Since our November 2024 lookthrough of Glassdoor reviews, Automattic’s overall rating is now at 3.0. That’s down from 3.8 and well below the industry average of 3.9. Matt’s approval rating has also plummeted from 62% to 36%. To use the same comparison as last time, WP Engine’s Heather Brunner continues to hold a 95% approval rating (with WP Engine’s overall score at 4.0.)
The following is a collection of reviews that have been posted publicly since last November, all from former or current employees of Automattic.
November 1st, 2024:
I noticed complaints about the CEO’s disruptive “Matt bombs” and uncomfortable rants during events from day one. While I appreciate the company’s openness, the dismissal of this behavior as “just him” raised concerns about accountability and its impact on morale.
November 4th, 2024:
The board needs to remove Matt as CEO and do a clean sweep of all the sycophants who contribute nothing to the day-to-day operations.
November 6th, 2024:
The CEO has lost his mind and is trying to bring the entire WordPress Community down with him.
December 29th, 2024:
The leadership team consistently fails to align with company values, particularly regarding our commitment to open source. The CEO’s decisions often contradict our established principles, creating a chaotic work environment. Management changes direction frequently without clear communication, making it difficult to maintain steady progress on projects. The company culture has suffered as executives seem more focused on short-term gains than upholding our original mission and values.
13th January, 2025:
Matt is extremely difficult and demoralizing to work with. He gives vague and terse directives, won’t answer clarifying questions, and then micromanages you retroactively. There’s even a long-standing and widespread term for when he notices something he doesn’t like (and often doesn’t understand) and then drops in to criticize everyone involved: it’s called a “mattbomb”. He’ll demand unrealistic and counterproductive changes, then disappear again.
He’ll make rude and unprofessional comments about people on internal blogs that are available to everyone in the company, while simultaneously preaching “good intent”. He seems to have no empathy, and refuses to change his negative behaviors. We did an engagement survey twice a year, and he always got very negative feedback from a large part of the company. The closer you work with him, the more you saw the real him.
In the past few years, he seems to be going off the rails more and more.
16th January, 2025:
The CEO is a complete embarrassment to the company. The board really should force his resignation. Not surprisingly, he has surrounded himself with low level ‘leaders’ that are even less effective than he is, I presume to preserve his fragile ego. Massive global orgs operate much more effectively than A8C. It shocks me how a ‘tech’ company can be so analog, bureaucratic, slow, and directionless.
9th March, 2025:
Stressful environment due to CEO’s conduct
2nd April, 2025:
CEO has gone off the deep end lately. Erratic moves, not listening to his lawyers, or anybody for that matter. The most recent event of 16% layoffs was done with zero notice and without reason other than “financial situation” despite admitting revenue has been increasing.
Matt, don’t lose your humanity completely. I know you used to be a good person
3rd April, 2025:
Extremely toxic environment. No leader has actual leadership experience so it’s essentially leaderless at all levels. Any external leaders that join are quickly pushed out.
3rd April, 2025:
The CEO is not a good leader and has no principles despite him stating otherwise. Look at his actions, not his words, and be the judge yourself.
5th April, 2025:
Top leadership is erratic and inexperienced, at times abusive and paranoid
12th April, 2025:
– The leadership is clueless about how to grow revenue, and the company has been going downhill since 2023. There is leadership rot due to which obvious solutions to some business problems never get implemented.
– The CEO doesn’t believe in data-driven approaches nor in marketing, and that shows in the company culture. Products are launched according to the whims and fancies of a few who think they know what will work, only to discover a few months later that their feature tanked revenue. It is then rolled back. Rinse and repeat multiple times a year.
– Several silent layoffs happened since 2023, and then in 2025, they laid off 16% of the workforce, which includes tenured and high performing engineers. Company claims their culture is based on kindness, but it all started going downhill since 2023.
– CEO worship culture. Internally called Matt-bombs, a single comment from the CEO is enough to change the entire direction of the business unit overnight.
2nd May, 2025:
I’ve been with Automattic for years, and it’s heartbreaking to say that the company has completely lost its way. The recent layoffs were handled in the most brutal, tone-deaf manner, with no known criteria, especially for a company that once prided itself on its ethical values. The CEO has lost all credibility, and the company now feels like a cult, where fear and insecurity dominate the culture.
While the flexibility and talented colleagues were once the highlights, everything else has become a struggle. Leadership is silent, career growth is non-existent, and employees are treated like disposable assets. The company has become a shadow of what it used to be.
If Automattic is to survive and regain its former strength, management needs to make a change at the top. The CEO must go. The talented people who remain deserve better leadership, transparency, and a culture of respect.
3rd May, 2025:
This used to be a tremendous place to work, but has been in decline since too-rapid growth post-Covid. Late 2024 CEO got the company involved in some nasty and very expensive litigation by provoking a rival to sue, and it has been downhill from there, resulting in two voluntary redundancy rounds and one mass layoff. This has decimated the culture and trust. Products are outdated and unable to keep up with technology or the market, largely because the whole company is built around the CEO/Founder’s ‘baby’ WordPress, plus piecemeal acquisitions according to his tastes and whims. Another big issue is that career advancement may be very wobbly. You can progress internally but find yourself unemployable after exit since the company invents its own roles, metrics and structures making it very hard to compare like for like when applying elsewhere. Fundamentally permanently USA-centric despite attempts to be globally minded.
