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Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

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Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#161

Post by arethuza »

preommr wrote: post #139
photomatt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 perspecti…

Maybe that's why they are hiring an "Associate General Counsel"?

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#162

Post by throwaway984393 »

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…

I finally have an analogy for the "Open Source company":

A company creates a free buffet and sells seats at a table. They hope a competitor doesn't come and take the free food, slather it in hot sauce, and sell it at their own restaurant, because that would be rude.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#163

Post by xnorswap »

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…

Being made to make that kind of decision in such a short time clearly isn't fair.

In many jurisdictions it would be an unfair contract.

To then say "Look at how many people didn't take up the offer so they clearly support us" despite such a short notice on the offer makes a mockery of the company and it's leadership.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#165

Post by mtlynch »

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.

>I'm curious why you say I'm a petty tyrant.

For the reasons I gave in that same paragraph.

I agree that you made more lucrative offers than Basecamp, but they presented their offers (publicly, at least) in a way that feels more professional and respectful of their employees.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#166

Post by snowwrestler »

uxp100 wrote: post #141
renegade-otter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a technical level, I tend to agree. Never underestimate the skill of the employees to save their boss from horrible decisions. That said, Twitter is no longer "open" like it used to be - I bet it just won't handle the public traffic anymore. That is directly tied to cratering revenue but it's hard to untangle from the owner's self-destructive drug-induced behavior. It's a testament to the quality of the codebase i…

That might be true about the traffic, but twitter wasn’t open before the musk purchase either, it would stop you from seeing posts if you weren’t logged in if you tried to scroll more than a few times. Its current behavior of showing just a few posts sorta, uh, randomly selected might be easier on the server, idk.

For most of its life, Twitter was completely open. You could see any tweet or user page with the URL, whether or not you were logged in. The only exception was if someone had “protected” their account.

Twitter as it runs now is far more locked down. And that happened after it experienced significant, noticeable outages.

Performance is not binary… Twitter is still “up” as a service but with a much smaller public footprint and handling much smaller amounts of traffic.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#167

Post by deergomoo »

criddell wrote: post #152
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.

Extra odd given how much they tout the ease of having one codebase that scales from the watch to a Mac.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#168

Post by chang1 »

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.

I'll second that Day One is a great app... I've used it nearly every day for the past 13 years. I was afraid it would stagnate after it was acquired by Automattic, but it's only gotten better.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#169

Post by throwaway2037 »

senadir wrote: post #143
JohnMakin wrote: post #38

I can think of very few jobs where I wouldn’t take this offer immediately and have a few month sabbatical.

Fun part, Automattic already gives you 3 months sabbatical every 5 years. For the people who were going to take sabbatical, they got those 3 months off.

Paid or unpaid sabbatical?

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#170

Post by fhfhfhjfnfnfmf »

senadir wrote: post #26

Plenty of people who took the offer were on the fence already or looking to switch companies anyway, it was a good motivator for them.

Are you an employee? I’ve seen a bunch of comments like this on various forums. Is Matt telling his employees to spin the folks who left?

Edit: it seems like he is. Wow.

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