By Will Schmidt • Updated: 09/01/22 • 5 min read
The Year Without Pants: WordPress and the Future of Work
A lot has changed in the world of work since 2013, when Scott Berkun released this quirky book title, outlining his experience of becoming employee #58 at Automattic, a company remarkably different to his previous experience working at Microsoft.
From its inception in 2005, Automattic has been a fully remote company, and an extremely successful one. WordPress currently powers two out of every five websites on the Internet and, as of 2022, Matt Mullenweg and his team have built up the company to nearly 2,000 employees across the globe while also raising US$846 million across six funding rounds.
The following are key insights this book gives on Automattic’s success as a remote company and how it might provide a blueprint for creating your own thriving remote culture.
Automattic’s amazing culture began as an open source software project
Back in 2003, Matt Mullenweg posted on the Internet about his plans to fork b2 to create a better, more intuitive blogging system. Funnily enough the post attracted just one reply — Mike Little agreed to join the project which lead to start of a new open source project.
As WordPress started gaining in popularity, more programmers started contributing to the project. Eventually, this thriving community of contributors led to Mullenweg co-founding Automattic and the commercial version of the open source software.
From the start, anyone in the world could contribute to WordPress, and Automattic was built and operates the same way today. No office buildings and no geographic restrictions.
Asynchronicity is key to the way Automattic works
Automattic employees aren’t expected to work at a specific time of the day (or night). Everything happens asynchronously, through the magic of the Internet.
When new job applicants start the hiring process there’s a good chance they’ll be hired without ever having a phone or Zoom interview. For most roles, the entire job interview process happens over chat.
Supercharge your remote or distributed team culture in 5 minutes or less
Get exclusive content we only share with our email subscribers.
100% private and secure. Unsubscribe anytime.
Focus on the product you ship (“Real artists ship”)
Automattic focuses on their product creators, not managers. Which means there aren’t a lot of people at Automattic whose job it is to tell other people what to do.
If you want to get something done at Automattic, the best way to do it is to find a way to make it part of the product you work on. Everything else is secondary.
There is also a focus on shipping. Small incremental improvements are valued over big features that take a long time to develop. This means that there is always something new to ship, which keeps everyone engaged and excited about their work.
Keep meetings to a bare minimum
While the majority of work at Automattic happens asynchronously, meetings are still necessary from time to time. However, they are kept to a bare minimum in order to minimize interruptions and maximize productivity.
Typically, P2 discussion blogs are used to discuss and debate descissions. This meanbs, the types of things other companies would have meetings for, Automattic can often resolve in written form.
If a meeting is absolutely necessary, it is usually held over video chat so that people can participate from anywhere in the world. This allows for more flexible scheduling and eliminates the need for travel.
Meet up in real life!
Automattic gets together once a year for seven days of collaborative work and socializing. This week is called ‘Grand Meetup’, and it usually takes place in a different city each year.
In addition to their all-company Grand Meetup, teams meet up in person several times a year. These team meetups are an opportunity for the team to get to know each other better and work on projects together that they wouldn’t be able to do as easily online.
For example, the design team might get together to whiteboard some solutions to tricky UX problems. In Berkun’s book, he is working for Team Social, who had their meetup in Athens where they worked on redesigning the comment system.
Remote companies thrive if they’re made up of passionate people who love their job
If there’s one takeaway from reading this book, it’s a reminder that no matter what type of company you have, it’s never going to have great culture (in-office or remote) if it’s made up of the wrong types of people.
WordPress attracted people that initially were happy to work on the open source project for free, and Automattic continues to thrive and grow today by attracting the same kind of people that want to design and create.
Will the person you’re about to invite joining your team, be excited to wake up each day and work for your company? Skills and aptitude are important, but so is attitude and culture fit. If you’re not sure, take extra time to find people that truly believe in what you’re doing, because they’ll be the ones that help you achieve an Automattic level of greatness!
