
Automattic is closing its San Francisco office as most employees work remotely - nkjoep
https://qz.com/1002655/the-company-behind-wordpress-is-closing-its-gorgeous-san-francisco-office-because-its-employees-never-show-up/
======
marcuskaz
We didn't switch to allowing remote work but started remote and always been
remote. We had an office space at Pier 38 that was closed by the city in
2011[1], so had to scramble to find space. At that time we thought we would
expand more in Bay Area and found a good deal that also could support other
employees visiting the Bay Area. For example, in 2013 we held our whole
company meetup, but have outgrown it. The main US WordCamp used to be held in
SF but now as cost goes up we are moving them around last two in Philly, next
in Nashville so another use of the space wasn't needed.

We found it easier to grow and expand all over the world and didn't grow as
much in the Bay Area as thought. Currently only 20-30 people of our 550+ live
in Bay Area

Also as far as space goes, that is just one photo of the downstairs area of
the space. You can see more at
[https://automattic.com/lounge/](https://automattic.com/lounge/) and some
early shots here
[https://customspaces.com/photo/uklO4BLxis/](https://customspaces.com/photo/uklO4BLxis/)

P.S. I'm the guy in the green shirt in the photo, woo hoo!

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/pier-38-shut-
down/](https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/pier-38-shut-down/)

~~~
23443463453
It's what I don't get about the whole outsourcing, tech sector debate; if bay
area tech employees are so expensive, why not hire people that are equally or
at least sufficiently as qualified in other parts of the USA, where you could
get away with paying them less even though it would provide them with wildly
higher quality of life than they would get anywhere in the Bay area from most
perspectives. Essentially the question is why the heck outsource to places
like India, where people don't speak proper English and the technical skills
are lower in many ways, which is only compounded by communication issues, let
alone why hire H1B visas from, e.g., India at Silicon Valley rates; when you
could have hired net far better Americans in the long run. Western and
American society suffers from a shortsightedness that will end up destroying
not just the USA, but the advancement of all of the rest of humanity through
that kind of mentality. You can only live on the inertia of others for so long
before momentum ceases.

~~~
gnopgnip
If they were equally qualified they would still demand a comparable salary. A
full stack dev in Houston makes nearly as much as one in SF with the same
qualifications.

~~~
linkregister
A quick jaunt to Stack Overflow Jobs, Glassdoor, or h1bdata.info will show you
that in the vast majority of cases, no. Different markets have wildly varying
pay.

If you meant "overall net income", then the Houston dev would likely come out
ahead after taxes and rent/mortgage.

------
alaskamiller
Had a party at the WordPress office a few years back and it's a great space.
There's a lounge, kitchen, the bathrooms are nice, some room for bikes, and
the rest of the space is setup to be multi-use. There's a big stage area and
the corners are furnished to be pretty cozy.

Of my past work places--death star cube farms in old silicon valley to tiny
rooms in sweltering Berkeley summers to shiny live/work lofts to giant
sprawling disneyland like campus to noisy hipster coffee shops--that WordPress
office would be up there in terms of a good place to work at.

The real story is the upward trend that if you give an inch, your employees
will take a foot. If you offer telecommute, workers will not show up.

I've been freelancing and telecommuting the past five years. I've built my
workstyle around chat bubbles, slack channels, video calls, and emails whether
2PM or 2AM.

I've built my lifestyle around that. As in I work around my life. Things
just... get done without a direct measure of productivity anymore.

Sitting somewhere from 9 to 5 is like watching TV from the 2000's, ordering
Netflix DVDs when we live in the 2010's with streaming Netflix.

And as one disappear, so does another and another. When you look around and
realize no one else is there anymore it just becomes a ghost town while the
virtual water cooler becomes more and more vibrant.

No ones goes to the office anymore, it's too lonely.

~~~
devoply
> if you give an inch, your employees will take a foot.

Employers have been eating up to 10 hours (2 hours per day) of unpaid commute
time of employees for ages. Is it then really surprising that no one wants to
waste time coming to work. If that time was paid, if commute time was paid,
then maybe you would consider it. But it's a very simple economic calculation.
It's like why am I paying for that time. I don't have to, so I won't. That 10
hours is 20% extra salary that is not paid.

And if your argument is that you could live closer, then the counter argument
is that employers should have their offices in affordable areas where any
employee can afford to easily live because rent is cheap. Not in the middle of
downtown because that's what their peers or customers expect.

~~~
del82
It's interesting to view commute time as the employer's time rather than
employee's time, and therefore as time that should be compensated. I'd always
thought of it as the employee's time, and the employee's decision about where
to live and how to commute, etc. As an employee I'd factor in the commute when
making decisions about a job.

Playing with this idea a bit: do you view the clothes that someone (only)
wears to a traditional in-person office as rightfully the responsibility of
the employer? Lunch?

