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on Gopher (inofficial)
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huslage wrote 18 hours 31 min ago:
This comment thread is just hilarious. When a CEO of a VC-backed
startup that you admire does things you disagree with, you find ways to
justify their actions. When a CEO that is running an actually
successful business and wishes to defend that business legally, you
trash him. Be better.
bravetraveler wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
Matt needs to be better, you're hilarious - he is the common
denominator
ssimpson wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
Executive behaves like a child, labor suffers the consequences.
bsima wrote 19 hours 48 min ago:
I used to be a big admirer of Matt and Automattic, but after this whole
WP Engine episode I've lost respect. I shut down my old wordpress blog,
still working on importing the posts as org-mode files onto my new
site, I no longer recommend WP to non-techies that ask me how to build
a website.
I hope WordPress (and Automattic) turn the ship around but its not
looking good at this point.
emaro wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
I wonder what this means for the future of Beeper.
TheCraiggers wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
I'm wondering the same thing. Considering they were just acquired,
I'm concerned. Especially since as far as I know, they still are
operating under a free model.
emaro wrote 1 hour 37 min ago:
Yes, however Automattic seems invested in the idea, since they also
acquired Texts.com (which I didn't know before). So maybe the
"universal chat app" is still part of their plan going forward?
Still, I'm concerned too. But I guess only time will tell...
patcon wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Judgement aside, I've gotta respect the humane way this org does
layoffs. There's some slags in here about founder being "sociopath",
but I'm just seeing a really humane founder with maybe some control
issues.
Trump, who betrays everyone for personal benefit, there's a sociopath.
Mullenwag's just got some personality vices that served him as
underdog, and didn't adapt to when he gained power
DeathArrow wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
>A comprehensive package covering severance pay and benefits.
What does this mean in term of monthly wages?
I was a technical lead for the Romanian branch of an US company. They
fired me along with my team and other teams. The reason was they were
profitable but they missed the ARR by a million or something. Last year
they did the first firing round, this the second.
When they announced they will fire us, they also announced they will
hire more sales people. The ratio of business people/tech people was
already 7:1 before that. They also said a programmer should produce 5
times the money the company spent with him, and we were at 4 point
something.
Now I have found a position at a local company which takes care of its
people even in harder times.
raspberry-eye wrote 1 day ago:
AI is eating the world.
dccoolgai wrote 1 day ago:
So if you took the deal last year you would have gotten 9 months, now
the severance is 9 weeks. Way to reward "loyalty". Good thing we're so
smart and better than everyone else and we don't need unions.
Centigonal wrote 1 day ago:
Relevant comment from 24 days ago:
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43309837
hinkley wrote 1 day ago:
Financially your best bet is to be in the 1st round of layoffs.
Ego-wise, it's best to be in the second round. First round there's
still some money and a lot of guilt, so the severance tends to be
good.
By the time they lay off truly essential people, you're burnt out,
and you're lucky if you don't have to sue to get what you're owed by
law, let alone whatever policy they had for paying out vacation time
or what have you. You also get to enjoy a fun period of survivor
guilt when they laid off people who you think have contributed as
much or more than you have, and then know that you'll be next if they
laid of already.
phire wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
IMO, if there is any talk of "loyalty" in that first round of
voluntary layoffs, you should always leave. Even if you were
previously loyal, the company is changing and you won't like the
results.
stefanfisk wrote 1 day ago:
Your also competing with fewer people when looking for a new job.
zellyn wrote 1 day ago:
âWhile our revenue continues to grow,â
Hard to read further than thatâ¦
nightpool wrote 1 day ago:
Haven't seen any public reporting on this yet, but from internal
conversations this seems to include a 60% workforce reduction at
Tumblr, which now only has a few remaining engineers.
donohoe wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Yeah, thatâs my understanding as well
treecrypto wrote 1 day ago:
I actually started paying the subscription for my Tumblr account a
couple years ago. I don't get much direct benefit from it, I do it
because it's the only social media site I use and enjoy, and I was
hoping it would help keep it from shutting down. 60% workforce
reduction is not great.
IG_Semmelweiss wrote 1 day ago:
i dont mean to kick a dead horse, but a "few remaining engineers" for
what is effectively an outdated clone of a microblogging site, a few
engineers, seems like a lot still
nightpool wrote 1 day ago:
what microblogging site do you think Tumblr is a clone of? and
outdated compared to what, exactly?
bionhoward wrote 1 day ago:
HR wranglers? Damn, thatâs simultaneously hilarious and terrifying
rob wrote 1 day ago:
"Either I'm an idiot, or something is going on that you don't
understand. Let's check back in a month. :)" [1] ...1 month later...
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1glejno/comment/lv...
URI [2]: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/64/wpengine-inc-...
gregoryl wrote 1 day ago:
Huh.
>> There are no layoffs plans at Automattic, in fact we're hiring
fairly aggressively and have done a number of acquisitions since this
whole thing started, and have several more in the pipeline.
URI [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hxnh73/automattic...
lolinder wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
That was important posturing to make sure that everyone knew that his
nuclear war on WP Engine was absolutely not going to impact his
ability to run the business and the WordPress project. Whether it was
true or not it didn't matter at the time, the important thing was to
keep up appearances and not let anyone on Reddit think they knew
better than Matt.
snitty wrote 1 day ago:
It's not uncommon for companies to be in a hiring mode until they're
very much not in a hiring mode any more.
itishappy wrote 16 hours 46 min ago:
Not uncommon at all, but perhaps a symptom of poor leadership.
nostrademons wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah. I was made a manager in Feb 2022 with 5 directs and 9
headcount to fill. Hired 5, and then by June 2022 all remaining
headcount was cut. In January 2023 we had our first-ever layoffs
in the company's 25-year history.
IG_Semmelweiss wrote 1 day ago:
It is so hard to fathom that a leader trusted with millions of
dollars of other people's money can be so disengaged from
recruiting as to not see a hard wall of cash crunch, months if
not years ahead.
You can't assume fundraising will always go swimmingly. You have
to always be in survival mode, and if that means not hiring
aggressively, then you put on the breaks until the money comes in
.
Either as a leader you are clueless about your business cash
needs, you are clueless about risk management, or you are
clueless about the market, all of which make you not a suitable
leader for a long-term company.
_DeadFred_ wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
âIt is difficult to get a man to understand something when
his salary depends upon his not understanding it.â
If you are the CEO saying 'we are planning for bad things in
the future' while every other CEO is saying 'the arrow only
goes up' guess which company the stock market punishes and who
gets removed by the board versus who's options become worth
more?
mathattack wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
Iâve seen many companies have this problem. They base hiring
against planned revenue instead of current revenue. In a sense
you have to - if youâre planning on growing 100% for several
years on the back of new products and a big sales team you must
hire in advance. Itâs what the VC model is founded on. The
downside is when you miss the revenue, you have to cut deep.
And itâs usually worse because your hiring standards dropped
in hyper growth.
nostrademons wrote 1 day ago:
The issue was interest rates. Money was free in Feb 2022; the
interest rate was literally 0%, and so any cash-generating
investment at all is profitable. Fed started raising rates in
Apr 2022, at which point leaders started freaking out because
they know what higher rates mean, and by Jun 2022 the Fed was
raising them in 0.75% increments, which was unheard of in
modern economics. By Jan 2023 the rate was 4.5%, which meant
that every investment that generates an internal rate of return
between 0% and 4.5% is unprofitable. That is the vast majority
of investment in today's economy. (We also haven't yet seen
this hit fully - a large number of stocks have earnings yields
that are lower than what you can get on a savings account,
which implies that holding these stocks over cash is
unprofitable unless you expect their earnings to grow faster
than the interest rate drops, which doesn't seem all that
likely in today's environment.) [1] Now, you'd have a point if
you complained about how centralization of government and
economic power with the President and Fed chair, respectively,
is a problem. That is the root cause that allows the economy
to change faster than any leader can adapt. There used to be a
time when people would complain about centralization of
executive power on HN, but for some reason that moment seems to
have passed.
