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Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

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Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#251

Post by runjake »

lolinder wrote: post #202
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/

What percent of the WordPress team took the offer? ~126 departures were from WordPress, out of how many total?

From the first sentence of the article: 8.4%

So, roughly 2,000 employees?

Original post: https://ma.tt/2024/10/alignment/

Edit: I stand corrected. OP is asking how many employees are in the WordPress "division", which I cannot find a public source for and is kind of hard to tally.

Matt said yesterday[1] that ~100 employees work on wordpress.org, one chunk of what encompasses the WordPress "division".

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41726197#41726796

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#252

Post by toyg »

netsharc wrote: post #20
appendix-rock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

That's uncharitable. Mullenweg has been pretty good for the FOSS ecosystem as a whole, and he's just going after one particular company (arguably one particular board member of such company, the SilverLake guy), that he now sees as parasitical to the ecosystem.

Musk steered a social-networking giant into american-far-right territory for his own vanity, retweets baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories, and supports all sorts of terrible campaigns.

The ballparks are very different.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#253

Post by debo_ »

fhfhfhjfnfnfmf wrote: post #244
senadir wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am. I’m not spinning anyone. Several of my friends took the offer, they were unhappy, it was great timing. I support them 100%.

[flagged]

This is really not appropriate.

Edit: thanks for removing the attacking language that was previously at the end of your post.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#254

Post by danillonunes »

jumperabg wrote: post #12
netsharc wrote: 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...

It would be hilarious of someone started 2 days ago, took the money left and went to WP Engine.

The offer probably come with some sort of a non-compete clause. Otherwise WPE could pull a Pressable by offering to secure a job for everyone who leaves A8C.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#255

Post by ziddoap »

runjake wrote: post #251
lolinder wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percent of the WordPress team took the offer? ~126 departures were from WordPress, out of how many total?

From the first sentence of the article: 8.4% So, roughly 2,000 employees? Original post: https://ma.tt/2024/10/alignment/ Edit : I stand corrected. OP is asking how many employees are in the WordPress "division", which I cannot find a public source for and is kind of hard to tally. Matt said yesterday[1] that ~100 employees work on wordpress.org, one chunk of what encompasses the WordPress "division". 1. https://news…

>8.4% of the company,

The person you are replying to is asking what percentage of the WordPress division, not the company-wide percent.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#256

Post by righthand »

keiferski wrote: post #243
righthand wrote: post #241

It will be interesting how many customers start flying the coop. Wordpress can be entrenching software but I have also found that a lot of the plugin heavy sites are just using plugins/customizations for trivial things you could easily eclipse. Migrating off of it is easier done than said in that case. We will be leaving WP Engine and Wordpress behind after we spend 2 months rebuilding on sensible software on a sensi…

Probably not too many. The average WordPress site is run by a small business that doesn’t care the slightest bit about tech industry drama, or what open source even means.

That may be enough, the average Wordpress site probably is subsidized by the larger sites that may leave. I don’t see the amount of employees exiting as a small amount even though it’s not even 20%.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#257

Post by toyg »

jeroenhd wrote: post #118
izacus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> hire strategic H1B employees [so that] you can maintain operations with desperate staff that can't afford to leave

In other words: slavery has only upsides for slaveowners.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#258

Post by rralian »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

I suspect it was the 6 months salary rather than any major philosophical agreement.

I think this is correct. Some people were misaligned, but the majority seemed to be taking advantage of a generous severance for different personal reasons. And anyone on a pip would have a hard time turning it down.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#259

Post by mtlynch »

randomdata wrote: post #224
mtlynch wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So what you're saying is that Matt is a tyrant because he isn't as an effective communicator as DHH is? That's quite an unusual take on tyranny. Or perhaps that's not what you are saying at all, but are just a poor communicator yourself? If that's the case, I am surprised you are not more sympathetic to the folly of interpreting such statements without other context. Dunning-Krueger effect strikes again, I suppose.

I said that Mullenweg's explanation of the buyout makes him come across as a petty tyrant.

I didn't say that poor communication is what qualifies someone as a tyrant.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#260

Post by jart »

lsaferite wrote: post #204
jart wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did WPE fork WordPress though? They clearly claim in their legal filing that the WordPress installs they use come directly from the official sources. I don't use WordPress or WPE, but I would (perhaps naively) assume that if they are making a clear statement of fact in a court filing that they are not lying about that fact.

They forked their business, which is WordPress hosting. In the complaint they brag about how they haven't changed a single line of code in WordPress itself. That's way more adversarial than forking the codebase, since the GPL ensures people still give back when they go their own way.
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