And Now My Watch Has Ended  🔗 **Source:** [And Now My Watch Has Ended](https://michaelbox.net/2026/07/and-now-my-watch-has-ended/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [wordpress-careers, layoffs, developer-hiring, full-site-editing, wordpress-community] > author: Michael Beckwith > source: michaelbox.net > reference: https://michaelbox.net/2026/07/and-now-my-watch-has-ended/ > date created: 2026-07-24 20:00 > > # 🏷️ Title: And now my watch has ended > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [Custom Post Type UI](https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/) - [WP Search with Algolia](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-search-with-algolia/) - Contact: [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/tw2113.bsky.social) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbeckwith/) · [email protected] ## 📝 Summary - **What happened.** Michael Beckwith (tw2113) announced on 2026-07-23 that he and WebDevStudios have parted ways after 13 years and 7 months. He is actively seeking full-time remote work in the WordPress ecosystem. - **Why it matters.** Beckwith is a long-tenured maintainer of two widely-installed community plugins — Custom Post Type UI and WP Search with Algolia. This is not an anonymous layoff; it touches plugins a large number of sites depend on, and it raises an open question about their continuity. - **Key stakeholders.** Beckwith himself; WebDevStudios; users and contributors of CPT UI and WP Search with Algolia; WordPress agencies and product companies currently hiring; the broader community network that circulates these posts. - **Risks and tradeoffs.** He names a specific skills gap — Full Site Editing and the evolving tooling around it — as the backdrop. That candor is admirable and also potentially costly in a search; it is the kind of self-assessment that hiring managers may weight more heavily than it deserves given 13+ years of shipped work. - **Bottom line.** A senior WordPress backend engineer with deep plugin-maintenance and community-support experience is available now, has roughly two months of runway, and is asking his network for leads. The most useful response to this post is circulation, not analysis. ## 📖 Main Content - **The separation.** Thirteen years and seven months at WebDevStudios ended on 2026-07-23. Beckwith frames it as expected in the abstract but not on that day — "I knew that it would happen eventually, but I didn't quite expect it to happen today." - **The stated cause is a shift in the shape of the work, not performance.** "The type of work within the scope of WordPress that we had has evolved, and the needs for my 'Backend Engineer' specialties had waned alongside that." He is explicit that the work continued to satisfy clients: "I was managing to still get the work done, satisfactorily, with clients continuing to be happy with me. So, nothing that I did wrong." - **He names the gap directly.** "I never fully grasped how to best, and efficiently, work with Full Site Editing for example. I also struggled with the evolving tools sets that were being used and praised." This is an unusually frank public admission, and it locates the story in a broader structural shift rather than in individual failure. - **What he's proud of.** The knowledge and work produced over the period, and specifically "the multitudes of community support" he provided for WebDevStudios' products — Custom Post Type UI and WP Search with Algolia, along with their premium counterparts. Community support, not just code, is what he leads with. - **Continuity is unresolved.** WebDevStudios "expressed interest in some potential contract-based work for continued support at a smaller scale," and he has not yet set rates. So the plugins' support burden may partially continue through him on a contract basis — or may not. - **Runway is finite and stated.** Covered "for a couple of months" through the separation plus savings, "but that will definitely not last forever." This is a time-boxed search, not an open-ended exploration. - **What he's looking for.** Full-time remote, within the WordPress ecosystem. Agency work and product/plugin development plus support are both acceptable. He would return to freelancing only "if push comes to shove," and explains why: "I thrive when I don't need to be the person hunting down new work regularly." - **The ask.