URI [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
nilamo wrote 1 day ago:
Why does the interest rate matter? Unless you have no cash on
hand and are operating soley off debt??
halfcat wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
> Unless you have no cash on hand and are operating soley
off debt??
Bingo
nostrademons wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
My employer actually has roughly $100B of cash on hand.
The issue is that they're a publicly-traded company, with
a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. If they're
investing in an internal product that will make back 1%
of the money invested in it over the next couple years,
but they could have been investing in Treasury Bills that
make back 4.5%, they are committing financial malpractice
and will be sued accordingly.
nilamo wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
If that were true, Research and Development couldn't
exist.
maeil wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
I'd have hoped someone at Google would know this is a
myth.
The idea that choosing a 1% strategic internal
investment over a 4.5% T-bill constitutes actionable
"financial malpractice" or a breach of fiduciary duty
leading to successful lawsuits is incorrect. Courts
recognize that running a business requires strategic
choices and risk-taking, not just maximizing immediate,
risk-free yield. A lawsuit would fail unless plaintiffs
could show the decision was tainted by disloyalty, bad
faith, or gross negligence in the decision-making
process, none of which are implied by simply choosing a
lower-yield strategic project.
Hence why no one ever gets sued for this. It doesn't
happen. It lives in the minds of HNers and Redditors to
provide a very convenient excuse for their employers,
or in general companies, making abhorrent decisions
purely based on feels and short-term next-quarter
profits/stock price, regardless of the negative
externalities they inflict on soeciety.
PeterFBell wrote 1 day ago:
If you're venture based and were expecting another round
sometime soon. With higher interest rates there were more
compelling alternatives for LPs than to invest in Venture,
causing a trickle down chilling of the fund raising
environment for venture backed companies and requiring them
to come up with accelerated plans to reach profitability -
including cutting staff and optimizing for survival over
growth.
foolswisdom wrote 1 day ago:
> Fed started raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point
leaders started freaking out because they know what higher
rates mean, and by Jun 2022 the Fed was raising them in 0.75%
increments, which was unheard of in modern economics.
You're basically making the case that it happened fast, and
went up high, but everyone who paid attention to interest
rates understood it was only a matter of time till it had to
at least revert back to pre-covid rates (whether you think
that's 1.5 or 2.3 or something, depending on how you
measure), and that obviously there would need to be real
layoffs after.
The excuse is really saying "it turned out more extreme than
we thought", but was the behavior take responsible assuming
non-extreme rate changes?
saghm wrote 1 day ago:
> The issue was interest rates. Money was free in Feb 2022;
the interest rate was literally 0%, and so any
cash-generating investment at all is profitable. Fed started
raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point leaders started
freaking out because they know what higher rates mean, and by
Jun 2022 the Fed was raising them in 0.75% increments, which
was unheard of in modern economics. By Jan 2023 the rate was
4.5%, which meant that every investment that generates an
internal rate of return between 0% and 4.5% is unprofitable.
"Unheard of in modern economics" is carrying quite a lot of
weight there. The last time the rates were increased by 0.75%
was 1994, and while that's not recent, it's pretty silly to
imply that CEOs should be making long-term investments
assuming that it would be literally unprecedented for that to
happen. Interest rates have changed only a few dozen times
_at all_ since then, so yes, they haven't been increased by
that much recently, but there's never going to be enough of a
sample size over a period of a couple decades that it would
be reasonable to assume a precedent that will never be
broken.
The crux of your argument seems to be that because the
interest rates happen to be set a certain way at a certain
time, it would be irrational not to make decisions based on
how profitable they'd be at that exact moment in time. The
problem with this line of thinking is that plenty of
investments are only realized over long enough period of time
that by your own admission, people can't possibly react fast
enough to avoid those turning into a loss. My question is,
why put yourself in a position where you can't adapt fast
enough in the first place? The way interest rates are set
should not be news to the people making these decisions in
companies, so it's not crazy to expect that maybe the people
who are betting their company's success on something from
less than three decades before being "unprecedented in modern
economics" could think at least _a little_ longer term than
"literally anything is profitable in this exact moment, so
there's no need to think about what might come next".
nostrademons wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
Because they are publicly traded and subject to lots and
lots of checks on corporate governance. The CEO actually
didn't want to lay people off (and did a shit-poor job of
it when he did). He was getting pressure from the board,
who in turn was getting pressure from a lot of activist
hedge funds.
Small-fry who operate secretly are able to take the long
view and enrich themselves off the masses' stupidity. CEOs
of a multi-trillion-$ company that is ~10% of the
retirement portfolio of every American are not. At that
level you have to go with the market consensus, because you
will be ousted and deemed not a fit steward of the
enterprise that you are entrusted with otherwise.
saghm wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
> Small-fry who operate secretly are able to take the
long view and enrich themselves off the masses'
stupidity. CEOs of a multi-trillion-$ company that is
~10% of the retirement portfolio of every American are
not.
From my math, you're off by several orders of magnitude,
unless somehow we're not talking about Automattic
anymore.
telotortium wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
He's a Googler, he's talking about Google.
pityJuke wrote 1 day ago:
How infuriating for anyone recently hired caught in this trap.
It seems to me the obvious, from both a business & human perspective,
is to stop hiring at first signs of trouble, before layoffs. To do so
otherwise is cruel.
I doubt Matt had zero idea about this possibility two months ago.
regularfry wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
The median position is to be hiring, just to backfill attrition.
"Trouble" might be temporary; it might be noise. Hiring is always
slow, with cycles longer than "trouble" might last.
We might argue about the parameters in this situation, but
structurally there's a bias towards the low-pass average.
hinkley wrote 1 day ago:
The exuberance and self-assuredness that your plans are going to
work out leads to overreach and I think the lag in accounting
practices helps make that more acute.
I have had too many experiences where I thought my current employer
was about to start circling the drain, and I've ended up some place
that was circling faster. At a guess I'm about 50:50, which I
suppose I should count as 'lucky' but has never felt that way.
Fish-tailing is a common flame-out mode for startups. VCs are
partly to blame. They don't like to discourage you in case you come
up with a miracle, but neither do they want to put good money and
time after bad if it turns out you're going to be a break-even play
or a loss.
IG_Semmelweiss wrote 1 day ago:
Its not even cruel. Its just dumb. Really dumb.
You are going to invest significant resources into hiring,
onboarding, and injecting new staff into workflows for people that
will not be there as soon as they are actually productive.
So its not just the cash burn - its the tieup of 3x team members to
getting new people trained to become effective and successful
contributor. Time is finite.
It makes no sense to throw away all that time spent by your team,
who could have use that same time to get a few more features out,
proposals sent , or projects spec'd instead.
paulcole wrote 1 day ago:
If you believe you need more people to get out of trouble isnât
it cruel to not follow through?
nostrademons wrote 1 day ago:
The business world changes direction faster than companies can
adapt. That was my biggest lesson as an entrepreneur:
entrepreneurs don't really pivot into product-market fit, the
market pivots into them. The reason capitalism works is because
there's this huge sea of dream-chasers out there, most of whom will
go bankrupt, so that when the market's needs change there is
somebody out there to service them, and everybody who's not
effectively servicing them goes to hell and gets another job.
