Culture, what culture? - Software Engineer Automattic Employee Review

1.0
Sep 10, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Remote work is good - Work is impactful as WP powers a lot of the web - Small teams and nice people

Cons

- Leadership increasing pressure to deliver to unrealistic deadlines - Engineers are responsible for everything, leadership take no accountability for failures, engineers are blamed instead - No project management, engineers are expected to do this - Design doesn't really know what to do, engineers are expected to do this - No clear roadmap from leadership, engineers are expected to do this (seriously, if you "work on the wrong thing" you'll be fired) - Arbitrary performance metrics, lines of code, PR count, compared to other teams working on different things - Management overrule team leads on IC feedback, call it "alignment"

Explore other reviews about Automattic

5.0
Apr 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Thorough and thoughtful onboarding process. Super supportive coworkers. The vast amount of resources to learn is second to none. Leads and mentors proactively check in and offer support constantly. Diversity and inclusion is amazing.

Cons

I do not have any cons at this time.

2.0
Jan 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I had the opportunity to work alongside incredibly smart, talented, and kind colleagues who were always willing to share their knowledge. The role offered diverse and engaging technical challenges working with a wide range of customers, most of whom were pleasant to collaborate with. The company provided excellent health insurance and 401k benefits, which I genuinely appreciated. The yearly travel for team meetups was a highlight. It created valuable opportunities for team building and strengthened relationships across the distributed team.

Cons

While unlimited PTO sounds attractive on paper, in practice it required careful coordination with team capacity and management, making it less flexible than expected. The culture inadvertently encouraged overworking, as people often forgot to actually take time off. Weekend on-call shifts, combined with a small team rotation, created real burnout risk. The most significant issue was the unexpected layoffs, which were extremely disruptive to team morale and productivity. The instability created by constant turnover ultimately became unsustainable and led to my decision to leave the company.

10
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