Automattic Reviews

Pros

- Generous hardware and software budget. - Competitive benefits. - Travel opportunities if you are into that. - A great place to have your first experiences as a remote worker. - A chance to work on open source projects (if you are assigned to them, or in your own time) - This is your place if you are a WordPress fan. But you could be disillusioned by looking behind the curtain.

Cons

- Some employees are more equal than others. Automattic used to have a lot of pride in its diversity and inclusion policies when hiring, but that has changed substantially in the last years when benefits and hiring shifted more and more towards US-based employees. Also, treatment varies a lot. US employees are treated with more leniency, whereas remote contractors are more... expendable. - There is absolutely no Engineering Practice You can choose your own tools, which is great. But there's absolutely no regard for who's coming next. There is no technical direction other than "open source is the best idea of our generation". Also, there are very poor and unhealthy metrics. - "Leadership" is incredibly inconsistent. Your happiness as an "automattician" depends greatly on how much overworked is your team lead. Because team leads are also required to not only manage people and projects, but also have regular output. Some leaders manage to concentrate on the first two, but even then, it depends on the projects. It's sad when leaders have to ignore the people side in favour of managing projects or writing code to meet a deadline. If that's your leader inclination, you can expect to have an awful time. - Communication is oxygen, except when it's not. No matter how openly and honestly you communicate, if your leader has too much pressure on the technical side, or is too inexperienced as a leader, brace yourself. You could easily be terminated if you have a bad time. But as I said before, there's more leniency towards US-based employees. - Projects are not finished, they are abandoned. There is no project management practice. Neither agile nor waterfall. Work is estimated based on which way the wind blows. Tracking of progress is non-existent and deadlines are set based on management "feeling" how difficult implementation is. That leads to deadlines not being met, priorities shifting and projects deployed to users with incomplete features. - Forget about having a career path. Automattic is a company that does not believe in titles. That in itself is not a bad idea. But a side effect of that is that as an automattician you have no goals for career development. You are encouraged to learn, but not provided with direction. So, in most cases, you'll pursue things that will either make your work easier or help you realize that your future is elsewhere.

Pros

I was impressed by: * their internal tools and the overall documentation: very easy to retrieve information, very easy to find the right people, very easy to organize things (p2 rocks!) - and not only. Sometimes they say “Welcome to the chaos” - but if that’s chaos, then they don’t really know how the other companies look like. * the shared ownership: people jumping in to fix various things outside of their team or product area. * the existence of the developer excellence/hiring/bootstapping team trying to standardize and introduce various practices across the growing company * the trust that is put into people: all those things that you find on blogs regarding “no Big Brother” are true. * all their supporting departments: HR, Accounting - a well-oiled machine * the struggle and desire to make things work - and to balance the “everything is for granted” with “we’re responsible for our future” attitude. Interesting to look at, did not make up my mind about it: * the super-fast switching of individuals between teams. I think the hand-over period is about two weeks, which tends to give me the impression that the owned domain is not that complex: anyone can catch up quickly, anyone can drop it quickly. * the cross-functional teams: tech people combined with business people, working towards the same goal

Cons

Could be better: * the tech stack. I may be wrong, but I had the feeling of not investing too much into new things. In the current world of hundreds of new Javascript frameworks and keywords like Kotlin, K8s, Terraform, AWS take-over, CI/CD with code coverage and so forth, I had the impression that working for Automattic could make me lag behind. * the USP in hiring - which is “ability to work from everywhere”, as advertised. It truly requires some cherry on top, something that is product related. I left because: * a better opportunity. A place where I had the feeling I can develop myself better - and therefore contribute better. * had some doubts about my future and/or motivation for Automattic and working from home, since the job that I ended up with was a bit boring. … but, just for you to understand that the company is a good one, I felt bad about leaving them. To avoid leaving early like me, think very well and ask yourself: 1. Do you fully understand what working from home means? It’s not only the fanciness that is advertised, and the context you’re in may have a different impact. A few examples from my learnings: if you live in a new location or country, maybe it’s better to meet people in an office - and discuss with them local problems; then, is that commute you’re having really bad right now, or that’s a good time to clear up your mind and make the switch between work and family? For example, in my case, getting out a office room and reaching the living room with the family - was simply not enough to detach myself at the end of the day. 2. Did you understand the market, the company - with all departments that you may have to be in, the product(s), its areas, the tech stack, and how do you see all those evolving in 1-2-3-10 years? Are you ready to energetically contribute to all those? That's a very important aspect - since only if you have a good reason you'd be able to motivate yourself into working from home. I'm serious - don't let yourself charmed quickly by the benefits - and think well about everything. It's in both parties' interest.

Pros

Remote work is nice. The outside image portrayed is compelling.

Cons

Everyone is scrambling to please the CEO. And what pleases the CEO changes on a whim. There is little to no direction so everyone is left to guess about what they should work on. Many smart people left recently and you can feel the drain.

Pros

A work place where you get treated like an adult.

Cons

No bonuses or incentives for middle management.

Pros

This is genuinely a great company and I feel incredibly fortunate to work in such a supportive and caring environment.

Cons

I can't think of any!