Corporations and management basically exist to buffer this
uncertainty. Employment is actually a really bad deal in good
economic times; owners reap almost all the windfall of having a
successful product. But in bad times, the company keeps paying you
even if they're losing money, at least up until they don't. You
get a raw deal, but not as raw a deal as the people paying you.
Likewise with strategic direction. The market's needs change
faster than senior executives can adapt: if they always produced
what the market was actually clamoring for, the company would run
around like a chicken with its head cut off (this actually happens
when the CEO panics, and a key CEO skill, and part of the reason
they're paid so much, is the ability to ignore every piece of
market data saying "You're not hot anymore. Nobody wants you, and
the market has moved on" and keep doing what you're doing even
though your intuition is telling you that you're doomed and going
to lose your cushy $20M/year job). Much of the job of middle
management is to buffer senior management's freakouts and tell the
ICs "Keep calm and carry on; let's see if he still cares about this
new hotness next week."
no_wizard wrote 19 hours 59 min ago:
>The market's needs change faster than senior executives can
adapt: if they always produced what the market was actually
clamoring for, the company would run around like a chicken with
its head cut off (this actually happens when the CEO panics, and
a key CEO skill, and part of the reason they're paid so much, is
the ability to ignore every piece of market data saying "You're
not hot anymore. Nobody wants you, and the market has moved on"
and keep doing what you're doing even though your intuition is
telling you that you're doomed and going to lose your cushy
$20M/year job)
You know what I absolutely hate about this take? It ignores my
shared experience I've had with others (IE, its not just me).
I've worked in this industry a long time. So I've inevitably
worked for places that ran into financial trouble. In multiple of
those cases, it could have been prevented if upper management
actually listened to what those of us developing the product had
to say about shifting customer behaviors and expectations, that
what we were seeing was different from what they were trying to
sell and have us develop. It always ended in disaster.
They refused to listen, but never paid the price for that
failure, my colleagues did and in one instance, I was on the
receiving end of a layoff along with others as well.
nostrademons wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
It's kinda their job to not listen. CEOs get bombarded with
thousands of pieces of information each week. If they shifted
the company direction each time, the company would get nothing
wrong. In the immortal words of Ribbonfarm, "CEOs don't
steer": [1] A good CEO will let in just the little bit of
information that saves the company - this was Andy Grove's
pivot to focus on microprocessors over memory chips, or Steve
Jobs's turnaround of Apple. You didn't have a good CEO, and
got your average mediocre CEO that sets a strategic direction
and sticks with it regardless of what the market says.
I'm curious though, if you knew your employer was going under,
why not jump ship to the competitor that actually did
understand what customers wanted? Employees are economic
agents too, and oftentimes competitors are more than happy to
hire out of their competition.
URI [1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/09/ceos-dont-steer/
no_wizard wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
>A good CEO will let in just the little bit of information
that saves the company - this was Andy Grove's pivot to focus
on microprocessors over memory chips, or Steve Jobs's
turnaround of Apple. You didn't have a good CEO, and got your
average mediocre CEO that sets a strategic direction and
sticks with it regardless of what the market says.
Still too simplistic. Yeah, they need to filter information
and say no to things constantly, I get that is a core skill.
If something is repeatedly being brought up by members of
your core teams, you should at least look at what they're
saying and ask where they are coming from. That is simply
good sense. There is a persistence factor in involved in each
of these cases that are the source of the frustration.
If what constitutes a good CEO is allowing in the 'little bit
of information that can save the company' (really thats a
call about identifying useful information before anyone
else), objectively most companies have terrible CEOs, and I
question the value of the position entirely on that basis,
especially at larger public companies.
FWIW, at each of these companies I worked at, the headcount
was at most in the hundreds. I was only 2 clicks below the
executives in the company tree, there wasn't a lot of barrier
to interaction there, which is what I find even more baffling
about the whole thing.
>I'm curious though, if you knew your employer was going
under, why not jump ship to the competitor that actually did
understand what customers wanted?
I did this twice. In the one instance I wasn't able to get
moving faster than things were going down hill. Partially,
this is a symptom of just how long interview cycles have
become over the years. Took me longer than expected, but
moreover, the company conducted the layoff faster than I
really thought they would. I got the timing wrong by a little
bit, it happens.
Its not like you identify an issue one time either, its the
repeated ignoring of what happens despite repeated sustained
efforts to raise the awareness where it needs to be.
hinkley wrote 1 day ago:
I've worked at a couple consultancies who played themselves by
investing too heavily in one or two customers.
Once a single customer is 1/3 of your revenue they can start
extracting considerations from you that may not be what your
employees thought they signed up for. It's a good way to end up
being a body shop. I don't have a philosophical problem with body
shops per se, it's just that I don't want to work for one, so I
pick places that should know better, but sometimes don't.
It can also be problematic if 2 customers account for 45% of your
revenue and they both get the same idea, which can happen
particularly when the market shifts. You have no way to call
their bluff and move enough people to other projects to make it
stick.
KennyBlanken wrote 1 day ago:
That's a lot of words from someone who doesn't know what's been
going on for ~6 months or so that is relevant.
Mullenweg lost his mind and attacked a competitor to Wordpress
hosting (WP Engine) and kept doubling down and only served to
demonstrate how much of an unhinged asshole he was.
Along the way he pissed off the Wordpress community - the worry
was that if anyone else pissed him off (which could include he'd
accuse them of using the Wordpress name or even "WP", even if it
was descriptive (which is entirely permitted use of a trademarked
name) and run up a bunch of legal expenses for them.
Angry-at-the-world blog post after blog post doubling down over
and over. Taunting people as he banned them from the Wordpress
slack, that sort of stuff. Then he blocked WP Engine from
accessing the Wordpress.org plugin and theme registries which
meant a huge number of sites couldn't update plugins or themes.
Then he announced Automattic was going to cut back engineering
hours to (if I remember right) one full time staffer. One person
to keep up with security updates and bugfixes of a very
complicated piece of software used by a lot of organization.
Incredibly childish and thoroughly demonstrated to the world that
he was unsuited for leading a company and being the sole person
almost completely in charge of a piece of software used by a
20-30% of the websites in the world.
This was absolutely foreseeable, especially when he cut back
Automattic's engineering to 40hr/week.
I advised a client a few weeks into the drama to at least keep in
the back of their minds that they might have to migrate at some
point as "the CEO of the company is off his rocker, they probably
will start to struggle with security updates, and the company may
go out of business."
paradox460 wrote 1 day ago:
This will continue until there are actual consequences for those
responsible.
I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they
should start from the top And work down.
tasuki wrote 20 hours 32 min ago:
> I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they
should start from the top And work down.
I'm off the mindset that employment should be voluntary: both by
the employer and the employee. It makes employers reluctant to
hire if they know they can't get rid of people again.
(I'm a socialist at heart and think it'd be pretty nice for the
government to take care of people who lost their jobs. Just tax
the companies a little more!)
alvah wrote 1 day ago:
>I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they
should start from the top And work down.
Oh, to be young and idealistic again! So in your world, the
people running the business should fire themselves first?
alxjrvs wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
Imagine the organization you are imagining in your head.
Now imagine there is a Super-boss, who is exactly like the
"people running the business" (attribution needed), but one
level above them.
