shirts I have are from WordPress events or companies. Like this is a WordCamp Mi you the ten year anniversary of WordCamp Miami shirt. You know, like I've you know, it's there's s you know, half the stuff in my walls are WordPress. Like it sits everywhere.
Eric Karkovack (05:36)
And that th and and so I I wanted to talk a little bit about your background on WordPress. ⁓ because you've been doing this a long time. How did you get started with with WordPress? W why did you decide that this was your your path?
Andrew Norcross (05:49)
Honestly, was an accident. ⁓ I'd love to give it more of a b yeah, like a more heroic backstory, but no. ⁓ like I said, I was working in finance. I had tinkered with hard the hardware side of computers since I was a kid. the first computer in the house, I was four years old. ⁓ so like I'd always been around them. I'd always used them. Like I was very much familiar, you know, comfortable with them. but it through a weird concurrence of events, I ended up getting
To be able to do remote access for the finance job, I had to have a static IP from my ISP because this is again this is the early two thousands. so they had an arrangement with the broad brand provider, so I got business tier internet at home, which gave me a static IP, which meant I could have a server. ⁓ so I was like I'll
Well, make a server. I'll whip up a server. Like, I got a tower sitting around. so I did that, and then I'm like, well, now I gotta put something on it. And a friend of mine was a local music writer, already had he had a site in movable type. And I initi and where he was hosting it, he had to move it. It was on somebody else another friend's computer in their living room kind of thing. so you know, he
Yeah, I was I can figure that out. ⁓ so I did it movable type initially. And I just didn't care for it. and so this would have yeah, so this would have like WordPress two point f
Eric Karkovack (07:20)
Four
Andrew Norcross (07:21)
ish, somewhere around there, three or four. I was like, this WordPress thing seems cool. Let's d you know, 'cause at the time it was that in Drupal, and I'm like, Drupal is is just insane. ⁓ already at that point. Like I had no experience. So I'm like Drupal seemed way beyond what I was capable of. ⁓ so I was like, yeah, we'll figure this WordPress thing out. and that was it. Like I did that and then, you know, ⁓ I ended up
being a stay home dad for a short period of time and did this as well and it just kinda t it was in the right place at the right time. because it was all open source and it was all non compiled code, like I could just read it. And that's what I did. Is I just read source code. A lot of it. And
threw different stuff at it just to see what would happen. And, you know, it was just a lot of very manual, you know, very base level sort of but that's how I sorta I taught myself how to wr you know, write software. And I just kept going I just never stopped.
Eric Karkovack (08:24)
Yeah, that's that's kind of the beauty of this industry and of WordPress in particular. That's how so many of us got started. It was just kind of by accident we needed something. We found ⁓ that we could look at the code and we can kind of replicate and figure out what was happening, and all these other people are sharing what they're doing. so I I want to move it close to the present now, because recently ⁓ I noticed you posted a thread on social media about you know, the struggle to find a a new gig and or even land.
And I appreciate your being forthright about that because it's a hard subject to talk about
Andrew Norcross (08:59)
Sure.
And frankly, it's the first time I've been in this situation in my entire life. ⁓ this is not something I've dealt with before. but you know, there's a confluence of events, AI being one of them, and you know, we can definitely get into that. but you know, what I'm seeing is that everybody is spending less money.
⁓ there's less work seems like there's just less work to be had. And that i is a change historically from what it's been. and i beyond that is being a developer in the United States
With WordPress being so distrib globally distributed and always has been, and some of the larger you know, some of the best agencies are not at all based in the US. And when they're looking at hiring somebody, there's a multiplier on a US based employee. You have to cover health insurance. ⁓ you've gotta pay you know, th there's just more work involved. given the choice, you're gonna pick somebody else because
you don't have to pay them as much. and and that's a big thing that I've run into in this process is if I lived overseas, I'd have no problem. I've had more than one company say, we'd love to bring you on, but we can only offer you a number that I haven't
Yeah, a number that I made in twenty fifteen. Twenty sixteen. Yeah, like a a a number that is not insult you know, again, like it it sounds weird to talk about it like that in like a very privileged situation to be like, but but I know how much work is involved with those roles. And I'm like that's
that's a lot of work for not a lot of money. And it it's you know, combined with the expectation that you will use AI. Not that it's made available, but that it's a requirement. And without any discernible reason or impl you know, as to why. You know, nobody say, you know, they're like, we need you to use AI for this reason. They're like, use AI. I'm like f
For what? And they're like, to be faster. I was like, speed has never been the problem. You know, anybody who's worked in this space for any amount of time knows that the writing of the code is a small part of the process. It's not zero, you know, and it comes with its own stuff. And we've definitely overcomplicated software development independent of AI. but that's never
the holdup usually. It's figuring out what to write. It's figuring out who is involved, you know, who's gonna use this. You know, it's distilling the expectations of a client who frankly is not technical like that because that's not their job. ⁓ and they I you shouldn't expect them to be. is, you know, like that's the work. Like that's where the experience and you know the knowledge comes in that like yeah
Eric Karkovack (11:51)
Yeah.
