Automattic

Fully 'distributed' worldwide company with full benefits (home office setup fully provided for you, great benefits and competitive salary). An absolute boon for anyone who hates the commute or the workplace itself - working 100% from home is fabulous and everything in the company is built around that. Welcoming culture (everyone is *extremely* friendly) with Employee Resource Groups on diversity and inclusion topics, they're trying hard to be welcoming and inclusive. You're expected to work hard and intensely, and there are performance expectations and lots of constant quality reviewing so it's impossible to 'coast'. There's a culture of "rotations" so that you can try out different roles for a few months and moving around is very welcomed.

While Automattic claims to be a champion of diversity, diversity is a very liberal and sometimes extremist mindset. There is no room for advancement outside of very specific career tracks, and the company is constantly changing the expectations of its employees - including behavior of personal online presence and activity.

Management is poor at best. While some division leads are exceptionally bright and do not fall in this category, a majority of team leads simply are unfit for their positions.

Pay is good, but the work environment punishes criticism, even if it's given with the desire to improve the product (unless you are a white male). Whether intentionally or not applies different standard of work and behavior for people of color and women. Has stopped prioritizing the customer, to the point of explicitly asking to do a worse job in some cases to increase email answer rate. Schedule flexibility and benefits have been steadily eroding as company gets closer to going public, as has the level of quality in new hires and work.

Pros
- great health, vision, dental 100% paid
- 6% 401k match
- travel 1-2 times per year
- 6 month parental leave
- 3 month sabbatical after 5 years
- easy to expense home office items

Cons
- salaries are lower than other companies, the benefits may offset this for you if you live in a country with an entity
- things are changing and it’s no longer the same
- support is asked to pitch sales with no additional commission, and high pressure to learn how to sell yesterday
- unlimited PTO, they recommend 25 days which includes statutory days, vacation, and sick so it really ends up being only about 2-3 weeks vacation

Of all the work environments I have been in, the ability to structure my work day, to structure it so that I feel supported and energized to bring my best to work has been a priceless attribute of working at Automattic. I As a data scientist, I feel that the immediate work offers challenge, opportunity and a chance to impact the company.

There are some amazing people who work at this company. As it has grown, the leadership has not grown in a way that makes sense for the company and there's a lack of communication between divisions. It's very difficult to know if you're meeting expectations or what that even looks like, and many people feel insecure about their jobs. It has been a great place to work in the past and I think it could be again with some changes.

It’s a lot like the show Severance. It’s a cult like atmosphere. If you don’t act like a robot you’re going to be reeducated. Leadership is very aligned with the DEI silliness that’s been happening for the last 5 years. You’re expected to conform to the nebulous and ever changing standard of whatever the one side of the culture war believes. Leadership are mascots, not leaders. 

100% remote with mostly flexible schedules. Great benefits. They're working through some challenges with growth that they didn't prepare for, particularly in support. Not a lot of room to grow into other areas of the work and no capability to move within the company really that's different than starting from scratch. Culture seems great on the surface but reality doesn't necessarily match that.

It can be a wonderful place to work if you get in the right team - else,, you will struggle under bad managers and they will use every small mistake against you and threathen to fire you at every moment.
Employee's mental health is not taken into consideration despite multiple claims. 

Automattic's tooling, processes, leadership behaviours and culture are designed for flexibility and remote working. There's a healthy balance between asynchronous communication and meetings, and the focus is on getting your work done in the ways that you work best.


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