Our long time users, especially those who we’ve had candid conversations about the development of features for Matador and it’s extensions, will know that sometimes our guesses are way off. We have several projects we’ve told our users we are actively working on, but some are months past our original expected completion goals. For example:

  • I shared with a user that I wanted to see an extension for Location-based Job Searches released by the end of summer 2022, and we are now in approaching spring 2023.
  • A user who joined our ecosystem in last summer last year discussed a desire for features related to user-editable profiles and I shared we wanted that done by year-end, but again, its now spring.

And those are just two examples, with many more on the list. So, why is that? Why do we miss our goals? Well, it isn’t for a lack of best intentions, promise!

You see, when you join the Matador Jobs ecosystem you are not purchasing a static piece of software, you are purchasing access to support and updates to a living, breathing piece of software that exists in a fast-paced industry. Late last year, we were hit with a triple-whammy of things out of our control but that needed immediate attention. These things “skipped the line”:

  1. Several major jurisdictions in the US including the city of New York and the states of Washington and California announced enforcement of new Salary Transparency legislation would begin on an accelerated timeline, some as early as the start of the new year. Not only did we produce an update in mere weeks to ensure our users could be compliant with these laws, but we’ve made now three updates to the feature in 2023 already as we’ve observed pain points for users implementing it.
  2. WordPress 6.1 came out and as a truly performance-based update, the first in several years, required we address updates to take advantage of changes and fix new quirks, some of which are still being addressed today.
  3. Several changes to the Bullhorn REST API occurred that required we quickly produce updates to ensure connection stability and data integrity.

All current users of Matador Jobs needed the above updates as soon as possible while simultaneously all current users of Matador Jobs are doing business without the features under development that were moved back to prioritize the above items. Further, all of the above items were major development efforts beyond the scope of regular bug fixes–which also keep us on our toes at all times.

That said, it would be a lie to say the story ends there, however. Yes, the unexpected, high-priority, everyone-needs-them-and-now features and updates like those from last fall will always skip the line, but so do sponsored projects. In our Request a Feature page, we explain how a user can sponsor the development of a feature or extension:

If there is a feature we’ve blessed and you don’t want to wait, you can sponsor it. In that case, we will split the cost of development of the feature and include it first in a special pre-release for you then in the next regular release for everyone else. You will agree to sponsor 50% of the cost of development, which we will estimate for you ahead of time.

Given we are still a small team, we do allow some of our development time each week to go toward sponsored projects. These sponsored projects benefit everyone, but impact how work is prioritized after the mission critical needs, like the three items encountered last fall, are addressed. That doesn’t mean all our time is up for grabs, but any time not going to a given feature or extension will mean that the feature or extension will take that much longer.

During a meeting of the minds late last year, Paul and I agreed that we’ve taken on too many sponsored projects lately. We are working on clearing our queue of previously agreed upon sponsored work and being more selective of what we take on, as we are aware some of our sponsored work has benefited niche needs over features that would benefit a wider swath of our user base, and we want to be better balancing our limited time instead of appearing like we are selling it to the highest bidder.

Anyway, I hope this helps you understand our thought processes and some of the nitty-gritty realities of our day-to-day decision making at Matador. I wrote this post to offer the transparency you often don’t get with other companies while also ending on a high note that we aim to be better too! Thanks for being a member of our community!