Andrew Norcross (12:17)
A lot of code that I write is inherently not that difficult, I would say. Yeah, like if you're experienced and you've done this for a while, like you could absolutely take what I've written and implement it in a very similar way for a particular use case that you may have. ⁓ you know, the difference is that I know why I wrote that. I can explain how this thing works. If something doesn't work, 'cause it it's gonna happen,
I got a pretty good idea where to look, or at least where to start. And this AI generated code, nobody knows how it works. It's just more. You know, I we're already seeing the reports come out that a lot of companies are pulling back a lot, which is not unexpected in any way, shape, or form. ⁓ it was always the subscription model was always a weird thing.
Eric Karkovack (13:04)
Yes.
Andrew Norcross (13:16)
You know, like I don't get to pay my electric company twenty bucks a month and use as much electricity as I want to. I don't know why AI would be different. But you know, so combined with again the people that are running these companies, like are not people I want to be putting my money into the pocket of.
Eric Karkovack (13:36)
I I can understand that.
Andrew Norcross (13:39)
Yeah. We've got
Eric Karkovack (13:41)
I was gonna say we we've got a situation where i it's funny 'cause you mentioned I think one of the things you mentioned in your thread was that, you know, you've written code for so many years and these tools have actually gone in and, you know, they've harvested your code basically and now it's they're kind of using that against you.
Andrew Norcross (13:58)
I mean
it's funny. I have two experiences with it. So I was looking up a word I don't remember exactly. It's something to do with the old WordPress nav menu functions and certain stuff like I always just look up because I know what I'm looking for, but I just yeah. And you know, Google try you know doing its best. I hadn't switched away from Google yet. you know, gave me that box that has, you like some code and I'm reading it, I'm like, man, this looks familiar. And
You know, they link you know, they they provide the attribution, which, you know, credit in that situation. and I click it and sure enough, I wrote it as a reply to a question on the s on the WordPress Stack Exchange in twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen. ⁓ it was giving me my own code back. ⁓ now again, it's open source on a public website, and they did provide attribution. So, I mean frankly they followed the letter of law. ⁓
And then another time I was working on something, this is somewhat recently, ⁓ with MailPoet, which I have not done much, you know, certain plugins that I don't do much work with, I'm like, I need to, you know, refamiliarize myself with it each time because I'm like, I know there's been a lot of improvements, you know, and enhancements and whatnot. Sure. So I'm digging through and I'm just looking for a way to add a tag to a subscriber or a subscriber to a tag, you know, whatever direction I was going. ⁓
So again, first thing I did is I went and read the source code. I went and looked at the API class that they had in their plugin. Looking through, I'm like, I don't see it. This is I I you know, I can see a couple ways I could use e parts of but whatever. So I'm like, all right, let me go. And I go again, I go Google it. And it gives me this block of code. And I'm like, this looks nice. so I'm like, all right, let's see what happens. I take it in, immediately, fate, you fatal errors right away. And
I'm digging through it for a second, I realized it just made up a function. It just created an API function that said add subscriber to tag, camel cased it, commented the code, like the function they gave, like it looked real nice. It was real pretty. Didn't work at all. Because it made it hallucinated one, maybe two functions that just straight up did not exist in that code base. And like that's an error that a junior developer
Would make but catch themselves before anybody else saw it. Like that's such a low-level thing. And I was like, and this stuff this is replacing us?
