Automattic

Automattic is a software company whose products include WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Tumblr and WordPress VIP. Its work centres on WordPress, the open-source content management system that the company says powers over 40% of all websites. WordPress.com gives blogs and websites a home on the web, the free WooCommerce plugin lets merchants sell online and WordPress VIP serves enterprises, all built on the same underlying software. The company states a mission to democratize publishing, commerce and messaging, and says the vast majority of its work is available under the GPL, the open-source licence that WordPress itself uses.

The company's wider portfolio includes Day One for journaling, Pocket Casts for podcast listening, Longreads for long-form storytelling, Akismet for spam filtering, Gravatar for profile images, Beeper for messaging and Newspack, which offers tools to publish stories, drive revenue and build audiences. Automattic also contributes to open-source and non-profit projects such as WordPress.org, BuddyPress, bbPress, WordCamps and the Five for the Future initiative.

Automattic describes itself as a distributed company and has been remote-first since its founding in 2005, working asynchronously and communicating through Slack and the P2 collaboration tool. Building a company around remote work was unusual in the software industry at the time, though the practice has since become far more common. Automattic's 1,412 staff, who call themselves Automatticians, are spread across nearly every corner of the globe and speak 107 languages, with shared spaces in New York's NoHo and San Francisco's Mission district available for in-person collaboration. The company contrasts its approach with employers that demand a return to the office, saying it values impact over hours and believes staff should have autonomy over the projects they take on.