If the Super Boss were to look at the situation, I think it'd
be pretty obvious that the issue would be "The people
organizing the company at the highest level" who are
responsible for the failures of the company. That may involve
over-hiring, which is itself a bad practice that causes
unnecessary pain and (personal, financial) suffering, and would
be a good cause to fire them for almost crashing my beautiful
super-company that I, the Super-boss, super-founded.
You're saying that if we return the Super-boss to the realm of
the fictional, then suddenly it isn't the C-suite's fault
anymore?
If we're discussing should, then yeah, their heads should be
the first to roll. I agree its idealistic to imagine them
having the sort of decency this requires, but I agree it should
be the case!
copypasterepeat wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
An honest question: why is this being downvoted? I thought that
downvoting is meant to be used when someone is trolling or
bringing the level of discussion down, not when you simply
disagree with someone's point. I mean sure, it's stated a bit
sarcastically, but my gosh if we're going to downvote every
sarcastic comment, that would include a good portion of HN
comments.
itishappy wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
My read is that the parent is immature and needs to be
reminded that "starting at the top" means the people in
charge. What does it add to the discussion?
alvah wrote 20 hours 21 min ago:
I probably failed to account for the differing backgrounds of
HN commenters & the resulting overly-literal interpretation
of sarcasm, to be fair to the downvoters. Of course the
owners & managers should take responsibility for poor
corporate performance.
InsideOutSanta wrote 1 day ago:
If they have to fire people, they're running it poorly, so yes?
alvah wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
If you've spent any time in business at all, you know it's
always the tea lady who gets fired first and the managers
last. Many commenters here seem to live in some kind of
fantasy world.
InsideOutSanta wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
>the people running the business should fire themselves
first?
You were questioning whether they should, not whether they
will. That's what people are responding to. They understand
perfectly well who will get fired first.
alvah wrote 20 hours 23 min ago:
I was questioning the idealism actually. Thereâs not
much to be achieved by wishing the world was a certain
way, itâs generally more useful to deal with the world
as it is.
InsideOutSanta wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
What idealism? The person you responded to said they
didn't expect things to change unless there were real
consequences. Not expecting things to change is the
opposite of idealism.
But even if they were idealistic, arguing with people
for wishing the world was better is a genuinely odd
thing. If you followed your beliefs, wouldn't you
understand that telling people not to wish for things
is pointless? If you actually dealt with the world as
it is, you would not argue with people on the Internet
because changing somebody's mind, particularly in the
way you are attempting to do it, is just as much
wishful thinking as hoping that CEOs will fire
themselves.
alvah wrote 10 hours 35 min ago:
"I'm of the mindset that any time a company does
layoffs, they should start from the top And work
down"
That idealism.
InsideOutSanta wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
It's stating a preference. Having a preference is
not idealism because idealism requires some amount
of belief that the preference can be achieved.
"I believe I will be a millionaire by age 30" is
idealism.
"I won't be a millionaire by age 30 unless I rob a
bank, but I should" is not idealism; it's just a
factual statement about one's preference for
wealth.
And, again, why are you arguing with me at all? If
you followed your advice, you'd understand that it
is pure idealism to expect me to change my mind. As
somebody once said, "Thereâs not much to be
achieved by wishing the world was a certain way;
itâs generally more useful to deal with the world
as it is."
It's odd to scold people for stating their
preferences, and it's even odder to scold them for
something you seem to be doing yourself. If you
actually believed in the things you advocate for,
you would not be in this thread.
no_wizard wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
If we don't talk about what we feel is ideal, we can
never strive to achieve it.
Its really important to discuss idealism for that
reason alone
alvah wrote 19 hours 55 min ago:
Good luck with changing human nature, i.e. persuading
managers to voluntarily act against their own
self-interest. Thatâs just not how people work.
What you say is true in some cases, but not in all
cases.
no_wizard wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
Can't even try if we don't talk about it. The issue
with line of 'clear thinking' is it leaves no room
for change.
If enough people take talk into action, we could
reasonably see a change in behavior. It may come
from sources than we don't expect, but it can
happen all the same and we only have a chance at
getting there if we are wiling to talk about what
is ideal and raising that awareness. Its an
important piece of that puzzle
icehawk wrote 1 day ago:
If they're running the business, and it's at a point where it
needs layoffs; sounds like they're not doing their job
properly, and should be replaced with people who can-- like
every other position in the business.
Not that they will-- too much self-interest.
ted_dunning wrote 1 day ago:
It's been done.
Bob Mercer and Peter Brown laid themselves off from IBM when
they were told to execute 10% across the board layoffs. They
had argued their team was one of the highest performing teams
in the company but were told that they had their quota. 10% of
their team was 2 so they took the hit.
From there, they went on to run Renaissance.
IBM should have kept them.
mathgeek wrote 1 day ago:
> So in your world, the people running the business should fire
themselves first?
If they are needed to continue leading, they should consider
cutting their own salary until the problems are fixed. Let them
take their entire compensation in just their equity for a time.
However we all know this wonât be the norm, and thatâs OK.
Not great, just OK.
hinkley wrote 1 day ago:
I do know of one guy who took a pay cut because unless he
hamstrung his own team badly he was looking at needing to lay
off about 2.3 people and so he cut his own salary to make it
2 instead of 3.
That's one story surrounded by a hell of a lot of shitheel
stories.
ted_dunning wrote 1 day ago:
Been there and done that. One startup I was at instituted a
50% pay cut for senior execs, 25% for the level below that
and no cut below that. The CEO took a 100% pay cut.
This let us get through a short rough patch without layoffs.
leosarev wrote 1 day ago:
I worked at middle-sized company that instituted a pay
cuts, cutting all bonuses and stopping raises.
After year, company lost almost every person in tech
managenent and most of team leaders, their clients actively
executing forking rights and no one believes in company
future now.
I once heard wise words from some CEO. In harsh times,
clients do not want cheaper and worse services from us.
They want less services. So we are moving out headcount
down, while keeping pay and even execute raises for those
who stay.
pdimitar wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
Can you explain why this is wise? I'd say most execs
leaving is usually a net positive. You are framing it as
a tragedy and I am just not seeing it.
From where I am standing, leeches that are only there for
fat bonuses left. Where's the loss?
And the measure you described also doesn't follow. Bad
times always end and then you have a worse product. Will
the execs pick up the new tech work?
dboreham wrote 1 day ago:
Jim Barksdale enters the room.
dijksterhuis wrote 1 day ago:
not the parent, but accountability is supposed to be assumed up
the org chart while responsibility is delegated down.
so, yeah. the people ultimately accountable for fucking shit up
should probably be held accountable first and foremost.
(this is why CEOs often resign in the wake of a scandal)
toomuchtodo wrote 1 day ago:
Those lacking empathy donât know how to not be cruel. They keep
filtering to the top unfortunately. Something that remains to be
solved for.
noisy_boy wrote 1 day ago:
There is nothing to solve - you are in the game of capitalism
(the American Edition) and the job is to maximise shareholder
value. They are paid big bucks because they only work for that
without empathy/cruelty or such emotions. The only way to solve
is to change the game but that's next to impossible because most
powerful players like it that way and will turn on anyone trying
to change their fattening ways.
The best part is that the pawns keep getting sacrificed and do
nothing to change it; not only that, they refuse to support
anyone trying to change the game to make their lives better. It's
amazing.
melbourne_mat wrote 1 day ago:
From an alternate universe:
I apologize for my erratic behavior which has tarnished our brand and
created unnecessary turmoil within our organization. Regrettably, we
will need to implement a 16% reduction in headcount to address the
financial challenges we now face. I have decided to step aside and hand
over control to my deputy, who I believe will provide the steady
leadership needed to rebuild trust and restore our company's vision.
