Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#281

Post by mtlynch » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:00 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #262

mtlynch wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no objective measure of what makes a tyrant. If one comes across as a tyrant, they are a tyrant! You did say, as interpreted by the reader, that his poor communication skills makes him come across as a tyrant, and therefore that is what makes him a tyrant. That may not be what you meant, but in that case we're right back to you and the poor communication skills of your own.

It feels like you're bending over backwards to misinterpret what I said, so I'm going to stop engaging with you.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#282

Post by bachmeier » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

michaelmcdonald wrote: post #148

throw16180339 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask which university?

Penn State. https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-off...

Yes. The campus I was referring to specifically was New Kensington. Here's the president that took the buyout: https://www.psu.edu/news/new-kensington/story/penn-state-new...

20% of the employees across all campuses took the buyout. The percentage of staff (not faculty) that accepted it varied across campuses from 8% to 41%.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#283

Post by legitster » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

righthand wrote: post #274

legitster wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://thenewstack.io/the-wordpress-saga-does-matt-mullenwe...

> “I think a fork would be amazing,” he told TNS. “They should fork WordPress, because what they offer is not actually WordPress. They call it WordPress, but they really screw it up.”

Yeah, part of the confusion here is Matt's unreliability as a narrator of his motivations. He wants WP Engine to fork, but then he asks them to pay. He wants Wordpress to grow and be open source, but suddenly he champions branding and restricting trademarks.

It's hard to know what his stated end goal in all of this is - maybe he's okay shrinking the Wordpress community so long as they control a bigger slice of it?

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#284

Post by keiferski » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

righthand wrote: post #276

keiferski wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm saying that WordPress is incredibly widespread, far more than I think most tech industry people realize. The average WordPress site builder doesn't know or care who Matt Mullenweg is or what open source means. WordPress is just the simplest way to make a usable website – and has been for the last 20 years, almost.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#285

Post by righthand » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

solarkraft wrote: post #270

As entertaining as it can be to follow a public meltdown for 5 minutes, this hurts because Automattic was a company I used to look up to. I had the idea that some day I might work for them. Not sure this will still be possible. Maybe on a business unrelated to Wordpress. > 159 people took the offer, 8.4% of the company, the other 91.6% gave up $126M of potential severance to stay! That is an interesting (meritful, im…

Yes using percentages to claim that those people never mattered to Automattic. Classy.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#286

Post by lolinder » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

senadir wrote: post #278

lolinder wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, you could have said you work for Automattic!

How's the distribution of departures by tenure and level? We know one of them was Executive Director over WordPress—is she an outlier or does the departure list skew to the top?

And within the "WordPress division", is the spread even between groups, or does it skew towards some groups over others?

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#287

Post by legitster » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

senadir wrote: post #271

legitster wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To OP's point, I don't think the provided buyout window was long enough to determine that. If a bunch of other shoes drop, like more stuff comes out of discovery with the WP Engine lawsuit, knowing that you only had 4 days to accept or GTFO might still leave a bunch of on the fence employees.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#288

Post by ppseafield » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

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…

I'll second the sibling poster here by saying anything useful you want to do with WordPress will probably have a non-negligible cost, and usually a subscription. WooCommerce for instance requires a subscription to add a minimum quantity to a product! I volunteer for a non-profit that uses it, and it's absolutely insane how many plugins will give you a little for free but charge $5/month or $50/year for just slightly more features.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#289

Post by acdha » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #153

yellow_lead wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You begged the question of whether this is rational and I think it’s worth considering that it isn’t. It would not be out of character with other middle-aged guys making bad decisions because there’s something else going on in their life which they don’t control and so they’re going to flex their power where they can – Musk appears to have flushed tens of billions of dollars on Twitter in no small part because his daughter isn’t a robot he can control – but an even simpler explanation I’ve heard is that MM simply hadn’t had anyone tell him no about his business in decades and has gotten used to it. That’s not uncommon for CEO-types in unregulated industries and can be particularly bad if paired with an unwillingness to recognize that you’re making a mistake.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#290

Post by RobotToaster » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

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…

I went with wordpress for a website for a small charity I help with, I'm not usually a web guy but I used it years ago and, hey, it's open source right?

I was incredibly disappointed in how the plugin ecosystem is dominated by "freemium" plugins that don't really seem in the spirit of open source. Even Automattic's own jetpack seems nothing more than a connector to a proprietary SaaS.

I still don't understand how the new template system is supposed to work either.

Maybe I'd feel different if I was doing this for a company, but I was doing this for free for a charity with near zero budget.

The only real competition seems to be ghost though, and it doesn't even have a real plugin system. If you want something simple like a event calendar you need to host it entirely separately.