Eric Karkovack (16:30)
So I've had that happen before where, you know, AI will tell me something exists that doesn't exist. And I've written about it on another site a while back, about how confident AI can be. ⁓ and of course you don't want it to be you know, wishy washy about its answers, right? ⁓ you know, for for many reasons, y you know, a confident tone is going to help them sell more service. It's going to make you feel better about what it's doing. But at the same time, it can also trick us into thinking
that we, you know, should just rely on this tool for our critical thinking, which, you know, I I a and I I am an AI user. I am I am not
Andrew Norcross level developer. I know enough around PHP and things like that, but I, you know, there's certain things that I just don't know how to do. And AI has helped me through that, but I've also just developed like a process for it. ⁓ for testing and things like that for security. But I look at this and you know it wants you to trust it, of course, but
problem is that we humans have to like verify these things before we actually publish them because it could make mistakes like that and you know you're left wondering what happened.
Andrew Norcross (17:43)
Well I mean like it will and that's the thing is that mathematically seventy seventy-five percent accuracy is is about as good as it can get. ⁓ and that's just that's a physics math math that I do not understand to be very clear. you know, nowhere near I barely I barely passed algebra. So like let's be clear, that's math that I don't understand. but the people that do have written a lot about it and and yeah, like using you know and there's a whole lot of studies that are like
Yeah, it can start diminishing your cognitive reasoning ability like within 15 minutes of use. And and again, but I'll also say I don't have to do a lot of mundane stuff. I'll say that AI seems to be pretty useful for mundane stuff. You know, admin level work, boilerplate, you know, stuff where you're like, I'm not sure how to write this. and yeah, like there's a part of me is absolutely one of those like old man yells at Sky. And I was like, if you don't know, then learn it. ⁓ like I I get it.
You know, and it's one of those things where I I I think part of it is, you know, what drew me to this in the first place was that there was a craft element to it. ⁓ it wasn't just putting together Legos, ⁓ which I love doing, obviously. but it wasn't just here's the list, put all the stuff together, ship it out. ⁓
you had to figure some things out. And especially when I started working in WordPress, like they had just added pages. That that's where we were. ⁓ like there was no custom. Yeah, there were no custom taxonomies, there were no custom post types, there was no cust you know, there was no built in menu. ⁓ like it was still very, very raw. Yeah, and very you know, so like if you wanted to do anything beyond the be the basics, ⁓ you had to
really kind of get in there and figure it out. And that is always what I wanted to do. Like I wanna solve puzzles. I want to figure this stuff out. I wanna build things. I don't like I review my code and I review you know, I've obviously done endless amounts of code review for my coworkers and and stuff like that. Like that's part of the process. ⁓ but I don't want to just review code. That sounds horrible. ⁓
Like that also sounds like a complete waste of the time that I have put into learning and gaining the experience to babysit a robot. Like, I don't know why anybody would think that's appealing.
Eric Karkovack (20:28)
Well, j ⁓ just to be clear for our audience, ⁓ you indeed had an a prospective employer tell you that you ⁓ didn't necessarily you weren't a great fit because you don't use AI.
Andrew Norcross (20:41)
Correct. I was told that I did not use enough AI in my own workflows. And this was after, you know, we all know how tech interviews go. They're endless. Yeah, so this is after talking to everybody and doing jumping through all the hoops and doing all the things and Yeah, being told that it not that I didn't do it in the tests, it was
that I personally did not use enough of it. And I was very clear throughout the entire process that I don't use it and that I didn't use it. And I explained why. You know, it wasn't it wasn't just a flippant sort of, you know, like, ⁓ You know, it was when I was on the NASA project, one of the, you know, one of the devs on the team started using Chat GPT to write code. He didn't say anything about it, didn't tell anybody about it. ⁓
And all of a sudden I start seeing all this code show up, p all these PHP files that are filled with React syntax.
