I bought iThemes All Access Pass on 1st April 2010 along with StudioPress, Headway and Catalyst (then Frugal) with the idea of starting a WordPress based website setup freelancing service business and be able to quit my day job. At that time I was working as Principal Solution Consultant (started as UI Design Specialist) at SAP Labs India Pvt Ltd. My job involved building demos using a Adobe Flex framework for prospective clients. Even though I had no real problems with that job, it was getting routine and I did not find it interesting any more.

I tried all the WordPress frameworks and realized how Builder makes it real quick and easy to create any kind of site, thanks to the superb layout manager. I felt that while Catalyst and Headway offered a lot of options to set up things visually, they were geared more towards newbies who were not comfortable with CSS. There’s nothing as awesome as Builder if you know CSS to create websites, especially for doing PSD/HTML to WordPress. The first time I used Builder my thoughts were like “Wow! Why did I not use this before?”

I started taking active part in Builder forum and helping other folks with their questions and if I remember correctly was given a part-time offer to continue what I was doing but as a paid job within a month. I enjoyed solving what are mostly CSS questions and the satisfaction I would get to see others build/fix their sites was a lot more than in any of my earlier jobs. In the past I worked as a Teaching Assistant in Vibrations and Dynamics of Machines Lab, as a book boy in library, as a recruiter (night job) interviewing candidates in US from India, as web master at Sum Total Systems.

I quit my day job and joined iThemes in full capacity as support moderator on 6th December 2010.

Here are a few points to consider for anyone thinking about taking a support job in WordPress industry:

1. Be genuinely interested in helping others. You can’t work as a support person if you treat your role as just a job and something which you do because you have to do. I am usually online most of the time from 6 am to 10 pm every day including weekends (when support is supposed to officially take off).
2. Be very good at CSS and Firebug. You don’t have to remember the div structure or classes and IDs. Use Firebug. The  single most typed (I actually have set my text expander to do this for me) sentence in my 10,000 posts thus far is: “Add the following at the end of child theme’s style.css:”
3. Make your life easier by writing extensive documentation. It does not make sense to type the same thing over and over when you can simply point the users to a already existing FAQ entry.
4. You don’t need to know how to write PHP. But you should be able to read, if not 100% about 50% PHP.
5. How do you know if the support job is right for you? Simple, do it for free for a month or two and you will know it yourself. Spend time in WordPress IRC channel (#WordPress), help folks in WordPress forums, take up WordPress jobs.
6. Google is your friend.

For young people working in MNCs (IT industry) in India: If you not working as a manager and don’t have any plans of becoming one, learn WordPress and take up a career/business in WordPress. WordPress = Money. There are so many ways of making money with WordPress. You can set up sites for others, you can create sites and sell them, you can take up a support job, and if you have got the coding brains – can create plugins, you can design themes if you are the visual type person with graphics skills. You will realize how less you have been making as a software engineer if you enter the WordPress field and see the infinite power in it.

I want to say thanks:

1. to my wife for supporting my decision to quit a stable day job that I was doing for more than 5 years. It is not a common practice for folks to work from home here in India.
2. to Cory Miller for recognizing my potential and offering me a job at iThemes.
3. to Ronald for being my virtual big brother. If I need guidance on any work related aspect, he is always there.