What's the reputation of Automattic out there?

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. We’re remote first. Some people do hybrid but it’s 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 you’ll hear about it. Paternity/maternity leave is a lot shorter. I can’t remember exactly but it’s 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 can’t 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 it’s 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 haven’t 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 don’t 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 don’t 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 it’s less. We laid off around 10 people but that was mostly a reorganization in marketing. There has been increase in PIPs from what I’ve been told. And we’re still hiring, just with more purpose now.