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Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

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Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#271

Post by senadir »

legitster wrote: post #267
senadir wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's incredibly naïve to think that it's over now. The legal ramifications of what Automattic has done have not even started to set in motion. Also, as a longtime WP user, my understanding of the product is... pretty different now to say the least.

The whole drama is not done, but the colleagues and friends leaving all at once is done, and that was stressful, you don't know who's leaving next until you see their name.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#272

Post by FireBeyond »

toyg wrote: post #252
netsharc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

> That's uncharitable. Mullenweg has been pretty good for the FOSS ecosystem as a whole, and he's just going after one particular company

This is actually far from Matt's first rodeo:

He described Movable Type as "desperate and dirty players" for having a section in their docs on how to migrate WordPress content into a Movable Type blog.

When Envato started allowing people to publish themes they had created with a proprietary license, he retaliated by banning any developer on the Envato platform from speaking at any WordPress-related event (sound familiar to punishing the users for a disagreement with a platform?)

Wix was accused by Matt of using WP's mobile text editor in violation of the GPL. Wix showed that they had actually adhered to the license terms, and then forker their own version under the MIT license.

> one particular company (arguably one particular board member of such company, the SilverLake guy), that he now sees as parasitical to the ecosystem.

He went after GoDaddy in 2022 for the same reason, to the same extent.

Interestingly, for someone who has such hatred for Private Equity as "leeches and freeloaders and parasites upon open source software and communities", the ONLY other active member of the WordPress Foundation board (than Matt) is the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm that Matt himself appointed.

This is not his first misstep, by far.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#273

Post by lolinder »

senadir wrote: post #214
lolinder wrote: post #206

The article says that ~80% of the departures (126 people) were in the WordPress division, but doesn't indicate the size of that division. That's a much more interesting number than 8% of the company as a whole—depending on the size of the division and the sub teams affected that could be an enormous amount of WordPress brain drain. For scale, Automattic has previously indicated that "over 100" people work on WordPres…

WordPress division doesn’t mean the open source one, it means anyone working on WordPress related products, like jetpack, Woo, VIP, dotcom… The rest work on non-wp like tumblr, dayone, beeper and other apps.

I realize that, but the question remains: if 80% of the people who quit came from a single division, the percent of the company that quit is somewhat irrelevant. That division is the one we're interested in here, and it might have been completely gutted for all we know.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#274

Post by righthand »

legitster wrote: post #269
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…

Matt himself suggested the exodus: fork Wordpress, call it something else, host the plugin directory yourself. And it's not like Wordpress is known for it's phenomenal code quality or anything. This is your chance to ditch some of the bad ideas ( cough Gutenberg cough ) or legacy code.

Yeah so WP Engine will just proxy the Wordpress plugin search results and cache the top plugins on their end. That’s a lose in this case for Automattic if that’s his suggestion then why even block WP Engine customers in the first place?

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#275

Post by senadir »

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]

Any company has low perfomers, if you denay that, then I can't really engage with you here.

Low performances usually go on a performance improvement plan (which almost half who enter it graduate it successfully to stay).

People on PIP didn't want to take their chances and just took the offer.

This does not mean all 150+ people were low performers, some of the brightest, most intelligent engineers and designers left, and I do miss them greatly and hold so much respect for them. Many of them were dear friends of mine.

For your attacking comment, I'm engaging my actual profile and name, and you're engaging with a throwaway account that's less than a day old, so I don't know who's more spinless.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#276

Post by righthand »

keiferski wrote: post #264
righthand wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

Pretty unlikely. In my experience, WordPress is basically the go-to solution for people that need a cheap website and don't want to think about it too much. Especially for non-technical people running a law firm, consultancy, etc. The technical folks that care about recent events most likely left WP years ago.

I’m not sure what’s unlikely. Customers leaving? My company is a customer, we’re leaving. Or that most free sites are subsidized by paying customers? Why is that unlikely that seems pretty par for the course for free services.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#277

Post by toyg »

FireBeyond wrote: post #272
toyg wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That's uncharitable. Mullenweg has been pretty good for the FOSS ecosystem as a whole, and he's just going after one particular company This is actually far from Matt's first rodeo: He described Movable Type as "desperate and dirty players" for having a section in their docs on how to migrate WordPress content into a Movable Type blog. When Envato started allowing people to publish themes they had created with a pr…

These are all small potatoes when compared to Musk's antics.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#278

Post by senadir »

lolinder wrote: post #273
senadir wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress division doesn’t mean the open source one, it means anyone working on WordPress related products, like jetpack, Woo, VIP, dotcom… The rest work on non-wp like tumblr, dayone, beeper and other apps.

I realize that, but the question remains: if 80% of the people who quit came from a single division, the percent of the company that quit is somewhat irrelevant. That division is the one we're interested in here, and it might have been completely gutted for all we know.

Division is probably the wrong term used, we have several divisions, you can categorize them into 2 categories: - WordPress ecosystem (majority). Around 80% of the company. - Non-WordPress ecosystem (minority). Around 20% of the company.

The % of people who left is consistent between those 2 divisions.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#279

Post by righthand »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #266
keiferski wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think these days, the average WordPress site runner is trying to find a cheap/free. Non-technical solution. I help out with a sports league who run a couple wordpress sites. - One, its totally the wrong CMS for how they use it. - Two, they have almost no ability to diagnose and debug issues themselves. Honestly 80% of the issues that get raised to me are even just solved by clicking "keep plugin automatically updat…

No I don’t see it as an open platform with a strong community. Matt has demonstrated he will shut off features for large swaths of sites where is the openness there? The community plugins are loyal to a few popular plugins that all have pay walls if you want to do more than the basics. Any time Wordpress implements a new feature they have to do so it doesn’t completely crush the plugin community. Like site maps for example are trapped behind using a wordpress hook or using a plugin like Yoast to customize them.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#280

Post by toyg »

ubermonkey wrote: post #240
toyg wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Movable Type never had the foothold that Wordpress has developed over the years. Once you reach a certain size, inertia alone will allow you to survive for a very long time, even making bad mistakes. Digg died because it was still small enough that a mistake could kill it; Reddit is now so big that the exact same mistakes (or even worse ones) will just not stop it. Same for Twitter or Facebook. Wordpress is way past…

That's definitely true, but MW shouldn't mistake inertia for immortality. WP doesn't really do anything novel. I disagree about Twitter, tho. It's not been doing very well lately; it's been in all the papers.

> Twitter, tho. It's not been doing very well lately

I know, but it has taken more than two years to take serious wounds and it's still very far from being dead.

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