WordPress.com, Vaultpress, BuddyPress, Akismet and WordPress.com VIP parent company Automattic announced Wednesday that it is offering “dream internship” positions for this summer. In a March 13th blog post authored by Mo Jangda, the statement began with “our company Automattic — which runs WordPress.com, Akismet, VaultPress, and many other services — is looking for a few stellar summer student development interns, specifically to work with us on the WordPress.com VIP team.”
Jangda went on to say that “as a paid intern, you’ll be working on a range of projects depending on your skills & passions — everything from doing development work on plugins that improve WordPress functionality for large media companies to working on core WordPress.com features and development. Last year, our interns had a great time developing code for WordPress.com that launched and is still in use! One of our intern developers worked on an early version of WordPress.com Enterprise, and another worked on Push Syndication, which is live on the WordPress.com VIP platform now.”
Remote Working Environment
Much has been said in recent weeks on the concept of remote working environments, especially since Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer implemented a company-wide telecommuting ban for the tech firms employees beginning in June. However, those who apply for and receive an internship with Automattic will not have to worry about physically being present at WordPress.com VIP’s corporate headquarters in California.
WordPress.com VIP and its sister websites take pride in hiring qualified applicants from all parts of the world and allowing them to perform tasks from any site with a reliable Internet connection. Jangda reiterated Automattic’s policy in his blog entry. “Where will you be working you may ask? Anywhere! We are a distributed company and are happy if you work from wherever you are — including your parent’s summer beach house — as long as you have a good broadband connection. The internship runs 8-10 weeks between June 1st and August 1st, 2013, but we are flexible on the dates.”
The internship could be an excellent opportunity for up-and-coming developers to hone their skills in a working environment that is both productive and remunerated; not to mention that an intern position would bolster pretty much any resume that revolves around WordPress skills.
Application Process
The application process is a bit different from what one might expect. Rather than sending in a Curriculum Vitae to a specific email address, Automattic is asking WordPress blog owners to author a post on their own blog explaining a project they would work on if hired as a WordPress.com VIP intern for the summer. After posting, they should then leave a comment at the bottom of Jangda’ original blog entry that links to their own writeup.
At the time this news article was published, only four comments had been posted to the official internship blog entry (and only one includes the corresponding link). However, the internship offer was less than two hours old when our own news story went up, so it is reasonable to expect a large amount of applicants over the next few days.
WordPress.com VIP offers Cloud Hosting and Self-Hosted options for companies that includes personal introductions to recommended third-party WordPress consultants, unlimited VIP support tickets, unlimited space and bandwidth, content delivery network and hourly backups, optimization and security feedback on your site’s theme for a faster and more secure site, and enterprise-level Akismet spam protection.
So far, we have yet to see this offer published in full on the official Automattic website (although there is a link to the story in its News section). This likely means that interested parties will need to apply in the manner described above in order to be considered for an intern position with WordPress.com VIP this summer.