** Direct and unhedged — if you are hiring or know someone who is, reach out. Three channels given: Bluesky, LinkedIn (which he flags as "perhaps more appropriately"), and email. ### 🗒️ Notes - Published 2026-07-23 19:05 UTC, modified 19:12 — a same-evening post, written close to the event. - The title is a Game of Thrones allusion (the Night's Watch oath), which lands as wry rather than bitter. - The site runs IndieWeb infrastructure — Webmentions are enabled — which is contextually relevant to Courtney's own IndieWeb plugin work. - Reading time is self-labeled at 2 minutes. This is a notice, not an essay, and should be read as such. - Notably absent: any criticism of WebDevStudios. The post is generous about the employer throughout. ## 📚 References - [Custom Post Type UI](https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/) — WebDevStudios plugin Beckwith supported - [WP Search with Algolia](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-search-with-algolia/) — the second named plugin - [Beckwith on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/tw2113.bsky.social) - [Beckwith on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbeckwith/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - After 13 years and 7 months, Michael Beckwith and WebDevStudios have parted ways as of 2026-07-23. - The reason he gives is that the agency's WordPress work changed shape and the need for his backend specialties declined with it — not performance. Clients stayed happy. - He's candid that he never got comfortable with Full Site Editing or with the newer tooling the field has coalesced around. - He's proud of the work and especially of the community support he gave to Custom Post Type UI and WP Search with Algolia. - WebDevStudios has floated smaller contract-based support work; he hasn't set rates yet. - He has about two months of runway between separation pay and savings. - He wants full-time remote work in WordPress — agency or product/plugin, either is fine. He'd freelance again only if he has to, because he does his best work when he isn't also constantly selling. - If you're hiring or know someone who is, he's reachable on Bluesky, LinkedIn, or by email. ## 📰 Newsletter **Michael Beckwith Is Looking** Michael Beckwith — tw2113 to most of the WordPress world — announced this week that he and WebDevStudios have parted ways after 13 years and 7 months. If you've ever used Custom Post Type UI or WP Search with Algolia, you have benefited from his work, and quite possibly from him personally answering a support thread. His account of why is unusually direct: the agency's work evolved, the need for backend specialists declined alongside it, and he never fully clicked with Full Site Editing or the tooling that grew up around it. He's equally clear that the work kept shipping and clients stayed happy. He's looking for full-time remote work in the WordPress ecosystem — agency or product/plugin development and support, either works. He has roughly two months of runway. The useful thing to do with this post is not to have an opinion about it. It's to forward it to someone hiring. He's on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/tw2113.bsky.social), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbeckwith/), and reachable at [email protected]. [Read the post →](https://michaelbox.net/2026/07/and-now-my-watch-has-ended/) ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Circulate the hiring ask through WordPress professional networks — this is the single highest-value action available from this source - Note the FSE-transition framing as a live topic for developer-education content: experienced backend engineers describing a genuine ramp problem is a signal about where teaching material is missing #### OSPO - Plugin continuity: two widely-installed plugins just lost their most consistent support presence. Worth watching CPT UI and WP Search with Algolia issue queues for response-time degradation #### Community - Contributors: Beckwith's community-support work is exactly the kind of labor that is highly visible to users and nearly invisible on a résumé. Consider whether the community has any mechanism for vouching for it - Ecosystem: A pattern worth tracking — long-tenured agency backend specialists displaced as work shifts toward block/FSE-centric delivery #### WordPress - Training: The stated FSE ramp difficulty, from someone with 13+ years of WordPress experience, is a curriculum signal. If he struggled, the learning path is too steep for the audience that most needs it - Plugins: CPT UI and WP Search with Algolia maintenance continuity is an open question - Community: Amplify through job channels #### The WPCC - Programs: Displaced experienced contributors are a candidate population for fellowship or transition-support programming ### FAIR - Not applicable to this source. ### Job search (Courtney's own, per active search context) - Same market, same ecosystem, overlapping target roles — worth tracking where he lands as market intelligence, and worth being genuinely useful to him regardless - The FSE/tooling gap he names is a concrete, checkable skills signal about what WordPress employers are currently screening for ## 🧪 Hypotheses - **H1:** Agency demand for WordPress backend specialists without block/FSE fluency has declined measurably since the maturation of Full Site Editing, independent of overall agency headcount. - **H2:** Long-tenured maintainers of community plugins experience longer job searches than their years of experience would predict, because community-support labor is poorly legible to hiring processes. - **H3:** Plugins whose primary support presence departs