~~~
croon
To some extent, yes on all counts.

> As an employee I'd factor in the commute when making decisions about a job.

Meaning you make concessions to either where you live or where you work. Isn't
that a sign that it's not completely your choice? If all jobs could be done
from home you would have all choices of housing available.

> do you view the clothes that someone (only) wears to a traditional in-person
> office as rightfully the responsibility of the employer? Lunch?

Same reasoning here: The only way you're not making concessions is if you
happen to like the clothes that fit within the dress code of the company (if
any).

And as for lunch, I've done IF for a few years (stopped a while back), and
it's really difficult if you don't tailor it around work when it comes to work
lunches, fitting meetings, available restaurants around work if you don't
bring your own lunch, etc.

I don't have much problems with either of it, as I've accepted it as status
quo, but it's obviously not a free choice.

~~~
del82
> Meaning you make concessions to either where you live or where you work.
> Isn't that a sign that it's not completely your choice?

Well yes, I mean there are many things about my job and my life that aren't
completely my choice if by that we mean I have to make prioritization
decisions and tradeoffs. Not being forced to work from any specific location
eliminates one of the constraints, sure.

The point was more about the idea that commute time should be compensated for
those whose employers to require them to come to an office. That's not obvious
to me. Suppose, for example, I chose to live 2 hours away from my office.
Should I be compensated for the 4 hours per day I spend commuting?

~~~
croon
> The point was more about the idea that commute time should be compensated
> for those whose employers to require them to come to an office. That's not
> obvious to me. Suppose, for example, I chose to live 2 hours away from my
> office. Should I be compensated for the 4 hours per day I spend commuting?

Yes, you're right. I wasn't arguing for a mandate, but merely questioning the
status quo. But if I could change it, I guess I would say;

Not if you have the choice to work from home instead. Otherwise, I don't know,
maybe? Obviously no one wants to pay wage to someone who chooses to live hours
from work, but likewise if my employer forces me to be somewhere far away when
I can get the same work done remotely, that's equally bad.

Of course both parties has the choice of switching employer/employee, but I
digress.

------
Androider
If you ask anyone inside IBM or Yahoo, going from remote to in-office was all
about significantly reducing the headcount. The moves also coincided with
reducing the number of sites, so many people would have to move far away or
resign.

I think the benefits of working remotely are still poorly understood, and
long-term the companies that are being built remote-first are going to have a
significant engineering advantage over those that bolt remote working on after
the fact.

~~~
tuna-piano
If true, it seems like a silly way to reduce headcount. The employees who feel
like they need the job will move, but those who know they can get a job
elsewhere will not. This adverse selection leads to some of your best
employees leaving, with your worst staying.

Better to just pick and choose who you want to keep.

~~~
dreamcompiler
> This adverse selection leads to some of your best employees leaving, with
> your worst staying.

Doesn't matter. Failing public companies like IBM and Yahoo don't care about
better vs. worse employees; what they care about is reducing costs, and that
tends to make better employees _more_ likely to be laid off, because they're
more expensive. Wall Street doesn't give a damn how good your employees are;
it just wants them to be cheap.

~~~
skylark
That seems overly cynical. I doubt Google would be the company it is today by
hiring cheap employees.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Is Google a failing public company?

------
ldp01
It sounds like the crux of the issue is connectivity is now fast, reliable,
and cheap. Employees don't need to waste time commuting anymore, so they
don't.

Now spare a thought for those of us sweating in the digital wasteland that is
Australia.

Every so often I have to walk over to my fridge and nudge my 4G modem to
improve the signal strength. I have a script running 'round the clock to reset
the darn thing if the connection drops completely (this somehow it fixes it).
I need the 4G connection because the copper wire to my house is so broken it
can no longer support an ADSL signal.

Fibre is apparently coming in like... 2019? It is expected to run at a maximum
of 25Mbps.

Needless to say, remote work is not exactly on the cards.

~~~
rmccue
FWIW, I have 100Mbps on NBN fibre in Brisbane, and I remote work (for a
WordPress agency, as it happens).

Fast internet is definitely possible in Australia, although right now, you
might need to move to get it (alas). It's also not yet cheap (but we can
partially expense internet, and you can also write it off for tax).

~~~
coffeecheque
I've got 100Mbps plan over copper with FTTN. Generally get about 96mb/s down
and 35Mb/s up. It's great.

But I'm lucky, and I get that. We play the broadband lotto, and it's not easy
to win. If I move I no doubt will be back in the ADSL2 world hoping I'm close
to the exchange.

~~~
ldp01
100Mbps on FTTN? That's not bad!

I'm holding my breath for when the NBN finally rolls through my area. Even
25Mbps would be acceptable at this point.

I had a chuckle today when I saw a restaurant in the Perth CBD was using a
Vividwireless 4G modem. I would have thought the middle of the city at least
would have a decent wired connection.