KennyBlanken wrote 1 day ago:
He'll never admit he was wrong or step down. He'll drive Automattic
into the ground and Wordpress along with it (until someone forks it,
like say...WP Engine, heh. Or Redhat, or IBM, or some huge web design
firm, etc.)
He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over from the
original author who was abandoning the project.
It reminds me of the rage-bender Jamie and Jim Thompson went on,
attacking OPNsense for "stealing" their work and doing a lot of
immature things taking over opnsense's domain, their subreddit, etc.
via legal actions. And at least one lawsuit. They lost on every front
- reddit gave the subreddit back to the opnsense developers, ICANN
gave them back their domain name, etc.
Attacking OPNsense for "stealing" pfSense was pretty rich given
pfSense's origin; netgate slapped their logo on m0n0wall and started
working on their fork. Which is exactly what opnsense did that
enraged them...
Especially as pfsense software started getting more user-hostile and
shifting functionality into the paid versions, pfsense has rapidly
become less and less popular. I almost never see anyone recommend it
anymore.
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
> He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over from
the original author who was abandoning the project.
Non Wordpress user here, not a blogger, donât use CMSs. Curious
about this line. Reading the history on Wikipedia, the original b2
was the precursor. It was pretty small and being abandoned. Matt
proposed forking it in January 2003, and worked with Mike to bring
the first version to fruition a few months later. 22 years later
itâs a goliath.
Given that history it seems totally fair for Matt to consider WP
his thing. You donât seem to think so, can you explain?
Brian_K_White wrote 23 hours 24 min ago:
That's all true and does not conflict. There is nothing to
explain.
solardev wrote 1 day ago:
If only we had real leaders...
joquarky wrote 1 day ago:
We do, but the sociopaths outcompete them.
facile3232 wrote 1 day ago:
You can trust me, facile3232, instead. I will improve upon all
things the leader of automattic.com failed to improve upon.
animuchan wrote 1 day ago:
This messaging is compelling. Are you also perchance against all
bad things, and in favor of all good things?
ike2792 wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
You can't just say "perchance."
systemswizard wrote 1 day ago:
You got this random internet stranger
kstrauser wrote 1 day ago:
> They also have our enduring gratitude for their time with the
company.
I hope the RIF'd employees can pay rent with that gratitude.
If I were considering using Wordpress for anything, which I am not,
this would end those plans. If they're laying off and keeping the CEO,
they must be in dire financial straits. That message says "we're doing
all the right things and have good leadership with a track record of
making good decisions, but we have no alternative but to fire a sixth
of our employees". That's not a good sign.
Kye wrote 1 day ago:
There's a parallel timeline where he admitted he messed up, stepped
down, hired a real CEO, put someone else in charge of the nonprofit,
and the downward slide he caused started to reverse.
phendrenad2 wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if the CEO throwing a tantrum that another company was using
"their" open-source (thus, not theirs) code wasn't the real problem,
but it made investors take a closer look, and they noticed that
Automattic has less of a moat then they thought.
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
Given what I know of the situation (which admittedly isn't much),
wouldn't the best course of action be to shitcan the CEO?
dangrossman wrote 1 day ago:
From Reddit discussions, if they can be trusted, there is nobody who
can remove Matt from any position. It's a private company and the
investors were given non-voting shares.
rs186 wrote 1 day ago:
I am confused -- so if investors don't like the CEO, there is
nothing they can do? Other than maybe taking their part of the
money out?
wavemode wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
Even "taking their part of the money out" is not guaranteed.
Again, it's a privately traded company, so there's no open
market. You have to find someone willing to buy your shares from
you and make a deal with them.
ValentineC wrote 1 day ago:
> It's a private company and the investors were given non-voting
shares.
My understanding is that the investors signed proxy voting rights
over to Matt. They are mostly ordinary shares, and may be
revocable. [1]
URI [1]: https://ma.tt/2021/08/funding-buyback-hiring/
mritchie712 wrote 1 day ago:
he'd already be out if it was simple to force him out
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
Let this be a lesson to anyone investing in a startup: don't give
any cash unless there's real corporate governance.
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
but the opposite is true too: don't take money from investors
unless they let you keep control of your company. for every
case like this there are probably a dozen cases where investors
took control of a company and ruined it for the sake of making
money.
pclmulqdq wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
How did they "ruin" a company if that company made money?
diggan wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
Not all humans are driven by the same motivations.
pclmulqdq wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
Presumably if you as a founder are not driven by a desire
to make money and your investors are, you 100% should be
ousted. This is the principal-agent problem at work.
diggan wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
> Presumably if you as a founder are not driven by a
desire to make money and your investors are, you 100%
should be ousted
Presumably, the real world is a bit more nuanced than
that.
There is no reason why you cannot run a company for
different motivations than "get as rich as possible"
while still accepting investments from people whose
sole motivation is "get as rich as possible". While
difficult, it is possible to align people even when
they have different motivations.
pclmulqdq wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
What you are describing is exactly the
principal-agent problem, and it is a real problem at
startups when a founder is truly motivated by
something that the investors don't care about. You
can run a company with different motivations than
your investors, but only so long as you return the
goods they want. If they see you not returning the
goods and not caring about that fact, they will try
to replace you. They will try to do that a lot faster
if you demonstrate that you don't care about giving
them a return than if you show that you do care.
Conversely, investors can be mission-driven or
otherwise aligned with you on something other than
"maximize my return," but those investors rarely give
you the best price.
toomuchtodo wrote 1 day ago:
Same with trading your time for stock options (that you hope
are eventually negotiable shares); trust is earned in drops and
lost in buckets.
SJC_Hacker wrote 1 day ago:
Dilution is a real problem. If they want you to act like a
Founder, you should have protected equity like one.
wmf wrote 1 day ago:
With apologies to Louis XIV, Matt is Automattic.
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
L'etatt, c'est M'att.
o11c wrote 1 day ago:
For the unaware (or under-aware): [1] Probably apocryphal. A lot
of people these days only know it from Star Wars.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
i am unaware of the star wars reference. can you explain that
one please?
Philpax wrote 1 day ago:
"I am the Senate":
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/bjj2ry/po...
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
wait, did he put his name in the company name?
if so, that's what we in the narcissist-identifying business call a
"tell".
Brian_K_White wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
Yes but this isn't really much of a crime or tell to me. The name
is great as far as I'm concerned.
And he's full of himself and completely wrong in this crusade he
launched for some reason, completely indefensible acts left &
right for over a year.
Both true.
yallpendantools wrote 1 day ago:
It's easy to call that a "tell" in light of Matt Mullenweg's
recent activities. No one was saying shit when Wordpress was the
darling of Web 2.0.
Justifiable evidence of Matt Mullenweg's unhealthy/excessive
narcissism only surfaced within the past year or so (I'm fuzzy on
the timeline, cut me some slack ya?). Automattic the company has
been so named for, goodness, close to twenty years now.
It could be Matt's been a narcissist from the start. But people
also change and not always for the better so maybe he became a
"narcissist" much later in life and his chosen company name just
so conveniently fell into the narrative.
There are CEOs in bigger spotlights with a bigger case for
narcissism who don't put their names on any of their companies
(emphasis on the plurality). One of them has a name with a
similar inflection pattern to other well-known albeit fictional
narcissist, Tony Stark.