Instead of class, it says class name, you the capital N and all that stuff. ⁓ because that's what the AI had produced and he j shipped it. ⁓ so that was my first introduction to it, other than some of those weird, like the Dolly image maker stuff that was showing up in the very, very beginning, you know. Yeah. you know, so I was like, All right, well this is trash. ⁓ and I ignored it for a while. Also, you know, NASA understandably was very specific about what tools could and couldn't be used, what
you know, what had access, you know, I had to use a NASA issued machine with a PIN card and, you know, VPN and all that other fun stuff. ⁓ so, you know, they were also very specific. And I again I explained all this. ⁓ and then I was like the roll after that, I dove straight into a project where I was asked to build very specific things that I knew how to build. There was no how am I gonna do this? It was these are the things we need. And I did them. So
And the stuff's not you know, I was like, I've not had the time to work on passion projects. You know, it's like the the what I see a lot of people doing is they'll throw that at a little app idea they have or you know, a little whatever to handle a thing that they want to do. And I'm like, that's cool.
Eric Karkovack (23:13)
were you surprised, you know, at at that reaction from from somebody? ⁓ or is that like kind of at the in this day and age now is that just where we are?
Andrew Norcross (23:24)
Honestly, I was incredibly surprised. And the reason being is the role was looking for someone, you know, it was heavy on the experience side. so i again it wasn't a staff engineer role. It wasn't a a situation where they're where where velocity is part of the equation. You know, like th this was looking you know, basically looking for people who could just
know how to fix stuff and build stuff without without doing the same thing twice, sort of thing. And I'm like, yeah, this is perfect. That's what I've done my whole career. so, you know, it it I was surprised because I understand, you know, again, I don't necessarily agree with, but I understand where some of the AI use comes from and and what people are, you know, using it for and what they think, you know, and what they feel it might offer them.
you know, i in the realm of s specifically in software, ⁓ I think using PHP makes that a little more difficult because there's so much more of it out there and there has been because it's such a you know, much older language. Like I think AI, you know, some of these, you know, Claude tools and whatnot are probably a lot better at things like type TypeScript that have only really existed for a couple of years. you know, same thing with React. Like there's a smaller library of examples out there, so
they probably learned a lot more current valid code examples, you know. Whereas again, some of the stuff that was scraping for PHP was fifteen years old talking about using magic quotes on PHP four. That is no longer relevant. ⁓ you know, so you know
Yeah, and that's the whole thing is that it you know, again, it was scraping GitHub, it was scraping ⁓ Reddit and it was scraping all the stack exchange sites. I'm like, those have a lot of historical code that's there for archive purposes, that's there, you know, like I have a whole slew of stuff sitting in in my own personal GitHub account that nobody should ever use. Ever. It is so woefully out of date, like to the point where some of it I've actually gone and like closed it and just gotten rid of it. ⁓
But every now and then I'm like, I know I solved this problem a certain way before, let me go look, and that'll give me a place to start to go do it better. ⁓ so again, I hoard code. You know, storage space is basically free. So but otherwise, you know, again, coming back to the question of was I surprised? Absolutely. and it can it worried, yeah, not worried me, but it really discouraged me because what I realized is
There's a lot of people that got into software development to get a paycheck now. When I got into it, there wasn't even a guarantee of a good paycheck at the time. ⁓ it was the web was very nascent industry, you know, like it was just getting going. And all of these, you know, everything was open source, a lot of people were you know, but like we weren't talking about these tech companies the way that we are, and we weren't talking about these these revenue numbers that a lot of these companies are, you know, in just in the WordPress space that they're doing now.
Eric Karkovack (26:30)
Yeah.
Andrew Norcross (26:56)
⁓ you know, so it wasn't that. It was, you know, you had you were had to be a little bit weird. ⁓ you had to want to figure this stuff out because nobody had figured it out yet. ⁓ and it dr again, it attracted a certain type of person. And at a certain point that changed to learn how to code, get a good job. And all of a sudden there's a whole bunch of people that don't necessarily have that level of passion for it. They have the skill.
But they don't have the passion for it. So when you offer them a tool that's just gonna produce the outcome that they're looking for, which is ultimately the paycheck, but you know, just like I need to ship this much code, this is what I gotta do, and this tool helps me get there. I'm like, I can't be mad at that. ⁓ you know, like it it annoys me, but I can't be mad at it. And frankly, the job market is so bad right now that anybody who has a role is doing whatever they can to hold on to it, and I absolutely do not fault anybody for that.