show measurable degradation in support-thread response time within 90 days. - **H4:** Public, self-disclosed skills gaps in layoff announcements correlate with longer time-to-hire than announcements that omit them, even when the underlying skills profile is identical. ### 📊 Methodology - H1: Longitudinal analysis of WordPress job postings (WP Jobs, agency career pages) coded for block/FSE requirements versus classic PHP backend requirements, 2022–2026. - H2: Cohort comparison of time-to-hire for WordPress developers with and without significant .org plugin support histories, controlling for years of experience. - H3: Scrape wordpress.org support forum response latency for both plugins, comparing the 90 days before and after 2026-07-23. - H4: Content analysis of public layoff announcements paired with self-reported time-to-hire; confounded by selection effects and hard to run ethically at scale. ### ❓ Questions - Will the contract-based support arrangement with WebDevStudios materialize, and does that meaningfully change the maintenance picture for both plugins? - Is CPT UI's maintenance formally tied to WebDevStudios as an organization, or was it in practice tied to Beckwith personally? - Was this an individual separation or part of a broader reduction at the agency? - How common is the FSE ramp difficulty he describes among senior WordPress backend developers? His candor makes him visible; it does not make him unusual. - What would actually help here — job leads, a referral, contract bridge work, or public vouching for the support work he did? ### 🔮 Future Research - Study the displacement of classic-PHP WordPress specialists as agencies shift to block-first delivery — how large is this cohort and where do they land? - Examine the maintenance fragility of agency-owned community plugins where support depends on one individual rather than a rotation. - Investigate whether the WordPress learning ecosystem has a coherent path from classic theme/plugin development to FSE proficiency for experienced developers, as distinct from beginner-oriented material. ### 💡 Implications - **Practice:** If you maintain a plugin inside an agency, the support relationship is likely person-shaped rather than org-shaped. That's a continuity risk worth naming before a departure, not after. - **Policy:** Agencies deriving community goodwill from open-source plugins have some obligation to plan for maintenance continuity when the maintaining individual leaves. - **Education:** The clearest signal in the post is that FSE proficiency is not arriving automatically for experienced developers. Thirteen years of WordPress experience did not produce it. That is a curriculum failure more than an individual one. - **Funding:** Community-support labor produces enormous user value and almost no career capital. Nothing in the ecosystem currently corrects for that. - **Security:** Reduced maintainer attention on widely-installed plugins is a supply-chain consideration, connecting to the WordPress Hosting Security Stack thread — maintenance capacity is a security property. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level estimate: Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level ~9. Plain, conversational, first-person. Self-labeled 2-minute read. #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: A "Hire Me" header image is set as the social card. - Improve: Not applicable — a short personal announcement doesn't warrant diagrams. The hire-me image is doing the right work. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: No audio. - Improve: Not applicable to this content type. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Well served. The register is direct and unornamented, and the ask is stated in plain words. - Improve: None needed. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Three concrete contact channels, all one click. - Improve: A linked résumé or portfolio in the post itself would remove one step for a hiring manager acting immediately. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Clear causal account — work changed, specialty demand declined, separation followed. - Improve: None needed; the reasoning is proportionate to the format. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Strong. The post is fundamentally a network request, with Webmentions enabled for public response. - Improve: None needed. #### 🧘 Solitary learners - Present: Complete and self-contained. - Improve: Not applicable. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: The Night's Watch allusion in the title supplies the only figurative framing. - Improve: Not applicable. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Standard WordPress post structure with a skip-to-content link and a proper `<h2>` for "What's next". Links use descriptive text ("Bluesky", "LinkedIn") rather than bare URLs. - Improve: No issues identified. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Skip link present; standard theme navigation. - Improve: No issues identified. #### Contrast and readability - Present: Standard theme; short paragraphs. - Improve: Not assessable from scraped content; no obvious concerns. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: `viewport` meta is set for responsive reflow. - Improve: No issues identified. #### Media and captions - Present: One header image, no video or audio. - Improve: Confirm the "Hire Me" image carries descriptive alt text — it is doing real communicative work here, not decoration. #### Forms and interactions - Present: A comment form and a Webmention URL field, both with visible labels and required-field marking. - Improve: The Webmention field's explanatory text is long; it reads fine but could use a heading association. #### Standards reference - Meets WCAG 2.2 AA on what is observable — semantic headings, descriptive links, skip link, responsive viewport. Only the header image's alt text is unverified. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: US-based, English-language, remote-work framing. - Improve: Not applicable — a personal announcement carries no obligation of breadth. #### Inclusive language - Present: Neutral throughout. No disparagement of the former employer or of anyone else. - Improve: None needed. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Short paragraphs, one clear heading, a single explicit ask. Easy to parse under stress. - Improve: None needed. #### Representation - Present: First-person account from the affected individual — the person with standing to tell it. - Improve: Not applicable. #### Psychological safety - Present: Notable. He separates the structural cause from personal fault ("So, nothing that I did wrong") without defensiveness, and speaks well of the employer. He also discloses financial runway, which takes some vulnerability. - Improve: For readers responding, the relevant caution is ours, not his: a post disclosing a skills gap and a two-month runway deserves a response that is useful rather than evaluative. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - **Causal account (appropriate to the claim):** The stated chain — work evolved, backend specialty demand declined, role ended — is coherent and modest. He does not overclaim knowledge of the employer's internal reasoning. - **Self-assessment separated from blame (strong):** Naming an FSE gap while simultaneously asserting the work was delivered satisfactorily is a genuinely careful distinction, and he holds both without contradiction. - **Proportionate hedging:** "I want to believe that for the most part" is exactly the right confidence level for a claim about how others perceived his work. #### Fallacies - None identified, and it would be inappropriate to hunt for them. This is a first-person announcement, not an argument advanced for adoption. The only claims are about his own experience, intentions, and availability — none of which invite adversarial analysis. #### Tone of voice - Measured, unbitter, and self-possessed. The Game of Thrones title supplies wryness that keeps the post from reading as either a plea or a grievance. Gratitude toward the employer is stated without any evident performance of it. The overall effect is dignified, which is difficult to achieve when publishing something like this within hours of the event. ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - **Deny:** Not present. He denies no allegation; there is none. - **Attack:** Not present. WebDevStudios is treated generously throughout. - **Reverse victim/offender:** Not present. He does not position himself as wronged, nor does he assign offender status to anyone. - **Assessment:** No DARVO pattern, and the framework is close to inapplicable here. Running it on a layoff announcement is a formality of the template rather than an analytically live question. ## 🎯 Conclusion - **Bottom line:** A senior WordPress backend engineer with 13+ years at one agency and a long record of community plugin support is available immediately, wants full-time remote work in the WordPress ecosystem, and has roughly two months of runway. He names an FSE and tooling gap candidly, and separates it clearly from work quality. Two widely-installed plugins have an unresolved support-continuity question behind him. - **Next steps:** 1. Forward the post to anyone hiring WordPress backend or plugin-support roles — this is the action the source is actually asking for 2. Reach out directly if there is a useful lead, a referral, or a public vouch to offer 3. Watch CPT UI and WP Search with Algolia support queues as a continuity signal 4. Treat the FSE ramp difficulty as a WordPress Training curriculum signal, not an individual shortcoming ## 🔄 Refactor Appendix — And now my watch has ended ### 📚 Literature Atoms (H3) ### [H1] Specialty demand can evaporate without any decline in performance > [!quote] ID:rw_mbwatch_h1 > The type of work within the scope of WordPress that we had has evolved, and the needs for my "Backend Engineer" specialties had waned alongside that. **Context & use**: - The stated cause of