Starting

Back in April, I left my job.

It wasn’t because I had everything figured out. It was because I didn’t. I knew I was ready for something different, something deeper, more challenging. I wanted to pivot into performance engineering, especially in the context of WordPress, which I’ve been working with for over a decade, because it seemed like the right pivot. AI was another consideration, I have an un-popular opinion on AI. But, back in April, I barely knew what this all meant, but I was excited to start something new. I’d been a developer for years. I built websites. I built features. I knew about page speed, maybe optimized images here and there. In May I figured out a possible change in my career: one towards performance. I remember working on a site that was having performance problems years ago: I remembered being so excited during that time. But, back then, I had no real sense of what doing performance actually meant. I mean real performance. The kind of stuff I now realize I never really touched. I thought I had a decent grip on things then: looking back…I didn’t!

Learning

Since then, I’ve thrown myself into learning. I’ve read everything I could find. I’ve tinkered. I’ve built test environments. I’ve watched people way smarter than me break down why something’s slow and ask myself how I’m going to remember everything. I’ve talked to mentors in the field. And yes, I’ve used LLMs to help me learn. And for months, I felt like it was all flying over my head, but I knew I’d reach a point somewhere in the future where things might start coming together. There’s just so much to performance work! The surface area of this field is massive. It touches everything. But lately, maybe just this past month, I feel like something’s starting to click. I’m finally getting a sense of what performance engineering really looks like. Not just the technical information, but the job itself. The craft: what it takes to be good at this.

It’s exciting…and terrifying.

Imposter

The people who do this kind of work are geniuses in my eyes, or at least that’s how they seem to me now. They’re brilliant. Obsessed with how things work. Systems thinkers. Knowledgable. People who know where to look when things slow down, even if it’s five layers deep. This is exactly what I am aiming for! And now that I can see more clearly…I see how far I have to go. It’s humbling. Imposter syndrome? Yeah. I haven’t felt like this since I was first starting out…and even then I felt more confident! That’s not a familiar feeling for me anymore, but it’s back. It’s something I’ve had to manage.

The Pivot

I’ve learned something else too: I don’t want to just build stuff anymore. I can. But I want to understand it all. It’s been such a joy getting to learn all this new stuff! Also, based on some amazing books I have read to do some soul searching: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, Mastery by Robert Greene, and Higher Self by Mory Fontanez (great books BTW): I think I have learned what really gets me going now:

The browser.
The server.
The database.
The network.
The fundamentals.
…All of it!

I want to live in the messy intersection of all of it, and I think I’ve picked the right niche. I really dig solving rare problems other people don’t want to solve. I want to solve problems that aren’t just what something does, but how they do it: and how you can do it optimally. About how to make it the best it can be! Getting back to the fundamentals! Performance work will let me be in all the layers: that’s where I want to be now. It rewards curiosity. It forces me to learn. And most importantly: it’s reignited my love for the WWW.

Keep Moving

I’m not a performance engineer yet. I do dare to call myself one, but I still have a lot to learn. But that’s where I’m headed. That’s what I’m aiming at. Specifically: Performance Engineering for WordPress. WordPress is the world I know best, and now I want to know it in a new way: under the hood. And I’m not sure how it’s all going to play out. I’m not sure if I am going to be good at this.  This post is just me planting a flag: saying it out loud. Telling you (and myself) that this is what I want. And that I’m learning to be okay being a beginner again. Beginners get to learn: it’s what I have been doing for months, and it’s felt great!