I don't know what "Automattic" as a company name says about Matt
as a person. I'll tell you what it is though: a damn good pun,
one I would gladly score myself given the chance.
willvarfar wrote 1 day ago:
Yeap, Automatic is not a good trade name but Automattic is
great!
apocalyptic0n3 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes. He also calls the employees Automatticians. So they're all
just Matt.
zem wrote 1 day ago:
guess their jobs were just automatted away!
Jare wrote 1 day ago:
Or it just sounded like a fun joke for a good company name... I
mean you are not wrong, but pretty much any successful young
entrepreneur must have some degree of excessive appreciation for
themselves, and this one was already achieving that status at 19.
groby_b wrote 1 day ago:
Knowing a number of successful entrepreneurs, many having hit
success early as well - most don't need to enshrine themselves
in the company name. It is indeed a tell.
If that wasn't enough of a tell, his behavior in the last few
months spelled it out clearly, circled the relevant parts with
a big fat red marker, and installed a blinking neon sign saying
"narcissist".
em-bee wrote 1 day ago:
i don't think that is how a tell works. of course now we
know. hindsight and all that.
to decide whether it is actually a tell, we need to look at
statistics of company names containing references to the
owners/founders and their behavior. and i don't think that
statistic bears out. naming your company after yourself is
the traditional thing to do. "automattic" is just on the more
clever side.
the tradition is changing only because it is becoming more
and more popular to name your company after the product you
are selling. now, putting your name into the product name,
that maybe could be a tell. but even here there are
exceptions: debian for example.
duskwuff wrote 1 day ago:
> wait, did he put his name in the company name?
Yes.
chris_wot wrote 1 day ago:
This might not have happened if Mullenweg hadnât sued his competitor,
then went off the deep end and hurt everyone.
DannyBee wrote 1 day ago:
I think this is a bit unfair.
Who among us can really say they haven't gone off the deep end,
burned every drop of good will that ever existed towards them and
their projects, sued a competitor and got hilariously burned by the
judge, all while burning hundreds of millions of your companies value
(blackrock marked them down 10%, which is 750 million)
This is just a normal thing that happens. It could have happened to
anyone.
ceejayoz wrote 1 day ago:
It may also have been part of his reason for doing so.
Panic/desperation.
1shooner wrote 1 day ago:
Another interpretation would be a common cause for both this and the
litigation, i.e. pressure to improve financials.
chris_wot wrote 1 day ago:
That's an unbelievably terrible course of action. If you have
financial issues, don't try to get out of it by litigation. Only
litigate if you absolutely have to, and you have been wronged.
Don't do it because you are trying to improve your bottom line.
1shooner wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
Yes, i think that's the consensus. But it didn't start with
litigation, it started with a 'creative' approach to generating
new licensing revenue.
chris_wot wrote 7 hours 21 min ago:
A creative shakedown.
FlamingMoe wrote 1 day ago:
Mentioning "our revenue continues to grow" seems quite out of place in
an announcement like this.
anon7000 wrote 1 day ago:
I think it's just saving face. That statement could be true if
revenue was growing at 1% or 10% or whatever.
altairprime wrote 1 day ago:
If opex is growing at a faster rate than revenue, and itâs not a VC
situation, then layoffs are a popular way to curtail opex â
typically business leadership cannot effect changes that would
eventually impact themselves, so, the board and executive layer
prefer to mass-layoff workers and middle management first and then
let the remaining leadership fight for their life to present
optimized plans. This is of course a terrible approach, because â
as Taskmaster quite enjoyably demonstrates â even the smartest
people tend to make a lot of asinine judgment calls under duress and
deadlines; but when the alternative is to admit weaknesses of
leadership, itâs certainly a logical enough course of action.
Arainach wrote 1 day ago:
I disagree - it's not properly addressed, but it's nice to see it at
least brought up.
Layoffs are always awful, but seeing companies talk about "changing
economic realities" amongst continuing revenue and profit growth -
often all time highs - is a real morale killer for those who are left
behind.
Microsoft/Amazon/Alphabet/Google are trillion dollar megacorps who
are insanely profitable, but they're firing people because they no
longer have to pretend we care about you at all and will instead try
to cater to Wall Street (who will never be happy - if I had $10000
for every quarter where a big tech corp "beat expectations" and the
stock dropped anyway I'd retire). It's a hard pill to swallow and
will increase bitterness and cynicism in the remaining workforce and
kill any chance of your employees caring about your vision or putting
in any extra effort.
lolinder wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
In this case, the "our revenue continues to grow" is not
transparency, it's deliberately obfuscating the increase in
expenses that led to layoffs being necessary. Not mentioned is the
insanely expensive legal battle that they launched with WP Engine,
which is already a massive drain on resources and a huge financial
risk given how strong WP Engine's case is.
"Our revenue continues to grow" doesn't matter if unnecessary
expenses outstrip it.
ChadNauseam wrote 1 day ago:
> they no longer have to pretend we care about you at all and will
instead try to cater to Wall Street
The company isn't "catering" to wall street, wall street is their
boss. The owners of the company vote on what they want the company
to do, and hire the person in charge of the company. And besides,
do you care about your company? If you got a job offer to make
twice your salary doing something you'd enjoy more than what you do
now, would you stay with your current company out of care for them?
Maybe you would, but I know of almost no one who feels that way
towards their employer, outside of those working for small tech
startups with their friends.
For almost everyone I know, their mindset is that they're going to
do the best job they can right up until something better comes
along, at which point they'll switch to something better. And I
fully expect that if my best work is no longer worth more to them
than my salary, they'll lay me off. In the meantime, they're paying
me a ridiculous amount of money to do a job I enjoy. It's a deal
that 99% of the world is envious of, and I don't think it should
inspire bitterness and cynicism
fn-mote wrote 1 day ago:
> they're paying me a ridiculous amount of money to do a job I
enjoy
> It's a deal that 99% of the world is envious of, and I don't
think it should inspire bitterness and cynicism
First of all, I think it takes a lot of guts to continue to have
this attitude in the current economic climate. Or, in your case,
immense skill, but not everybody - not even everybody in the big
tech companies - has that.
I think the bitterness and cynicism stems from not enjoying the
work. As crazy as this sounds - it's the intangibles as much as
the cash: for example, knowing the company will fight your
efforts to improve things.
scarface_74 wrote 1 day ago:
When was anyone naive enough to think their company cared about
them?
On the other hand, why should a company keep people around that
they donât need?
And the last point, speaking more about Microsoft/Amazon/Google, if
you have worked for either company for any length of time, there is
no excuse for you not to have a nice nest egg to tide you over
especially considering the severance amounts they give you.
You might be forced to sully yourself and become an âenterprise
developerâ and make around what most of the 2.8 million
developers in the US.
And yes, I did a bid at Amazon and within three years, I paid off
some debt, saved a chunk of change, got my 3.5 months severance
package and found another job quickly that was my target
compensation (not enterprise dev).
fwip wrote 1 day ago:
I might agree with you, if the "why we're making changes" section
had listed even one reason to lay people off.
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
Our revenue continues to grow, and will be even more profitable
as we lay off 16% of the employees.
The tone being set is not a good one to be sure.
onli wrote 23 hours 17 min ago:
Are they being profitable? Didn't automattic take venture
capital somewhat recently, suggesting that's not the case?
anthomtb wrote 1 day ago:
> This restructuring will result in an approximately 16% workforce
reduction
Probably the most salient detail for non-Automattic employees.
Everything else was generic fluff.
jihadjihad wrote 1 day ago:
> non-Automattic employees
non-Automatticians. Yes, they literally used this term in TFA.
munificent wrote 1 day ago:
I know this really bugs some people but every tech company these
days has a demonym for its employees.