separation - Paired with "clients continuing to be happy with me. So, nothing that I did wrong" — the displacement is structural, and he is careful to separate it from work quality **Tags**: #xref #articleseed <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### [H2] Thirteen years of WordPress experience did not produce FSE fluency > [!quote] ID:rw_mbwatch_h2 > I never fully grasped how to best, and efficiently, work with Full Site Editing for example. I also struggled with the evolving tools sets that were being used and praised. **Context & use**: - An unusually candid public admission from a senior developer - Read as a curriculum signal rather than an individual failing: if the existing learning path doesn't carry a 13-year veteran across, the path is the problem **Tags**: #xref <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### [H3] Community support labor is the proudest work and the least legible > [!quote] ID:rw_mbwatch_h3 > I am also proud of the multitudes of community support that I was allowed to provide for WebDevStudios' products like Custom Post Type UI and WP Search with Algolia along with their premium counterparts. **Context & use**: - He leads with support work, not code, when naming what he's proud of - That labor is highly visible to users and nearly invisible to hiring processes — the gap between the two is the point **Tags**: #xref #addendum <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### 🧠 Permanent Candidates (H4) #### [P1] Plugin maintenance attaches to a person, not the organization that owns it **Claim** (one sentence, Courtney's voice): An agency may own a plugin, but its support capacity usually lives in one individual — so a single departure can degrade maintenance for every site depending on it, with no ownership change to signal the risk. **Evidence pointer**: [[#H3]] **Scope & conditions**: Holds for org-owned open-source projects where support is not rotated across a team. Breaks where maintenance is genuinely distributed, or where a formal succession commitment exists. **Links**: - [[Perm · WordPress plugin ecosystem is a supply-chain target for long-term backdoor campaigns]] — because extends: maintenance capacity is a security property, not only a UX one - [[An Open Marketplace Turns Extensibility Into Liability Without an Owned Security Layer]] — because applies-in - [[Perm · Open source sustainability fails when emotional labor is expected for free]] — because evidence-for <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue - [F1] Check whether CPT UI and WP Search with Algolia support response times change over the next 90 days #fleeting #inbox - [F2] Look for other WordPress backend specialists describing the same FSE ramp difficulty — is this a cohort pattern? #fleeting #inbox - [F3] Ask what would actually be useful to him rather than assuming job leads are the answer #fleeting #inbox ### → Things 3 (max 2 actions) - [ ] Forward Michael Beckwith's hiring ask to WordPress hiring contacts — context: available now, ~2 months runway, wants full-time remote #things - [ ] Reply directly with any concrete lead or a public vouch for his CPT UI support work #things <!-- deep-read:sections end --> 📄 **Full text:** [[Full Document Contents/Articles/And Now My Watch Has Ended.md|And Now My Watch Has Ended by Michael Beckwith]] ## Highlights - The type of work within the scope of WordPress that we had has evolved, and the needs for my “Backend Engineer” specialties had waned alongside that. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kybbz7z0q18ywkxqdfh98xby)) - Note: Specialty demand can evaporate without any decline in performance — the displacement is structural, and he separates it cleanly from work quality. - Tags: articleseed, atom/literature/h1 - I never fully grasped how to best, and efficiently, work with Full Site Editing for example. I also struggled with the evolving tools sets that were being used and praised. I want to believe that for the most part, I was managing to still get the work done, satisfactorily, with clients continuing to be happy with me. So, nothing that I did wrong. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kybbzf313e31sy9x035wqyeh)) - Note: Thirteen years of WordPress experience did not produce FSE fluency. Read as a curriculum signal, not an individual failing — if the learning path doesn't carry a veteran across, the path is the problem. - Tags: atom/literature/h2, xref - I am ideally looking for a full time remote position, within the WordPress eco-space. This is where I’m going to be most comfortable and most easy to ramp up for. I’d be good with with either/both agency style work and product/plugin development+support. I have well over a decade of experience with it all. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kybbzqb09y6aetvg476f7t5p)) - Note: The actual ask, stated plainly. Full-time remote, WordPress ecosystem, agency or product/plugin. The useful response to this post is circulation, not analysis. - Tags: atom/literature/h3, addendum