I can think of very few jobs where I wouldn’t take this offer immediately and have a few month sabbatical.
A university in Pennsylvania made a similar offer this summer. 40% of the employees accepted it, including the president.
Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
131–140 of 416 posts
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#132> In a blog post, Mullenweg said the package offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, but the employees who took it would not be eligible to be re-hired by Automattic. Like never eligible? That seems kind of petty. I would understand some timeframe, like "not eligible for 3/4/5 years", but a permanent ban seems weird.
Why would you want to go back there anyway? The whole reason you are leaving is because you think the CEO is worse at adulting than a grade-schooler. I completely agree it’s petty, but it’s entirely in line with their behavior over the past few weeks. I guess at least it’s better than Musk?
> The whole reason you are leaving
I imagine for at least some people "$30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher" was the main motivator, and may have stayed otherwise.
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#133I suspect it was the 6 months salary rather than any major philosophical agreement.
It seems like a great deal at any company, if you're confident you can find a new job within six months. This plus the extortion makes me wonder if Automattic is strapped for cash?
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
twitter fired a lot more % and it's still working
It is actually quite remarkable that Twitter has kept functioning at a technical level. A lot of people expected the massive loss of engineering talent to doom them, but it seemingly hasn't. However, the site is going through a serious cultural (maybe you could say spiritual) death, and that might have something to do with the lost institutional knowledge of what made Twitter tick at a level deeper than just the code…
Uh, it has doomed them. Have you not heard about their massive drop in revenue as advertisers leave?
Sure, the advertisers say its because of the platform being a cesspool. But I mean anything on Twitter is on FaceBook or YouTube; you might have to look faster or harder. However, that stuff isn't where FaceBook / YouTube sends your ads. The targeting on Twitter is so bad compared to alternatives that advertisers just don't care to use it. This is an engineering problem caused by having nobody to fix it.
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automattic is a fully remote company, getting jobs in APAC, Africa, and europe is tricky, not a lot are going to throw that away and hunt for a job for 6 months.
Stupid question but where exactly in the world is getting a remote job not tricky?
I think in the US it's less tricky. There are much more openings without time zone issues.
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#136Earlier 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...
It would be hilarious of someone started 2 days ago, took the money left and went to WP Engine.
Probably still had another offer
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#137I'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.
Unless you have another job lined up the job market currently is not where everyone would just quit in my opinion.
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#138> In a blog post, Mullenweg said the package offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, but the employees who took it would not be eligible to be re-hired by Automattic. Like never eligible? That seems kind of petty. I would understand some timeframe, like "not eligible for 3/4/5 years", but a permanent ban seems weird.
Why would you want to go back there anyway? The whole reason you are leaving is because you think the CEO is worse at adulting than a grade-schooler. I completely agree it’s petty, but it’s entirely in line with their behavior over the past few weeks. I guess at least it’s better than Musk?
Just for the money? Why else?
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#139TBH, 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/
The handling of this is so bizarre it makes me want to sympathize with Matt (even though some of the information against him seems pretty damning), grab him by the shoulders and yell "please, for your sake, get offline, listen to your lawyers - this can't be healthy".
Matt, please, I know you're not going to listen to some random stranger, but maybe think about distancing yourself from this and getting some perspective from people that aren't as emotionally invested in this and listen to people like your lawyers, pr people, other senior management, etc.
Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
#140I am a bit out of the loop does any one have a summary of what is happening with automattic and wpengine ?
We have no idea, really. Based on public posts only, Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, founder of Wodpress completely lost his mind and went into war against WPEngine for unclear reasons (many suspect it's money pressure perhaps from investors). He claims they don't contribute to Wordpress and WPEngine says while they don't contribute to the core product they contribute aplenty to plugins, sponsor camps and document…
Reading WPEngine's legal complaint https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint-WP... they sound like cuckoos. My best guess is WPE's WordPress hosting business grew larger than Automattic and they're lashing out to survive. For example, WPE has 1000 employees and Automattic has 1700, but Automattic has their attention divided on 20 other products too, which left them blindsided when WPE forked their product, made it their core focus, outcompeted them on rizz alone, and cut them out of the profits without contributing to the costs. At that point Automattic is de facto unpaid employees of WPE and they're probably not happy about that. Their WordPress division is either going to be destroyed or have to use its guns. They chose the latter and many of their employees were angry because they signed up to be benevolent open source people. Unfortunately that's only really practical for a business when it possesses great advantage i.e. not being laid low by private equity. We should worry about Automattic's because if WordPress crumbles, Tumblr and a lot of other stuff may too.