I've been working for Automattic for a couple of years now, but I'm curious how it ranks among the companies in the tech industry. What do you think? Would you personally want to work for Automattic as an engineer? What's your opinion on folks who work here? Edit: Automattic owns WordPress.com and Tumblr
"You took everything from me" "I don't even know who you are"
Never heard of them.
Based on the replies coming in, I feel like I should look for a referral to work somewhere else soon... đ
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In my opinion, a lot of engineers in the WP space do not like the CEO. There are many reasons why. Whatâs it like working there? Whatâs your day to day like? How much autonomy do you have? Whatâs the pay like?
As a distributed workplace, it's pretty flexible. No strict working hours; you make your own schedule as far as you can deliver what you have committed to. Unlimited PTO (up to 50-60 days annually, 6 months maternity/paternity leave, 3 months sabbatical every 5 years). Lots of budget travel (2-3 weeks per year). Flat organization structure, no IC levels. Stepping up as a team lead doesn't qualify as a promotion; it's more like volunteering if you are into managerial stuff. TC is below average; as a backend engineer with 10 YOE, I make $140K and mainly work with legacy PHP systems. There are no bonuses; most folks get a 5-10% raise annually if there are no performance concerns. No layoffs so far, just an increase in PIPs, and hires have been on a freeze since last year. What do you say? Sounds tempting?
Thanks for replying. Great insights. Some things sound similar, some different. Weâre remote first. Some people do hybrid but itâs optional. Schedules are flexible but most people work a sort of 9-5 thing. It varies by team. Unlimited PTO but if you take more than 6 weeks youâll hear about it. Paternity/maternity leave is a lot shorter. I canât remember exactly but itâs something like 6 weeks. No sabbaticals officially but they have talked about offering them. Some people take them, but not that long, and they work it out with their manager. Some have been told we canât accommodate that and they should leave if they need the time. Travel budgets are on hold for now. People are starting to get restless about it too. Distributed teams need it. The leadership are being responsible with the spending right now, but I feel itâs time to loosen the purse strings a little. As a company that was not distributed before covid, except for a handful of people, I think they havenât quite grasped some aspects of remote work yet. We have IC levels and EM levels. IC has historically gone 1-5, with 5 being Principal, but we recently added 6-7 for Sr Principal and Distinguished. Interesting you donât have levels there. Team leads here are usually level 4 and up. Typically 4 and up will also do some level of cross team / cross org work. My base is over 200k. Bonuses vary. IC 4 and up get them, as do EMs. Bonus baseline varies, starting at 8% and upwards of 10%. I donât know top baseline for bonuses. Different levels get different percentages. They are distributed based on company performance. If company overperforms the bonus goes up accordingly. If it underperforms itâs less. We laid off around 10 people but that was mostly a reorganization in marketing. There has been increase in PIPs from what Iâve been told. And weâre still hiring, just with more purpose now.
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Who?