⁓ like it's real easy for me to get on a soapbox right now because I'm not, you know, working full time for anybody. ⁓ you know, I'm spending most of my time building fences and decks.
Literally.
Eric Karkovack (28:10)
Well tha that's that's an entirely different skill set and I don't see the robots coming for that just yet.
Andrew Norcross (28:16)
I don't think they will. I mean there's different robots that could do some of that work. Like some of the you know, having to put it you know, an auger three feet deep into the ground to be able to pull out, you know, to put new posts in, like there's better robots that'd be kinda cool, but yeah, no, I don't you know, software is not gonna replace that. But yeah, I'm also like I I'm forty five years old. I live in Florida. That is hard work.
Eric Karkovack (28:44)
He's sweating a lot, I can imagine.
Andrew Norcross (28:46)
yeah, saturating just I mean so much dry fit moisture wicking stuff. Like I understand the athleisia stuff way more now than I ever did before. ⁓ like I get it now. but yeah, no, it's just one of those things where like yeah, I've got you know a little bit you know, a little bit of contract work here and there, obviously. you know, I've got people that I've worked with over the years long enough now that you know, they hit me up when they're like, Hey, here's this thing. I was like, sure, you I just go knock it out. but yeah, like I'm seeing
I don't know how many resumes at this point, you know, applications or whatever I've put in. I had one per I had one company reply and tell me that I was overqualified. and I r respected the response, frankly. ⁓ you know, they're you know, basically they were saying they're like, We do brochure websites, you're gonna be looking for another job the moment you start here. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. but I was yeah, I respect that. And they were, you know, it's like, you're overqualified for this.
That and then the one rule I talked about you know where I I wasn't AI pilled enough. that's the only thing I've heard. Like nobody even bothers responding. Half these jobs that are out there aren't even real. so you know, it's kind of like I keep looking, I keep talking to people, but nobody that I you all I all I keep seeing are more layouts.
Eric Karkovack (30:07)
Yeah, I I wanted to bring that up too, 'cause that's that's kind of my rant about ⁓ you know, there there's been a lot of talk lately about ⁓ you know, the plug in ecosystem kind of struggling and sales are down and this and that. And I kind of trace that back to the
The the atmosphere that you came into this you know, where it was passionate developers who were selling a product. I bought the product and I knew the developer. And I knew that I if I had a problem, I could go to them. And then all of a sudden these independent plug-in shops are getting sold to, you know
Big conglomerates basically with a lot of private equity involved. And we see that in the hosting space a lot. And all of a sudden it it becomes like what private equity does everywhere. It's like, okay, it's about efficiency, trimming the fat and getting the product out the door. And you know, maybe that has something to do with this as well, because they're just looking for that human robot, so to speak.
Andrew Norcross (31:10)
⁓ I mean again like AI AI is not the only reason why things are the way they are right now. Like you know, again I was talking about, you know, like the how the pay disparity works from you know, as when you're hiring both US and Interna international. ⁓ and that's not even people trying to find countries, you know, like lower countries. That's just like, you know, they're looking at places like England and you know, Canada and Ir you know, like, you know yeah. Just not the US. ⁓
Eric Karkovack (31:16)
Yeah.
Yeah. ⁓
Andrew Norcross (31:40)
And again,
like a lot of it is there was more money to be made. To be clear, like WordPress has hit somewhat of a saturation point. I'm not sure they're going to get much more of a share of anything. Frankly, it's probably gonna diminish, but nobody else is gonna go up either. ⁓
I think we're gonna see a lot more. We're gonna see way more just static HTML, you know, some of those little site builder things that are like a bunch of people are like, I don't need a CMS. I need three pages. Like I don't need I don't need a CMS. I don't want to maintain a CMS. I don't wanna have to pay more for hosting to manage my CMS and to manage the huge stack underneath that has to run it. You know, all some people are like I just want three page, you know. My personal website is HTML5.
I also did not feel like maintaining a website. Yeah. So, you know, it's one of those things where I think that that's where you're gonna see a lot of stuff going is is like getting rid of some of the weight, you know, because you know, again, it's WordPress is a great tool. ⁓ it works for a lot of stuff. but it's overkill for certain things, a hundred percent. Sure.
