I'm off for a week of full-time volunteering with Three Rings at 3Camp, our annual volunteer hack week: bringing together our distributed team for some intensive in-person time, working to make life better for charities around the world.

And if there's one good thing to come out of me being suddenly and unexpectedly laid-off two days ago, it's that I've got a shiny new laptop to do my voluntary work on (Automattic have said that I can keep it).

#note #threeRings #volunteering #laptop #computers #work #automattic #employment #devcamp #hackathon

Via: https://danq.me/2025/04/04/3camp-2025/

Automattic's Big Bet: Layoffs Amid Growth Signal a Shift in Strategy https://tinyurl.com/mr2a33dy

WP Engine should offer free #WordPress hosting for a year to people laid off by #automattic yesterday, since they're no longer getting free hosting from .com.

The biggest surprise to me about the current #Automattic layoffs isn't the scale of it or that they're discriminating against those that were older than 40 — it's that there was a QA team.

#WordPress #Automattic #layoffs

'Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals.'

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/02/wordpress-maker-automattic-lays-off-16-of-staff/

TechCrunch: WordPress maker Automattic lays off 16% of staff. “Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/03/techcrunch-wordpress-maker-automattic-lays-off-16-of-staff/

Company behind WordPress just fired a lot of people:

“Automattic declined to confirm this number but we’re hearing the exact number was 281.”

“The layoffs include some longtime employees who have been with the company for north of a decade, we understand.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/02/wordpress-maker-automattic-lays-off-16-of-staff/

Apparently Automattic are laying off around one in six of their workforce. And I'm one of the unlucky ones.

Anybody remote hiring for a UK-based full-stack web developer (in a world that doesn't seem to believe that full-stack developers exist anymore) with 25+ years professional experience, specialising in PHP, Ruby, JS, HTML, CSS, devops, and about 50% of CMSes you've ever heard of (and probably some you haven't)... with a flair for security, accessibility, standards-compliance, performance, and DexEx?

CV at: https://danq.me/cv/index.html

#note #work #automattic #job #memorable #employment

Via: https://danq.me/2025/04/02/redundant/

Blogtastisch - 2. Blogs und das Fediverse

https://clip.place/w/7fCHrsXWiEWzXP2eSyQohp

Search Engine Journal: Mullenweg Considers Delaying WordPress Releases Through 2027. “A leaked WordPress Slack chat shows that Matt Mullenweg is considering limiting future WordPress releases to just one per year from now through 2027 and insists that the only way to get Automattic to contribute more is to pressure WP Engine to drop their lawsuit. One WordPress developer who read that message […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/14/search-engine-journal-mullenweg-considers-delaying-wordpress-releases-through-2027/

Pocket Casts: Web-, Mac- und Windows-Apps jetzt kostenlos zugänglich
Pocket Casts, eine der bekanntesten Plattformen für das Hören und Verwalten von Podcasts, bietet ab sofort seine Web-, Mac- und Windows-Apps für alle Nutzer kostenlos an. Diese Entscheidung
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/pocket-casts-web-mac-und-windows-apps-jetzt-kostenlos-zugaenglich/
#News #Services #Automattic #MacApp #OpenRSSPodcasting #PocketCasts #PocketCastsPlus #PodcastsKostenlos #WebPlayer #WindowsApp

Recent experience: #Automattic: refuses to remove #disinformation and fails to remove copyright violations despite DMCA reports. #Google: refuses to remove disinformation but claims it will disable or remove copyright infringements ‘soon’ (as of March 6) but has failed to do so to date.
I guess they only help big companies āe.

If this is true then only @wordpressdotcom would receive updates while the rest of the #WordPress community withers.

@photomatt Considers Delaying WordPress Releases Through 2027 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mullenweg-considers-delaying-wordpress-releases-through-2027/541821/

I am not a lawyer or time traveler, but from Matt’s odd statements, it appears that #WPEngine may actually win their lawsuit against #Automattic.

Matt on the other hand is “cutting off his nose to spite his face” with these measures, which is baffling honestly.

Any ActivityPub/Wordpress wizards out there? When I post a blog to AP and people like or boost it on Mastodon and other places, I need to manually accept those interactions from the Wordpress interface. I can understand comments need to be accepted to avoid spam on the blog. But what's the purpose of the other stuff? #Wordpress #ActivityPub #Automattic

Pocket Casts ora è gratis su web, Mac e Windows! Non serve più l'abbonamento per accedere alle app desktop. Ascolta i tuoi podcast preferiti ovunque. Sincronizza i progressi con l'account. #Podcast #PocketCasts #Gratis #WebApp #Automattic

Of the total 17 hours that #Automattic is now contributing to #WordPress, FIVE of those are to the Marketing Team. 30%! The same amount the “Executive Director” contributes.

HUH. Guess the Marketing Team isn’t as irrelevant as it was made out to be.

https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledge/automattic/

That’s now two pages reported to #Automattic for DMCA violations. Since they failed to act on the first, I doubt they will suddenly grow a backbone for the second. But it’s a US tech firm, so obviously you can’t trust them to honour their own terms and processes.

Late last year, #Automattic refused to remove a #disinformation post about me. I have filed a very routine DMCA complaint about a very obvious violation hosted by them. This has also been ignored.

Using WordPress internally at Automattic as a productivity tool is great... until you have to call in sick three days in a row and Jetpack treats your "streak" as an "achievement"!

#note #wordpress #automattic #work #illness #health

Via: https://danq.me/2025/02/26/3-day-streak/

Tumblr has financially backed Tapestry, an app launched earlier this month designed to let you organize feeds across the Fediverse, Bluesky, Tumblr, etc. #SocialMedia #Automattic #Tumblr #Bluesky #Fediverse #Mastodon #CreatorNews #SocialMediaNews

Tumblr backs Tapestry, a timel...