Taco Verdonschot of Yoast Shares His WordPress Story

Moeez: Hi Taco, it’s great to have you with us today. We would love it if you introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us a little bit about your background and what you are working on nowadays?

Taco: Hi Moeez, thanks for having me. After working in customer service for a while, I joined Yoast as a developer in 2013. Early 2014 I transitioned into a role as a support engineer and soon after that, we started growing a customer service team. I’ve led that team at Yoast until spring 2020 when I transitioned into my current role as manager community.

Moeez: What was your first interaction with WordPress? When and how did you realize that WordPress should be a part of your career?

Taco: My first interaction with WordPress was in January 2013. I was studying computer science at the time and one of my classmates introduced WordPress in a project we were working on. A few months later he retweeted a job opening at Yoast. I applied and well.. the rest is history.

I realized WordPress would be (a big) part of my career after joining WordCamp Europe in Leiden. That’s where I started to fall in love with WordPress and its community.

Moeez: I was reading your bio on Yoast, and interestingly you went from being a developer to customer support. How difficult or easy was that transition for you?

Taco: Obviously it was hard to admit that I sucked at being a developer. But the role in customer support felt a lot more natural for me. It really felt like coming home after struggling with development for a few hard months. Fortunately, Joost and Marieke are extremely good at recognizing talents, even when the person in question doesn’t see them (yet). So they really helped me make that transition go very smoothly.

Moeez: You mentioned that your love for the WordPress community was instant and that you consider it as your 3rd family, what was it about the WP community that made you love it to…

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