Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#321

Post by righthand » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #320

righthand wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they know someone who cares and all a switch takes is “hey I found this other cms just as easy as wordpress to setup and it’s less confusing to manage”. Yes there will be people who will never switch, but there are also people that do the advising to those people. If you’re not technically inclined you probably have someone you keep around that IS technically inclined, no?

In my experience, it's more that a small webdev company runs these sites and the client pays $50-200/month to maintain it, maybe do a little SEO, etc. To recreate the site in another CMS will cost hundreds of more dollars, at minimum, (probably thousands, realistically) and even then: what CMS are they switching to that's easier to use and has as wide a variety of plugins as WordPress? Because I'm not sure that CMS e…

Okay you seem pretty cemented in this belief. My belief is that there are plenty of CMSes available. The plugin ecosystem is a side effect of a poorly developed cms, not really a feature. You can abstract a lot of need for plugins by using a CMS that isn’t “just the basics to support a plugin culture”. If you want to lock yourself into wordpress requirements then you’ll never escape it.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#322

Post by jlarocco » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

coalface wrote: post #22

I'm surprised more didn't take the offer. Maybe they have a better package of shares in the company that's worth the wait? Otherwise it seems like a great offer to take even if you've enjoyed working there and support Matt and his public meltdowns.

With the current job market, I'm surprised so many took it. Some people in my Linkedin network have been searching for tech and developer jobs for over 6 months.

If it were me I would have stayed while I kept looking. It's always better to search for a job when you already have one, and you really don't know when/if the right thing will come along.

On the other hand, it's a great mini-runway for people who want to start their own company.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#323

Post by keiferski » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:10 PM UTC

righthand wrote: post #321

keiferski wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it's more that a small webdev company runs these sites and the client pays $50-200/month to maintain it, maybe do a little SEO, etc. To recreate the site in another CMS will cost hundreds of more dollars, at minimum, (probably thousands, realistically) and even then: what CMS are they switching to that's easier to use and has as wide a variety of plugins as WordPress? Because I'm not sure that CMS e…

Okay you seem pretty cemented in this belief. My belief is that there are plenty of CMSes available. The plugin ecosystem is a side effect of a poorly developed cms, not really a feature. You can abstract a lot of need for plugins by using a CMS that isn’t “just the basics to support a plugin culture”. If you want to lock yourself into wordpress requirements then you’ll never escape it.

I don't disagree with you that there are alternatives, I'm just saying that this requires a level of knowledge, expertise, and desire that the average WordPress user simply doesn't have. WordPress is so old and so entrenched that it will take a really big push to get them to go anywhere - and the recent debacle isn't that big enough of one.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#324

Post by hluska » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:11 PM UTC

Either the industry has changed dramatically, people have changed or there’s something truly odd going on at Automattic.

There is a Reddit user right now:

https://www.reddit.com/user/r_mutt1917/

They’re making some very rude statements about the people who accepted the severance package.

Not too long ago, there was this unspoken rule amongst humans where we don’t trash a large group of former coworkers in public like that. We wouldn’t speak in absolutes about large groups of people. We had class.

And now I see this person who has trashed everyone who left. They apparently aren’t allowed to state what division they’re in. But trashing over 100 people seems to be okay. I cannot imagine a single functional organization approving of such a thing.

I haven’t used Wordpress in a very long time. But I had a lot of respect for Automattic. My hope is that I don’t have to keep the verb in the past tense.

Somewhere along the lines, we lost a lot of our humanity. It is very embarrassing to think that we traded humanity for social media likes.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#325

Post by hluska » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

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.

Matt, I’ve had a lot of respect for you for a long time. But you have an employee on Reddit trashing every single person who left en masse.

https://www.reddit.com/user/r_mutt1917/

I understand that things get emotional and things happen. Especially in business. If you’re looking for perfection, you will not find it in me.

But, this is extreme. It’s tremendously unkind and terribly unprofessional. The worst part is that they claim they can’t tell what division they are in. It leaves the impression that trashing > 100 people is fine, but being identifiable is a problem.

Can you please do something about this? We can part ways with people, feel sad about it but not destroy their lives.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#326

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

lupusreal wrote: post #107

myspy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Network effects are a hell of a drug.

It's not network effect. There is nothing valuable that happens on twitter that doesn't make it's way out of twitter to the rest of the internet and reality. Avoiding twitter is actually a great way to filter out literal nation-state produced misinfo and propaganda that doesn't pass the smell test, but seems rampant on twitter.

People are addicted to twitter because of FOMO, because god forbid they learn about breaking news an hour later than anyone else.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#327

Post by DowagerDave » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:21 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.

They most certainly did not do a lay-off. Private companies in financial trouble don't do voluntary buy-outs. The "demand for millions of dollars" also explicitly stated "or equivalent investment in WP".

I guess you shouldn't let facts get in the way when you're pushing a narrative...

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#328

Post by DowagerDave » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

rralian wrote: post #258

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.

if you've got the resources this is a great way to clear out the dead wood. Most orgs either make life so unpleasant the person leaves to escape, or do nothing and let the poison kill other parts of the company.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#329

Post by DowagerDave » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

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…

there's another comment above from someone who appears to work there, stating approx 80% of total staff work on WP and 20% on the other properties, so the percentage seems inline across the company & "divisions"

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#330

Post by DowagerDave » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

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…

And, while I'm not invested in this in any aspect, I feel: About time! I appreciate an executive with the passion/guts/ignorance to push a direction that's controversial and not safe. I'm really sick of working for companies that have no opinion or passion, and do a bunch of boring things.

Where's today's DHH, Jason Fried or Joel Spolsky?