It doesn't mean that employees have some cultlike adoration for the
company. It's just very convenient inside the company to have a
single short word to refer to all employees of the business.
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
> It doesn't mean that employees have some cultlike adoration for
the company
No, but it does mean that the company wishes that employees had
some cult like adoration. The line between proud of the company
one works for and being cult like is not rigid, and moves
depending on the company
squiggleblaz wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
I've never taken it as wish that employees have some cult like
adoration, but as a team building exercise. I don't like it,
it's cringe, but it's nothing worse than a bit of meaningless
cringe. I have heard the theory of the fine line between a CEO
and a cult leader, but I've never worked at a company that came
anywhere near that fine line. Every CEO I've worked with has
known that we're there due to a mutually beneficial agreement.
ithkuil wrote 1 day ago:
Some companies even have a name for people after they left the
company, like "xooglers" for Google and "outfluxers" for
InfluxData
eppsilon wrote 1 day ago:
get hired back to become a refluxer, train as a hardware
engineer to become a flux capacitor...
tylerrobinson wrote 1 day ago:
> a single short word
> âAutomatticianâ
The word youâre looking for is employee.
munificent wrote 1 day ago:
I checked my list, and the fact that employees of Automattic
are called "Automatticians" did not make my list of things to
be outraged about. Maybe next week.
pseudalopex wrote 1 day ago:
Pointing out the error in your claim implied nothing about
outrage.
munificent wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
"Employee" is ambiguous because it doesn't convey which
business someone is an employee of. A company-specific
demonym is short and precise.
jihadjihad wrote 1 day ago:
I get it, it's just kind of a meme at this point after a couple
years of these boilerplate RIF announcements. Cmd-F for
"difficult decision" + whatever the demonym is and you're
basically guaranteed hits.
rchaud wrote 1 day ago:
Just say "all employees" then. Lots of companies use contractors
who don't have employee benefits, do they count as "Googlers" or
whatever the stupid stand-in moniker is?
blatantly wrote 1 day ago:
Plus severance will be paid but didn't say how much.
I was thinking this is a boilerplate firing email though!
Jare wrote 1 day ago:
> how much
With so many countries and legal frameworks to comply with, there's
never going to be a single answer for this.
beaucollins wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs looking like countries with better worker protections saw
zero layoffs.
duskwuff wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if it's better or worse than the voluntary termination
deal they offered to employees last year (first 6 months, then 9
months pay).
beaucollins wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs worse. Max Iâm seeing is 9 weeks.
duskwuff wrote 1 day ago:
Yikes. Meanwhile, the people who took the buyout last year got
6 months (or 9 if they waited for the second round).
lsinger wrote 1 day ago:
Much worse.
mrcwinn wrote 1 day ago:
Tough break for Matt Mullenweg, who unfortunately was caught up in this
reduction in force. I am sure this unexpected change will afford him
new opportunities. Wishing him the best!
swyx wrote 1 day ago:
for others who took this at its word, this sarcasm. matt is
unaffected.
jsheard wrote 1 day ago:
As a great man once said: "some of you may die, but it's a
sacrifice I am willing to make"
sidcool wrote 1 day ago:
This is well handled.
zem wrote 1 day ago:
on the positive side, it's a small thing monetarily, but retention of
company laptops is a nice goodwill gesture
rs186 wrote 1 day ago:
Worth maybe $1000, not even half a month's rent in almost any major
US city
anon7000 wrote 1 day ago:
Theyâre mostly high specced, newer M model MacBook pros
rs186 wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
I suggest that you look up the price of second hand M2 Macbook
Pros.
paulcole wrote 1 day ago:
They do say they have employees in 90 countriesâ¦
icedchai wrote 1 day ago:
Many of them are fully depreciated and worth nothing, or nearly so,
on paper anyway. Any new employees won't want an old laptop. And it
will cost time and money to deal with shipping, storage, cleaning,
re-imaging, etc. On average, the bean counters must figure it's
cheaper to let people keep them.
slt2021 wrote 1 day ago:
companies that collect their laptops from laid off => where do these
laptops go? how they recycle them?
rs186 wrote 1 day ago:
Redistributing them to new employees/interns is very common,
especially if the laptop is only 1-2 years old.
viraptor wrote 1 day ago:
It's a huge "depends". Different areas have different recycling
opportunities. Some hardware providers have their own
buyback/replacement programs. Also some companies may want to
reimage and reuse the returned hardware. Finally you want some
stock of temporary laptops available for people who are waiting for
repairs so some functioning used ones are great for that.
sgerenser wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah at the BigCorps I was at, old laptops (as long as they
werenât more than 3-4 years old) were usually reimaged and kept
on hand as spares or for interns, etc. But I imagine after a
large layoff they ended up with way more than theyâd ever
actually need.
bmulholland wrote 1 day ago:
Eh, from the company's perspective this is logistically easiest--the
laptop's value is hardly worth the effort.
etchalon wrote 1 day ago:
We always let our ex-employees keep their laptops because a. why
not? and b. I don't need laptops for positions that no longer
exist.
MDGeist wrote 1 day ago:
I was at a company that let people keep laptops (after they were
wiped) largely because the severance was so meager it seemed they
expected people to sell the laptops for some extra cash. :p
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
doubtful it was considered extra cash, but just now not needing
to spend cash on replacing the laptop with personal money
gopher_space wrote 1 day ago:
âWelcome to your new job at HighSpeed TopFlight. Hereâs an
old, used laptop.â
ornornor wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve had that happen to me at a new job. It disnt make my new
employer shine.
gopher_space wrote 1 day ago:
One of my key metrics for evaluating employers is Time To
Second Monitor.
javawizard wrote 1 day ago:
And yet only one company I've ever worked for went this way.
I wish more did; it really is such a small goodwill gesture to
departing employees.
zem wrote 1 day ago:
a lot of companies ask for equipment to be returned due to security
concerns, or just on principle
AlotOfReading wrote 1 day ago:
One former employer had this policy, and also refused to provide
a way to ship said equipment back. No one was happy with my
alternative solution: leaving it at the police station instead.
FireBeyond wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
A former employer said that FedEx shipping info would be
attached to my separation email. It was not. I emailed the two
people at HR who had been involved in my separation. Three
times each. No replies.
I still have the laptop. And a hard copy of the emails.
Also, as an aside, it is ABSURDLY easy to bypass MDM and DEP on
a Macbook Pro, even a later M series laptop. Absurdly so
(anyone here could do it in about a minute or less, and have a
de-MDMed, fully updatable, no weirdness laptop. Theoretically).
kstrauser wrote 1 day ago:
Is that what you proposed or what you actually did? I want a
story!
AlotOfReading wrote 1 day ago:
I actually did it. This was back in the times when you could
get a job the next day, and my new employer didn't want me
keeping anything from the old employer by the time I started.
Old employer was dragging their feet on the shipping label
and made it clear that failure to return the equipment would
be considered theft. I gave them a week of daily reminder
emails with an approaching deadline (no response), then
handed it to the cops as abandoned property. Got a few HR
calls immediately afterwards asking how to pick it up, and an
annoyed police call asking me not to do it again.
goldchainposse wrote 1 day ago:
> made it clear that failure to return the equipment would
be considered theft
Is "please arrange for a courier to retrieve it" not the
end of your obligations?