⁓ and you these plugin shops, like I think they also again they hit a saturation point, you know, like I I'm sorry, but like forms have been figured out. You know, if if you're if you're releasing a form plugin, the only real market that you've got available are the people that are pissed off at another form company. ⁓ you know, same with hosting. It's like everybody has a negative thing to say about every single hosting company because somebody had a bad experience.
⁓ you know and you know again I ran a product, you know, r when ⁓ you know running Reactive we also had, you know, the product division and and the biggest one being Design Palette. ⁓ you know, it was a worked in the Genesis framework, you know, and it was pre-customized you basically it was a customizer before the customizer. And you know, that was you know, we knew right away annual subscription, you know, we didn't do anything lifetime based. ⁓ we looked at it from a sustainability standpoint of
you know, it was not our only business though. Like, you know, we were also doing well on the agency side. So and they ran that, you know, long after I sold, you know, ⁓ my part of the company, they ran with that until clearly the bl you know, between the block editor and customizer and everything, like it was didn't need to exist anymore. ⁓ and that's some of the other issues, like some of these plugins solved a problem that no longer needs to be solved.
Eric Karkovack (34:18)
Yeah, that that's a big thing as the block editor, you know, continues to evolve. It's like some things that you know, those little things that Gutenberg didn't do, well it's doing a lot of them now and it's not necessarily ⁓ you you have to you don't necessarily have to invest in something else when the core software is doing a decent enough job.
Andrew Norcross (34:36)
I would rather core do it and I would rather extend on I've always rather extended on top of core than trying to wholesale shoehorn something else on top of it because then you're always fighting core. ⁓
There's a there's a bunch of plugins and stuff that I've released that I haven't looked at, you know, in a while that still works a hundred percent because it absolutely mirrors what core is expecting where and when things or core expects things to happen. So, you know, when they push out an update, usually I'm fine. ⁓ you know, I don't have to figure out I don't have to rebuild my abstraction layer between them because I'm already using what they're offering. ⁓
So and yeah, like when when Gutenberg was first coming out, I was not on board, be perfectly honest. but I didn't work on sites that I thought it would be useful for. ⁓ the stuff that I was building at the time was a lot more, again, a lot of plug-in work, a lot of API, you know, data migration data syncs sort of stuff, you know. Sure. So where it was like, I don't I'm gett I'm trying to avoid the editor in any form, ⁓ with a lot of the stuff that I was using building. So
But we use it on the NASA project and that's why that site is good. ⁓ like they had the most
comprehensive design system I've ever seen in my life. It was a hundred and twenty seven page Figma document that broke everything down to the truly to the atomic level up to full page layouts with you know again everything. You know, so like we had a compl we had a total blueprint of what everything could look like and the block editor was like, yeah no problem. You know
Eric Karkovack (36:20)
And I saw a demo of it I think at WordCamp US twenty-three. ⁓ there was a presentation on it and I I just rem recall all the block patterns that had been built so that you know whoever was putting in that content they they had you know already approved ways to display that data.
Andrew Norcross (36:37)
And
and what's funny is a bunch of the stuff that we built on that site was WordPress six point thing fair. That's where it was. So there was a lot of stuff that just wasn't there yet in Gutenberg that we had to build custom. There's a lot of custom elements in there.
⁓ that are now in core and better than what we built. I would 100% say, you know, because again, the much bigger team, you know, working on Gutenberg than there was the four of us working on the NASA site. so you know, it was one of, you know, like there's certain aspects of that already that I'd be yeah, 100% I'd rebuild it. with a closer, you know, closer usage to core. ⁓ so yeah, like for some of those page builders.
Yeah, your sales are probably going down because you're overkill. That's that's how you know like you can't be pro-capitalism until capitalism says you aren't the thing anymore. You know. Yeah. You don't get to pick it up. Like if you believe in the the invisible hand of the market, then you're at the whim of whatever happens. and you know, like I again, like running a product company is hard. keeping customers happy is hard.
Eric Karkovack (37:37)
Yeah.