I don’t know how to suggest Matt extricates himself from the litigation at this point, and I fear he will lose the company he built. He should re-read Jerry Colonna’s “Reboot” and learn to consider whether he might sometimes be in the wrong. Otherwise he will go down with his ship and take the global workforce with him.
22nd May, 2025:
Bad, really bad, outdated products, that break at the seams, that bleed customers, that are difficult to setup and maintain, and the most terrible leadership, with a CEO that should not be allowed near a computer
22nd May, 2025:
Unfortunately once an amazing place to work is now a pretty horrific place to work. The main cons are:
– Some of the leadership are scared of the CEO i.e. offending him and just do as he says without question. I don’t know why this is, it’s not a criticism aimed at Matt but those who work closely with him. Advise him better. People just things that are absolutely pointless to appease him.
– The legal issues with the rival organisation currently on-going has totally messed up the culture at Automattic, there were a lot of things that were just outright childish and to be honest really weird. Automattic lost some amazing people because of this. I will add however I believe although Matt gets a lot of negativity, I do believe the alignment offer he made was generous.
25th June, 2025:
– Everything you read here about the CEO is true. He used to be awesome, but people like Musk rubbed off on him and now he’s a spoiled rich kid who leads by fear and intimidation and decisions that make absolutely no business sense and he gets away with it because he was indeed successful the first 10 years and he’s been on autopilot the last 10.
– Yes men culture, the few higher ups under Matt are outside hires that do not challenge him and encourage him to do nonsensical things for our products
– Everyone is afraid they will get fired for voicing their opinions
– Coldhearted layoffs. After two rounds of insanely good buyouts, the remaining employees that were loyal had a surprise 16% workforce cut that was instant and for an incredibly low severance that was absolutely nothing compared to the buyouts
– Likely nosediving financially due to bad legal actions, unimproved products and services, and so many of the best talents taking the buyouts or being laid off. Do not apply, run far far away
Get rid of the CEO, #1. Get rid of every single lacky directly under him. Rebuild in a new era without fearmongering and control.
11th July, 2025:
Fish rots from the head. Get rid of all the incompetent yes-man in the leadership, and put someone else then Matt at the helm. Automattic build an amazing and rigirous hiring process, and not they are surprised that they have “feedback inflation”. Duh – you hired the best of the best, and they perform as expected. Since they can’t performance manage folks out, they just lay off people based on certain person’s gut feeling/rubric.
17th July, 2025:
The CEO is now well past the point of redemption. He operates like a textbook bully—dodging accountability, incapable of empathy, and oblivious to the damage he causes. His inner circle either cowers in silence or has gladly traded integrity for a paycheck. Product innovation at Automattic is on life support. For years, the CEO openly dismissed the value of Product Managers and mocked their contributions. What little creativity exists comes from outside, through acquisitions that are quickly smothered by arrogance and mismanagement. Here’s a challenge for Matt: every two years, require your executive team to secure compelling job offers elsewhere. If they can’t prove the market actually values their skills, let them go. I’d bet 30–60% of them wouldn’t survive that test. And to the Board: if anyone’s still paying attention: either step down or take action. Letting the CEO hemorrhage millions in legal costs because he can’t control his impulses is not just negligence but a stain on your own reputations. Enough is enough.
21st July, 2025:
Wish I had left years ago
The founder/CEO certainly landed on something special with WordPress over 20 years ago and rode some fantastic tailwinds through 2020. Unfortunately, his growth as a leader (and human) was completely arrested. When facing true adversity for the first time, Matt completely undermined the culture (and therefore value proposition) of Automattic as an employer. He fired and sidelined all the true leaders and handed things over to all of the most toxic yes-men. He somehow has learned all the wrong lessons and spent the last couple years doubling and tripling-down on poor strategy while repeatedly disrupting promising initiatives. It’s a toxic mess mess shrouded in false-positivity. The tech stack is an outdated mess and managed by a disaster of systems/engineering “leader” (which is killing engineering velocity and product innovation). Despite the Automattic creed, please be warned that you should NEVER question the status quo. When you interview, you’ll doubtlessly encounter some excellent humans (they’re still there and will be prominent on the hiring team), but the reality on the ground is bad. You will not be insulated from toxic leadership. Your career will stagnate. Your skills will become less marketable. Your mental health may very well be impacted long term.
6th August, 2025:
Automattic used to be the gold star for remote work and company culture, but now it’s a culture of fear, instability, and distrust. Leadership blames ICs and team leads for what is really a lack of solid leadership and vision from the top. ICs and team leads are tasked with driving profit, but are not empowered to make the changes necessary to do so. Matt-bombs destroy promising efforts that could lead to drastic improvements of a8c products, and whatever morale is left is quickly snuffed out by Matt-meltdowns, both publicly and privately.