Live data from Hacker News

Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

techcrunch.com

111–120 of 416 posts

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#111
post #23

8.4% or 159 employees is a lot of people, this will be long-remember at this company. On the other hand, most companies easily have at least 20% headcount overhead, so it'll be okay.

twitter fired a lot more % and it's still working

I assume that firing was a bit more selective in who they wanted to keep.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#112

TBH, I'm surprised they had almost 2000. I would've thought they'd be around the 500 mark.

As of today we are 1,733. But that may go up soon, we are hiring aggressively to fill roles of some people who left and meet increased customer demand! https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they have a job, they're not being compensated for being let go, they're being compensated for voluntarily leaving.

Usually the only thing that can be done during job verification is: - did they work there? - can they be rehired? If the second is a "no" it usually isn't good news (usually, that only happens when you're fired 'for cause', at least in the US). So, it isn't as pretty as an offer as you'd think.

If somebody started mere days ago, they can simply omit this job from their CV entirely and nobody would notice the gap.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter was profitable just before Elon purchased it and gutted it. So far his plan is not working.

I was curious if this is true or not. Found this: https://www.investing.com/academy/statistics/twitter-facts-s... which came from before Twitter went private. It's technically correct that they did make a profit (e.g. 2022 Q1), but also made a lot of loss (e.g. 2022 Q2). Comparatively, it's hard to find information about Twitter now. Most news articles mocks the revenue, but has no information about profit. However,…

Elon made substantial cuts but he has debt servicing that itself is a very large cost.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#115

I'm surprised more didn't take the offer. Maybe they have a better package of shares in the company that's worth the wait? Otherwise it seems like a great offer to take even if you've enjoyed working there and support Matt and his public meltdowns.

We have a special stock program called A12, and one cool feature of it is that you can still sell stock after you've left, with windows every six months. (You can only buy if you're currently employed, and it's downside protected, so you effectively have a 1x liquidation preference just like sophisticated investors.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#117

TBH, I'm surprised they had almost 2000. I would've thought they'd be around the 500 mark.

As of today we are 1,733. But that may go up soon, we are hiring aggressively to fill roles of some people who left and meet increased customer demand! https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

Seems rather desperate, please give this whole situation a once-over Matt

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#118
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

twitter fired a lot more % and it's still working

Twitter revenue is down 84% and is continuing to collapse every month. If that is "Working", then I'd love to laugh at your definition of failing :D

The revenue problem is mostly because of Twitter's new leadership, on the technical side the few people that remained have managed to keep the platform running quite well.

Sure, it has been plagued by the occasional random errors and downtime ever since Musk came in, but I don't expect most companies to remain operational on a technical level when 80% leaves.

An important lesson for tech companies: hire strategic H1B employees throughout your company so when times are real tough, you're sure you can maintain operations with desperate staff that can't afford to leave.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#119
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like another CEO/lawyer misstep. Why offer the same package for someone who started 2 days ago? Someone could've made "Length worked at company" as a factor in the maths. A 30K budget would make a very nice 6 months vacation indeed...

I would assume most Automattic employees are paid substantially more than $60k / year, so few people will be getting only 30k. At least in big American cities, $60k is a bus driver's salary.

Our current average salary is 149k USD, median is 134k USD.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#120

TBH, I'm surprised they had almost 2000. I would've thought they'd be around the 500 mark.

As of today we are 1,733. But that may go up soon, we are hiring aggressively to fill roles of some people who left and meet increased customer demand! https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

[flagged]
Post reply on HN