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Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

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Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#151

Post by posterman »

kelnos wrote: post #67
sofixa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if they were already looking for a way out / unsure if they want to stay. And the person who accepted 6 months salary/$30k to leave the job he started two days prior... Bravo, that's efficiency.

> And the person who accepted 6 months salary/$30k to leave the job he started two days prior... I would expect you have to have been there for X months or Y years already in order to be given the deal. Unless Mullenweg is really that desperate to get rid of anyone who doesn't agree with his hissy fit.

I don't love the way the dude handled it, but what is preventing you from even considering that it is a genuine gesture to his employees?

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#152

Post by criddell »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #150

I didn't realize they own Day One! That really stinks. It's a great app, but his childish antics make me question the wisdom of relying on it. I wonder if I can get a prorated refund.

Day One is really nice. I actually prefer Apple's Journal app, but for some reason they don't want to put it on the iPad which makes no sense to me. IMHO, Journal should have been an iPad-first app.

Until Apple does that, I'll likely keep using Day One.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#153

Post by immibis »

yellow_lead wrote: post #133
benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

I 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?

The only rational reason to lay off 159 employees and demand millions of dollars from your competitors, ruining your reputation in the process and losing all your customers, is if not doing that results in an even worse outcome.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#154

Post by lobsterthief »

yellow_lead wrote: post #133
benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

I 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?

If they were strapped for cash, they would’ve made the severance amount much lower.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#155

Post by auggierose »

jart wrote: post #140
chx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

Oh, finally a summary of the whole thing I understand.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#156

Post by throwaway984393 »

senadir wrote: post #145
mtlynch wrote: post #35

> So we decided to design the most generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer: if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher. But you’d lose access to Automattic that evening, and you wouldn’t be eligible to boomerang (what we call re-hires). HR added some extra details to sweeten the deal; we wanted to mak…

The offer had no limits (someone who was at the company for 2 days took it). Matt was also willing to continue sponsoring visa for the 6 months for whoever is on an work visa. This was a very distracting 4 days, I'm glad it ended quickly, the dust is settling now, and we're slowly going back to work.

[dead]

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#157

Post by batch12 »

photomatt wrote: post #123
mtlynch wrote: post #35

> So we decided to design the most generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer: if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher. But you’d lose access to Automattic that evening, and you wouldn’t be eligible to boomerang (what we call re-hires). HR added some extra details to sweeten the deal; we wanted to mak…

This was more generous than both the Basecamp and Coinbase buyout offers, I'm curious why you say I'm a petty tyrant. I can be a little ASD so sometimes my written communication doesn't come through the best.

It looks to me like passive aggressive lynch mobbing. Putting the issues aside, you seem to be doing a good job not letting the comments that charge you with medical and psychological issues get to you.

Figured I'd throw at least one positive comment your way.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#159

Post by badlibrarian »

photomatt wrote: post #112
talideon wrote: post #78

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]

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#160

Post by immibis »

myspy wrote: post #86
kelnos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical, honestly. Within the first few months of the acquisition, it seemed pretty clear to my tech-friend group that Twitter was on its way out and was going to fail. But it's been 2 years, and many of those same people still use Twitter quite a lot. Maybe it'll still fail, of course... it'll just take longer than anyone expected. I was never a big fan of it, and never used it much, so I can't judge any loss…

I don't get why whole developer circles didn't leave the platform yet. You can't ask people something via DMs without paying for the blue checkmark and it's totally unhelpful, plus it sends the message you care not enough about the right wing messaging that is send by the platform now. Or these people are just ok with that, I don't know.

They have. Lots and lots of developers are now on the Fediverse. But there's a cultural schism between the types of developers that frequent Silicon Valley cafes and the ones that frequent the Chaos Computer Club.
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