------
mrweasel
If you look at the pictures I can't say I'm surprised. It doesn't look like a
nice place to work. Two long desk, concrete floor, it looks very temporary.

~~~
ajdlinux
If my employer weren't providing me with a proper monitor, as appears to be
the case in these pictures, then I wouldn't be coming into the office either.

(Actually, if my employer weren't providing me with a proper monitor, I'd be
refusing to work on the grounds of the occupational health and safety risks of
working primarily from a laptop for an extended period of time.)

~~~
TheCoreh
Automattic does provide monitors for all employees. In fact, they will arrange
a session with an ergonomics consultant upon hiring you to set up a proper
home office, as well as give you an allowance to buy a proper desk, chair,
keyboard, etc.

At the San Francisco office, there's a table with cinema display monitors you
can plug your laptop to, they're just out of frame on this picture.

I'm 100% sure the people on this photo are not using the external monitors
because they don't want to. Some people prefer a consistent workflow
everywhere (be it at home, the office, Starbucks or at the beach) and you
can't quite get that with an external monitor.

Source: Worked at Automattic

~~~
ajdlinux
Well, that's good to hear! I'm surprised by how happy people seem to be using
a laptop monitor, but at least it's their choice.

~~~
jasonlotito
I'm surprised as well, though I see that trend where I work as well. People
who have a monitor sitting on their desk, but they never use it. They only use
their laptop. For myself, I love desktop space.

~~~
ghaff
I've changed over time for some reason. I have a nice dual monitor, mechanical
keyboard setup in my office at home. But I really got into the habit of
working on my laptop--probably because of a lot of travel. These days, I'm
more likely to just work on my laptop at home and not even in the office. At
work, I have an external monitor and keyboard I could use but I never do.

------
westoque
As a remote developer myself. I still value having an office.

I think being remote with an office setup is the best you can get. I can go in
at any time I want, and still have the nice environment to work from of.

Being remote doesn't necessarily mean no offices.

~~~
georgestephanis
Yarp! That's what our coworking allowance is for. I've been a member of a
local coworking space for longer than I've worked at Automattic, and always
got value out of it. But there's many coworkers that don't get value from it
-- so no need for them to pay for / expense it.

------
nfriedly
I feel like I have the best of both worlds. I work remote, at least from my
employer's prospective, but I recently leased an office in town.

I now have a quiet, private space to work, and a nice 5-6 minute bicycle
commute :D

It costs a little bit (~$300/mo for the space & utilities - yay for small-
town-Ohio pricing), but it's totally worth it.

~~~
sasper
This is how I like to manage my 100% remote position -- I rent a small space
to convert into an office, or just hop into a coworking space depending on the
amount of time I'm going to be somewhere and the infrastructure that needs to
be built out.

I have worked "from home" for years and have much better mental health (and
therefore better relationships) if I have a separate space to work from.

------
syshum
>The goal is to make the company’s workforce more nimble

No the goal is to reduce head count with out laying people off. Companies that
go from Remote to Non-Remote do it because it is an easy way to reduce head
count with out having to Lay people off, it is a methodology to force people
to look for work elsewhere.

People that can not relocate or have built their life around working from home
can not or will not make the transition back to working in an office easily.
As such they will seek out employment that better fits their needs which is
ultimately these companies goal because they want to avoid that "XX Company is
laying off X,XXX people in the next quarter" headlines

~~~
abakker
>Companies that go from Remote to Non-Remote do it because it is an easy way
to reduce head count with out having to Lay people off, it is a methodology to
force people to look for work elsewhere.

Isn't the article suggesting that Automattic is doing the opposite? They are
allowing people to work remote? By your logic, this would be to help _retain_
workers, right?

~~~
syshum
The story also talks about IBM and Yahoo and how they are doing the opposite
of Automattic, this is where the quote is from and what I am talking about.

While the headline is about Automattic the actual article covers more than
just them

------
TokenDiversity
I'm sick of working in open spaces. If you cannot give me a cubicle, let me
work at home.

There are countless researches clearly saying that open spaces are bad for
productivity yet for some reason they always win. And it's easy to see why,
you only have to throw buzzwords like collaboration, team-work, open ... and
done.

~~~
restalis
What I dislike most about a cubicle is the lack of natural light. (Open space
doesn't necessarily mean that natural light is available, I know, but a
cubicle makes it even less likely.) I am all for productivity but the cubicle
setup feels like going to an extreme for the sake of the last few available
percents worth of concentration improvement by stepping over parts of our
inherent nature. I am willing to tolerate that only for limited periods if I
absolutely need that productivity boost, I am not however considering that
good for me or anyone else for the normal daily work regime.

