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Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

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Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#291

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #287
senadir wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#292

Post by alberth »

ubermonkey wrote: post #222
legitster wrote: post #213

I've brought this up in another thread, but what's stopping Automattic from going after anyone making a profit in the WP community? Website developers, plugin makers, theme designers, etc. Everyone is using the Wordpress trademark to promote their service and the plugins library to keep their services updated. If that's the legal precedent being used now, Automattic winning the lawsuit implies that nearly the entire…

I mean, nothing. It's clear Matt will do whatever Matt wants, which is fine for him, but bad for the community and the platform. The "Wordpress era" has gone on a really long time. That longevity makes it easy to forget how quickly these things can change; remember Movable Type was the king of the blogging systems for a good while, until THEY (if I recall correctly) did a gross moneygrab and WP filled the gap. How qu…

MT was a huge pain to install, in part due to Perl.

Every shared host had PHP/MySQL, which made WP installs dead simple.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#293

Post by randomdata »

mtlynch wrote: post #281
randomdata wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#294

Post by dgacmu »

ppseafield wrote: post #288
Topgamer7 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you were to guide them today, what would you set them up that's not WP that gives functionality similar to wp+woo?

(asking for someone who has a site using wp+woo. I don't plan to switch us - the switching cost is too high to be worth it - but I do want to have something in my pocket for the future.)

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#295

Post by righthand »

RobotToaster wrote: post #290
Topgamer7 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Oh gosh I had to use a blog post to even find documentation on it. It’s basically a pile of hidden legos, for a simple table with columns you have to essentially implement it yourself with a few helper methods to help out. Then there’s the new system based on react because they could that has an entirely separate implementation stack. Also for a simple table you end up implementing all the functions and JSX yourself.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#296

Post by hshshshsvsv »

ufmace wrote: post #205
senadir wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting remote jobs in general is tricky if you're not from certain countries. I'm from Algeria, Automattic was one of the few companies that hired there. Every other country would ask you to be in the US, or US timezone, or in a certain European country. Not all remote is built equal.

This actually makes me really suspicious about Automattic. Companies generally don't refuse to hire outside of certain countries just to be jerks, they do it because complying with international tax obligations while paying employees in dozens of countries is complex and expensive. Given that, and the behavior we've seen from Matt and Automattic so far, what are the odds that they've actually got a bunch of really gr…

You can't use one or two behaviors that you disagree with and then use that to view everything the person does.

Think of the worst behaviors you have done which you are probably ashamed to even talk about.

Now imagine us using that worst behaviors to look at everything you do.

Sounds stupid right?

Exactly. That's why Christ was making a good point. Throw stones if you have not committed any sins.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#297

Post by hshshshsvsv »

senadir wrote: post #223
ufmace wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually makes me really suspicious about Automattic. Companies generally don't refuse to hire outside of certain countries just to be jerks, they do it because complying with international tax obligations while paying employees in dozens of countries is complex and expensive. Given that, and the behavior we've seen from Matt and Automattic so far, what are the odds that they've actually got a bunch of really gr…

You seem to never been in that shoe (from a country no one hires from). Companies avoid that because it’s too much hassle. Automattic cares and goes through the hassle, simple as that. You’re also talking without concrete knowledge. We work as international contractors, we handle our own local taxes. Automattic pays us the gross salary and it’s up to you.

Agree. Also I think Automattic was one of the few companies who actually paid a really good salary to even people from generally low income countries instead of paying market salaries and underpaying them.

Kudos to Matt man. Dude has actually done a lot of good stuff. Sure he has his problems. But who hasn't.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#298

Post by FireBeyond »

toyg wrote: post #277
FireBeyond wrote: post #272

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 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.

Never said they weren't, but was responding to your comment about him being good for FOSS and this just being a first instance of a straw breaking the camel's back and causing him to lash out.

He lashes out quite regularly. There are other instances too, including him previously rewriting agreements after attacking people.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#299

Post by charamis »

fhfhfhjfnfnfmf wrote: post #184
closewith wrote: post #37

TIL Pocket Casts is an Automattic product. Anyone have recommendations to switch (and not to the disaster that is Overcast)?

Yeah TIL and now I’m done with that Overcast is at least independent, so I’ll go back to them for now.

It's obvious that you're somehow personally involved in this situation, since you have filled this thread with multiple comments which range from dismissive to plain rude. And the whole thread reeks of comments who just try to frame company's CEO as irrational, which contribute next to nothing to understanding the two companies' dispute, while raising some disbelief for their motive in the first place.

Re: Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer

#300

Post by doublerabbit »

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…

> its totally the wrong CMS for how they use it.

As the same for most sites hosted with WP.

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