Seems like another CEO/lawyer misstep. Why offer the same package for someone who started 2 days ago? Someone could've made "Length worked at company" as a factor in the maths.

A 30K budget would make a very nice 6 months vacation indeed...

It would be hilarious of someone started 2 days ago, took the money left and went to WP Engine.

Probably still had another offer

The offer probably come with some sort of a non-compete clause. Otherwise WPE could pull a Pressable by offering to secure a job for everyone who leaves A8C.

I would assume most Automattic employees are paid substantially more than $60k / year, so few people will be getting only 30k.

At least in big American cities, $60k is a bus driver's salary.

Our current average salary is 149k USD, median is 134k USD.

That’s quite a lot. I imagine you’d be happy if you could get a little more than half as much in Europe.

It's an exaggeration. Starting salary in LA for a bus driver is $53k/year; NYC is $61k. Atlanta is $42k; Seattle $69k; Dallas $48k; Miami $43k. It's really only a very limited amount of cities that have $60k salaries for bus drivers.. and they're all cities where $60k doesn't get you that far.

For a comparison, starting salary for a bus driver in Paris is 30k euros (with no prerequisites, they will send you to learn how to drive a bus). I'd imagine the conditions are much better (a lot more time off, lower working hours), and the cost of living is lower, so those compensate for some of the difference.

Automattic is headquartered in San Francisco, where $60k is a bus driver's salary.

So there are probably very few employees whose 6-month salary would only equal $30k. Most people leaving will be getting a lot more.

Netherlands is around €37k/year, and a minimum of 41 holidays xD

While you are learning it’s only €22k though.

I guess the fact you get free insurance helps, and it’s not quite as bad as I thought, but with an income like that you can get a mortgage of around 170k, which will net you around 40% of a house.

How much after income taxes, though? I recently learned that after taxes, my salary in Eastern Europe is around average salary in a few US states, although on paper (pre-tax) it looks like the US is 4 times richer.

> $60k is a bus driver's salary.

...yearly salary

Right. Which is twice the 6-month minimum value (aka a yearly salary) Automattic is giving people if they want to leave.

I dunno, some-one who started 2 days ago may take just as long, or longer, to find their next employer as some-one with years of employment/experience.

If you've just started a job you've probably got an up to date CV, perhaps even some other job offers you turned down.

I’m not sure. The market is still pretty rough.

Then again I’m only speaking from my experience. Fewer companies are interested in interviewing and hiring me than ever in my career right now. If I had a job, I wouldn’t be leaving it.

Maybe other people are having an easier time. I hope so!

But they have a job, they're not being compensated for being let go, they're being compensated for voluntarily leaving.

Usually the only thing that can be done during job verification is:

- did they work there?

- can they be rehired?

If the second is a "no" it usually isn't good news (usually, that only happens when you're fired 'for cause', at least in the US).

So, it isn't as pretty as an offer as you'd think.

If somebody started mere days ago, they can simply omit this job from their CV entirely and nobody would notice the gap.

I assure you that this was considered. People are much smarter than you give them credit for. There’ll be a reason, you just don’t know what it is.

Ah yes, this chap is tanking his company into the ground for Reasons! Like feelings! No one in the entire history of the world has been on a coke bender and made bad life choices!

If you're rich enough or have enough of a cult following, every bad decision is really the work of a genius playing four-dimensional chess.

Is Elon Musk but written in PHP (1) a millionaire? Maybe he thinks 6 months' salary pay-off per person is well worth it to get rid of people who don't believe in his crusade...

1) Someone else's joke I saw on Instagram referring to Matt.

That's uncharitable. Mullenweg has been pretty good for the FOSS ecosystem as a whole, and he's just going after one particular company (arguably one particular board member of such company, the SilverLake guy), that he now sees as parasitical to the ecosystem.

Musk steered a social-networking giant into american-far-right territory for his own vanity, retweets baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories, and supports all sorts of terrible campaigns.

The ballparks are very different.

> That's uncharitable. Mullenweg has been pretty good for the FOSS ecosystem as a whole, and he's just going after one particular company

This is actually far from Matt's first rodeo:

He described Movable Type as "desperate and dirty players" for having a section in their docs on how to migrate WordPress content into a Movable Type blog.

When Envato started allowing people to publish themes they had created with a proprietary license, he retaliated by banning any developer on the Envato platform from speaking at any WordPress-related event (sound familiar to punishing the users for a disagreement with a platform?)

Wix was accused by Matt of using WP's mobile text editor in violation of the GPL. Wix showed that they had actually adhered to the license terms, and then forker their own version under the MIT license.

> one particular company (arguably one particular board member of such company, the SilverLake guy), that he now sees as parasitical to the ecosystem.

He went after GoDaddy in 2022 for the same reason, to the same extent.

Interestingly, for someone who has such hatred for Private Equity as "leeches and freeloaders and parasites upon open source software and communities", the ONLY other active member of the WordPress Foundation board (than Matt) is the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm that Matt himself appointed.

This is not his first misstep, by far.

These are all small potatoes when compared to Musk's antics.

Never said they weren't, but was responding to your comment about him being good for FOSS and this just being a first instance of a straw breaking the camel's back and causing him to lash out.

He lashes out quite regularly. There are other instances too, including him previously rewriting agreements after attacking people.

There's also this:

https://pearsonified.com/truth-about-thesis-com/

Wow, Matt really is an angry teenager lashing out in a middle aged man's body.

To be fair, that incident was nine years ago.

> And the person who accepted 6 months salary/$30k to leave the job he started two days prior...

I would expect you have to have been there for X months or Y years already in order to be given the deal. Unless Mullenweg is really that desperate to get rid of anyone who doesn't agree with his hissy fit.

I don't love the way the dude handled it, but what is preventing you from even considering that it is a genuine gesture to his employees?

He mentions someone taking it had joined only a few days earlier.

> Unless Mullenweg is really that desperate to get rid of anyone who doesn't agree with his hissy fit.

Given his quite emotional outbursts, this does not seem that unlikely.