The techies have spoken: working remotely trumps even a palatial office with games for all.
Automattic, the San Francisco firm that owns publishing-platform company WordPress, is selling its office, a converted warehouse on Hawthorne Street.
“The building boasts soaring ceilings and abundant natural light,” according to Colliers International, which has listed the property.
The place has got showers. It’s got a commercial kitchen. It’s 14,000 square feet.
But few of Automattic’s 550 employees would show up for work, preferring to enjoy the comforts of home and coffee shops, according to a new report.
“Five people go in it,” CEO Matt Mullenweg said in a podcast. “They get like 3,000 square feet each. There are as many gaming tables as there are people.”
The company has always made remote work an option for its workers, Quartz reported. If employees want to do their work elsewhere, in a co-working space, they can get a $250 per month stipend. If they want to get their work done at a coffee shop, the firm will pay for the coffee, according to Quartz.
As the company puts it in online recruitment material, “Everyone works from the location they choose. We’re spread out all over the world in more than 50 countries.”
Once a year, the hundreds of employees are all brought together, the company said. These “grand meetups” have taken place as far away as Budapest and as close as San Francisco, according to Automattic.
On top of these meetups, Automattic teams “meet for five to seven days to brainstorm team-level strategy and bond in locales ranging from Boulder to Buenos Aires, Las Vegas to Lisbon, Montréal to Mexico City, and Vienna to Vietnam.
“If you join our merry band, expect to travel three-to-four weeks per year.”
Just don’t wear your pajamas on the plane.
Photo: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg (Wikimedia Commons/Chiku Chu)
