My trip to Automattic started while searching for the best remote workplaces before COVID-19 was even a thing, back in January 2020! My findings included several remote workplaces but most of them were not distributed, meaning that only 2-3 would let you work from anywhere.

This will be a series of blog posts:

1. How did I ended up sending a CV (current post)
2. Interview Process at Automattic
3. My first 45 days at Automattic

What do they sell?

My next step was to do a little research about the company and their business field / product. Till then, I had never again heard of Automattic. So, I booted their site https://automattic.com/ and to my excitement I have been presented with a dead simple design only covered by text… I was just going to abandon the idea of working there when their products attracted my attention:

• WordPress.com
• Jetpack
• WooCommerce
• Tumblr
• many more here https://automattic.com/

I actually not only knew but have used all of them! The idea of working for a company whose products I use, got me excited! I started digging more. Automattic was founded by Matt Mullenweg (a founding WordPress developer) and is the force behind WordPress.com, a hosted version of WordPress a CMS (Content Management System) which has the biggest market share among all websites deployed currently globally. Automattic itself is one of the biggest contributors to WordPress which feels really good.

Verdict: I really like the product / business

Are employees happy?

After having decided that I might like to work for a company (which I have never heard before), I tried finding more about how are current employees are feeling. Glassdoor usually is a great resource for big companies and generally headquartered in US, UK or another big country. Reviews were not so many in contrast to the company size (68 reviews / >1000 employees) so I tried googling which actually returned a lot of posts written by current employees. That gave me confidence in feeling that most employees are happy while working at Automattic.

Verdict: Employees that take a moment to write their experience with a company should really be happy!

Spoiler Alert: Employees working at the Support department are called Happiness Engineers!

How does it feel working there?

Digging more through the posts, anybody would easily understand how the work week flows. Nothing is hidden or not well documented. Everybody works async in any timezone they prefer and can distribute their working hours in the day / week as they please. The most interactions are text based (Slack, P2, email) and they have 2-3 hours scheduled weekly for zoom sessions. The following great post summarises it pretty well: Q&A: What is Working At Automattic Like. But what bought me in was the Automattic Creed. Being a Scout myself, I take creeds seriously. Working in an environment that all colleagues have agreed on a creed makes you think their mindset is close to yours.

Verdict: You work from home and it feels like home!

Spoiler Alert: Actually, the level of professionalism / kindness / compassion of all Automattic employees has been eye- opening for me. I even had a colleague, which I only knew for 1 minute, jumping in a zoom call in order to explain me the data layer of Calypso, ending up him live coding typescript and teaching me for 60 minutes! Thanks Dennis!

Next: 2/3 Interview Process at Automattic