Musk derangement syndrome - Backend Engineer Automattic Employee Review

I think the team collaboration is the best one I have ever seen through my 11 years of career.

Sometimes, the company focus too much on quality and don't pay enough attention to speed.

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.

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.