AlotOfReading wrote 1 day ago:
In a situation where everyone (including me) was acting
reasonably, sure. But I was slightly gruntled from being
pushed out for filing a safety report, and keeping it in
my possession would have technically violated my new
contract. Giving it to the police was clearly not
stealing it and didn't require going out of my way to
help them solve a problem of their own creation.
goldchainposse wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
On the other side of this, I doubt the police would
have done anything if they reported it stolen.
There are questions online about "what if a former
employee doesn't return their laptop." They almost
always end with "send a threatening letter in
legalese." They stop after that because the the next
step is get a $300 per hour lawyer involved for a $600
laptop.
kstrauser wrote 1 day ago:
I love this. Bravo.
jelder wrote 1 day ago:
A company which is even moderately "OK" at IT will already have
the means to instantly lock and securely wipe devices of any
employee at a moments notice. Doing this during a RIF is a hell
of a lot better than making the mail room deal with a bunch of
filthy laptops.
oblio wrote 1 day ago:
A large bunch of big companies, including some of the biggest
on the planet don't even sell past-end-of-life laptops to their
current employees.
Let that sink in. They're not even willing to <> old laptops,
they would rather scrap them and contribute to pollution and
overall waste.
johannes1234321 wrote 1 day ago:
If they sell to (ex-)employees they sell to consumers. This
then includes consumer warranties etc.
However what large companies do is to get an agreement with a
refurbishing company, which will collect and refurbish them
and and pay the corporation some share.
This works in some mix calculation - the well treated
machines can be sold well, some machines can be used to reuse
some parts and some machines are nothing but cost for
disposal.
preinheimer wrote 1 day ago:
If you scrap a laptop you get a nice, auditable, chain of
custody from the end user to the company that will certify
it's been destroyed. If you sell someone their old laptop you
need to ensure that it's actually been wiped, not just "I
copied my files over and started using the new one". I've
seen a few IT departments be not great at "Sam got their new
laptop two weeks ago, someone should follow up now to see if
the wipe on the old one happened".
One choice won't get you fired, the other might save you a
bit of cash.
oblio wrote 1 day ago:
I'm talking about some companies that should have the best
IT departments on the planet.
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
Writing off equipment through depreciation is a time
honored thing for corps. If they sell them, they are no
longer a write off. That's now more work for the bean
counters.
oblio wrote 1 day ago:
Then donate them.
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't that essentially what they are doing when the
let the employees keep them?
oblio wrote 1 day ago:
My original comment in the thread:
> A large bunch of big companies, including some of
the biggest on the planet don't even sell
past-end-of-life laptops to their current
employees.
It's good that Automattic is doing it, I was
wishing it was an industry standard procedure, for
all past-end-of-life hardware, not just layoffs and
not just laptops.
Right now FAANG, for example, which you'd expect to
have the very best of everything, as far as I know
don't give old laptops (and other old hardware) to
employees, they don't even sell them. They send
them to be recycled or whatever, but the best
action is to reduce and reuse, recycle should be
the last option.
Plus an employee is likely to be willing to accept
their old device since they know it's performance
and general behavior.
deelowe wrote 1 day ago:
When I left microsoft, I kept everything EXCEPT data bearing
devices. I got the sense they REALLY didn't want to have to
collect the laptops either, but the VPs were forced to by
compliance.
igleria wrote 1 day ago:
klarna allowed us to buy our work phone and macbook paying only
the tax value. We had to give them the devices so they would be
wiped out by a third party, then they mailed them to my home.
OptionOfT wrote 1 day ago:
MacBooks and iPhones are amongst the easiest to wipe remotely.
You can wipe them fully (which would be the recommendation for
MacBooks) and remove just work-installed apps on an iPhone.
kstrauser wrote 1 day ago:
Absolutely. I was in charge of that at a previous job, and
telling Jamf to nuke the device did the job the next time it
was turned on.
runako wrote 1 day ago:
This is a G move, without a doubt the best way I've heard of
this being done.
refuser wrote 1 day ago:
Not especially surprising, but thereâs an awfully large elephant in
the room that likely directly contributed to this necessity that goes
completely unmentioned.
solardev wrote 1 day ago:
Drupal's sudden popularity?
mgdev wrote 1 day ago:
Matt's only real problem is not owning his ambition openly.
Trying to publicly argue the moral high ground was a stupid, unforced
error.
It didn't need to be moralized at all. Just make the changes you want
to make, piss off a vocal minority, then get back to winning and
making boatloads of money by executing exceptionally.
The problem, I suspect, is that Matt values how certain people
perceive him more than he values winning. It's unfortunate, because
he's clearly a very good executer and strategist. He's getting in his
own way.
Griffinsauce wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
> he's clearly a very good executer and strategist. He's getting in
his own way.
Apparently not. I'd argue he was perceived as such but has
thoroughly proven the opposite by now. There were so many stations
to get off the train.
bravetraveler wrote 1 day ago:
Ignore the financial valuations, man is a worm. I'd call him a
'hack' but that might imply talents given where we are.
Through his shitshow, he tried - and failed - to curry favor with
an OSS puppet. Not any particular software... like one might think,
but the whole "thing".
There was never any moment where WPEngine was beholden for offering
WordPress services. Everything was strained to the point he was
trying to redefine OSS.
He got in his way, ours as members of the public, and that of
WPEngine. Repeatedly... and I don't see enough reflection/reason
from Matt to believe this will change. Personally, I'd hesitate to
promote his strategies or skills.
Hamfisted is a better message. Or none, take the wind away. We
don't want his ambition or to hear about it. It's demonstrably
shit.
Edit: just in case this needs saying, I've never been affiliated
with either company. Don't waste your limited time looking for me,
Matt.
reshlo wrote 1 day ago:
If more people valued how others perceive them more than they
valued winning, the world would be a better place.
KennyBlanken wrote 1 day ago:
IMHO moralizing wasn't really the problem.
The extremely erratic behavior, the ego, the fixation with
vengeance, harassing organizations legally using the Wordpress
name, abusing his power at the wordpress foundation, using it to
punish Automattic competitors...
He pissed off a lot of people, but worse: he made a lot of people
nervous.
uoaei wrote 1 day ago:
Is the elephant in the room with us now? (Mind filling in?)
xd1936 wrote 1 day ago:
[1]
URI [1]: https://mullenweg.wtf/
URI [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20241026031947/https://bullenw...
stevage wrote 1 day ago:
Holy moly.
I never heard of this drama before.
This was crazy:
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/comments/1hlp08d/what_d...
ornornor wrote 1 day ago:
That was wild.
bananapub wrote 1 day ago:
the author of that email has been having a very public breakdown
for months now, mostly consisting of being a prick and trying to
harm the community and a competitor.
alphager wrote 1 day ago:
The legal threats against WPEngine and their customers, the
lawsuits between WP/Automatic/WPF and WPEngine, the banning of
several contributors, the takeover of WP Plugins on WP.org, the
shenanigans with several check boxes on the login pages of WP.org.
Analemma_ wrote 19 hours 7 min ago:
While it wasn't as damaging from a legal or (business)
reputational perspective, he also peeked into the Tumblr
database in order to doxx people who were making fun of him,
which doesn't say great things about his stability or fitness to
run a company.
65 wrote 1 day ago:
Matt Mullenweg is the elephant.
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
Since Matt regularly comments here, and given the expression
chosen; I'm pretty certain that they know who the elephant is.
foobarchu wrote 1 day ago:
His account has been inactive for almost all of 2025, I think
his legal team must have taken away the password.
lolinder wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
He has alts he uses that are probably still active.
chris_wot wrote 1 day ago:
Matt commenting here was part of the reason he is in the mess
he is in.
maccard wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2y7eyp3zpo
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