Andrew Norcross (37:54)
A lot of people don't understand why they should
They're more it was weird. It went from nobody paid a subscription for anything and they were like, Why would I pay an annual fee for this? ⁓ to everything has a monthly or annual fee. And now they're like, I don't want another annual fee. ⁓ so it s swung the complete opposite side of the of the pendulum, but it's still the same problem is, you know, cut and God forbid you change your pricing structure. Yeah. So, you know, again, a lot of it is like again, a lot of these and I what the biggest thing I learned on
Eric Karkovack (38:21)
This is for anyone.
Andrew Norcross (38:28)
doing the product side was you have to be better than free. And that is a lot harder than it sounds like. Because if your product is fifty bucks a year
And that one's free. And the free one only does eighty, seventy-five percent of what yours does, but that's free. They're gonna use the free one almost every time. So you have to be that much better than free. So it that is getting harder and harder to do. ⁓ because of just again what's available out of box.
Eric Karkovack (39:04)
Well it's it's ⁓ obviously tough everywhere on every level of this right now. I so one final question for you. Like where do you go from here? What you know and and tell us, you know, what you're looking for.
Andrew Norcross (39:18)
Yeah, so you know, that's all I mean, that's not, you know, the first person that's asked me that. ⁓
Frankly, a lot of people in my personal life have asked me that. They're like, well, what are you gonna do now? And I'm like, I don't know. Wagon wheel makers had more lead time than I did. ⁓ you know, it went from launching NASA, yeah, launching the new NASA.gov to a bunch of fanfare. Like, I think we got a Webby. Like, I think I got an award somehow for it. I also know I got a certificate from NASA saying thank you for something. so
y you know, it again because I was in Florida, I think it was you know, I I I would have had to go get it printed out, so I didn't I didn't. But ⁓ you know, I went from that to working on a another very high level enterprise site, ⁓ you know, high visibility, you know, high touch client sort of thing, ⁓ to babysitter robot for eighty grand. I didn't I did not see that coming. So
Ultimately I know that there are still problems to s you know, problems to solve, puzzles to solve. you know, it's a blessing and a curse, WordPress being that ubiquitous and that you know, having that big of you know, like there's always gonna be something around. ⁓ what that looks like I don't know. We'll see. Again, like I've been doing like I said, I've been building decks and and fences, handyman you literally handyman work stuff, like
I may go get a contractor's license. I don't know. it's this is such a weird time in tech that it feels it doesn't feel smart to make a firm decision on anything because again it this wasn't happening a year ago. If you would have called yourself an a in and again, it's already turning the other way. You're already hearing employers saying, These people that know AI don't actually know how to do the job.
Eric Karkovack (41:14)
Way.
Andrew Norcross (41:15)
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, Ford going and be like, ⁓ we used all our senior engineers to train our AI tool and then fired our senior engineers and guess what? The AI tool doesn't work well enough. We have to go back and hire all our greybeards, I believe they call them. ⁓ and yeah, that's a little ironic given. ⁓ but yeah, so like we're already seeing the swing go the other way where companies are like, ⁓ this might not be the silver bullet that we were hoping for.
But the flip side of that is like what's the next thing that they're gonna try to use to not have executives have always hated paying developers. Like, we're usually the most expensive. ⁓ they think things should just exist. And AI gave them that illusion that they can just make things exist now. that all you need is an idea and a dream. and that's just not the case. And you know
AI is a tool of theft. ⁓ it has stolen a lot of copyrighted works from friends of mine, you know. you might get fifty bucks from Anthropic, maybe. and you know, they came out and said that like, if we had to follow copyright law, we'd be bankrupt. It's like, well then you don't have a business model. ⁓ you know
Eric Karkovack (42:34)
Napster
did that, they really shut it down.
Andrew Norcross (42:36)
They put
13 year olds on trial. Like, again, just like the willingness to totally bend over backwards. Yeah, again, we're seeing in the news today that there's unpermitted gas turbines at a data center in Memphis that XAI is running. And I'm just like the it's illegal. Go turn it off. Just go turn it off. Like, you're the city. Go turn it off. And apparently we can't, you know.
Businesses can never lose money. Like you know, the whole return to office thing was because commercial real estate. I was like, I don't know why that's my problem. I don't know why that's my concern. I don't own commercial real estate. ⁓ so it's again, it's always been who's there's always a trade-off. Developers got paid well, knowing full well that they were making other people, a much smaller group of people, way more money.
Yeah. And it was kind of a trade off and it was kinda one of those we all kinda danced around it. ⁓ but it's like, yeah, you make three hundred K working for Amazon, it's like there's a reason. and that's become very clear. And now they're like, you know what, we'd rather not pay you. We'd rather just extract your skill and your knowledge without compensating you for it. And that's that's ultimately why I'm so averse to using these tools is
It's extracted knowledge and skill from the people who spent the time learning and developing it without compensation and giving it to people who couldn't care less what the result was.
Eric Karkovack (44:09)
I think that's a good way to put it.
You know, I I appreciate you coming on and and just telling us about this journey 'cause it's it's ⁓ I have to imagine that there are a lot of other people going through this same thing right now. And I think I mentioned to you ⁓ in an off air conversation a while ago that, you know, I've seen people who have been homeless, people way smarter than me who have, you know, had such a hard time and not just because of AI, but you know, just because of ⁓ the boom and bust cycle we're seeing now with layoffs. It
you know, people get hired and and they're laid off a month later, that type of thing. So it's like i it it seems even when you do get a job it it's not necessarily
Andrew Norcross (44:54)
Yeah, there's no
loyalty, there's no security. And again A bunch of companies overhired during quarantine, during twenty twenty, in twenty twenty one. And so a bunch of them are laying those people off and blaming it on AI. ⁓ where, yeah, they're not gonna fill that role with somebody else and they might throw an agent at it with a harness who does a skill, I don't know. but that was because they overhired. Like they were you know, like the people running
Eric Karkovack (44:57)
Is no security.
Andrew Norcross (45:23)
Ironically enough, AI would probably be the most effective at replacing executives. They don't do anything. They don't make anything. They don't they don't know, you know, they're just there. and AI can't they don't even do that. That's that's people below them. Like the that level of executive doesn't actually do anything. ⁓ you know, like they don't they don't
They're not a net positive, you know, like they don't contribute in any real tangible way. ⁓ you know, and most of them just have MBAs. Like they didn't go into, you know, i this is a side tangent and we'll leave with that. ⁓ you know, we all saw the the whole ⁓ Boeing documentary on Netflix a couple years ago, after all the crashes. And what they pinpointed it down to was
When the last CEO who was an engineer gave way to the first CEO who was a spreadsheet guy, everything started going downhill. And that's and that's pr you know, like that's private equity, but that is also publicly traded companies. ⁓ like I said, I worked in finance for ten years. Saw how the sausage got made then. it's you know, s i it's these people that like, yeah, like human beings are headcount. They're a number on a spreadsheet. They they don't
They're looking to maximize growth at all points at all costs. And the concept of having a sustainable business seems foreign to most of them.
Eric Karkovack (46:59)
Yeah, and that's kind of where we're at right now. I again I appreciate your time. I I I appreciate you being so forthright about this. Where can folks ⁓ connect with you online?
Andrew Norcross (47:11)
like I got a website with my name dot com. You know, I'm on GitHub. I'm ⁓ I don't do a whole lot of social media anymore. Again, I've just I've s like everything, I've seen the cycle up and down. You know, I lurk here and there, but I'm around. ⁓ there's there's always been ways to get a hold of me and especially the WordPress space, it's my last name or my full name. It's not hard.
Eric Karkovack (47:33)
All right. Well well thank you, Andrew. Well I I'm sure people will find you online. We'll put a couple of links in the show notes.
Andrew Norcross (47:39)
I was gonna say, I like, frankly, if you're not willing to do that tiny bit of effort to find me, like why are you looking for me? ⁓
Eric Karkovack (47:45)
Exactly.
Well, we know your name and and we have the internet, so Yeah. We'll we'll be sending you gift baskets and
Andrew Norcross (47:50)
That's really all you need.
Eric Karkovack (47:54)
Whatever, you know, pretty soon here But ⁓ thanks for your time and and thanks to everyone who has ⁓ listened and watched today. ⁓ be sure to visit the WP Minute dot com slash subscribe. You can grab our newsletter, ⁓ get to know us and become a member. Join our Slack community for free where you can ⁓ talk about AI or how much you hate AI. Either way, we're we're we're gonna welcome you. we'll see you again next time, everybody. Thanks.