------
Mozai
So they bought an oversized office space, provisioned it like a warehouse, in
a location that is horribly expensive to live near or get to. Are they
surprised employees would rather not go there?

~~~
rejschaap
They leased a warehouse and provisioned it like an office. People probably
like to go there, but they like to not go there more. I don't think they are
terribly surprised as they created the remote working policy deliberately. It
is more a counterpoint to IBM and Yahoo and their policy of not allowing
remote work any more.

~~~
georgestephanis
Local employees do like to use it, but as we've grown, the majority of
employees are not local to it. Fewer bay area employees proportionally, fewer
events in SF (due to price, we tend to do meetups elsewhere -- and with recent
customs concerns preferably not in the US for our international coworkers),
fewer usage.

------
CapnCrunchie
Working remotely has been a great experience for me. My wife and I started
traveling around the US since I am fully remote and her company offered to let
her work remote for a while so we could do this.

We either work out of the Airbnb we rent or a cafe. In some cities we were
close to a reasonably priced co-working space and would work out of there.

The big draw for me has been the flexibility. We try as hard as possible to do
asynchronous work, so some days I will take a few hour break in the middle of
the day and go do something, and then work later into the evening.

------
sgt
I find this quite funny: "And if they’d rather work at Starbucks, Automattic
will pay for their coffee"

I can understand occasionally working out of a coffee shop. But who does this
all the time and remains productive? And is it really fair to the coffee shop?

~~~
Woofles
I work out of a coffee shop every morning and come into the office around
lunch time. It helps break up my day into getting serious work done and things
that require communications.

As for being fair to the coffee shop, it's just become a way of life recently.
If you don't want people working from your shop, don't offer wifi. The shop
I'd been going to for over a year recently stopped offering wifi so I started
going to a more worker friendly shop.

------
tuna-piano
Humans desire to be a part of a community. For the last several decades, that
community (in the US) has been in large part the workplace.

Is anything replacing the workplace as the form of community for people or is
that something that is just being lost?

~~~
marcosdumay
The workplace stopped hosting healthy communities decades ago. Forcing people
into being there all day is just making sure no other community appears to
fill this need.

~~~
steve-howard
I'm sure you're well aware that this depends on the workplace.

~~~
marcosdumay
Not really. At least, not to any sizeable amount. It depends more on the
country, but if a decade on the same job is a long time on your region, then
no workplace will have a healthy community.

------
spikels
Shame that such awesome space was barely being used right in the middle of SF.
There is a pretty severe shortage of office space in the area. Automattic
should both make a pretty good profit by subleasing at current much higher
market rents and help alleviate the shortage.

Even better would be if this low density land could be incorporated into the
huge 667 Folsom office/residential project planned next door. You could build
50,000+ sqft on that large lot and help both the office and housing shoartage.
Unfortunately SF's planning process is so slow and uncertain it is probably
too late even if the owner and tenants agreed.

------
kyriakos
doesn't strike me like a nice office. looks like a co-working space for
startups. add more people and it will look like a hackathon than a company
workspace.

~~~
Cthulhu_
That may just be the intent. I see that appear in a lot of hip modern offices,
with parts modeled after Starbucks / coffee shops because that's the
environment a certain type of person prefers to work.

------
redm
It's gotten far easier to telecommute in recent years and that keeps the
productivity much higher than it used to be. My partners and I tried remote
work back in 2007, even spending 10k to video conference with Marratech [1]
(Google-owned). Today it's trivial to have good fast communication while
working remotely.

[1] [http://www.marratech.com/](http://www.marratech.com/)

------
raimue
The article claims they had 5 people visiting the office regularly. That does
not sound much compared to 550 employees. However, according to their map [1],
there are only about 10 employees in SF itself, a few more in the
surroundings.

Maintaining a 15,000 square feet office in that area for the amount of
employees seems oversized in any case.

[1] [https://automattic.com/map/](https://automattic.com/map/)

------
daemonk
I've just started working remotely. I think one of the major benefit for me is
actually that we mostly communicate via e-mail/messaging services.

Of course there are plenty of situations where talking face to face is more
informative, but I often find that to be rare.

Communicating via text has the added benefit of documentation and allows you
to think about what you are actually writing. I find describing what I plan to
do with a client via text helps me organize my thinking.

I work in data analysis though. So maybe this doesn't apply to other fields.

------
KIFulgore
Judging just from the photo, I'd work from home too if my workspace was a
warehouse with a bunch of picnic tables.

------
pyb
Funny how fast the 'remote' tide has turned in the last year or two. These
days, most prospective employers/contracts I find would prefer me to work
remotely. Although personally, I'd rather work onsite ! This is for London and
the South East of England.

------
aresant
What does a remote team do to enterprise value assuming a long term
acquisition?

------
cygned
I am wondering how a globally distributed team is set up from a law
perspective. How can I employ someone from another company? Create a
subsidiary in their country?

------
winteriscoming
Looking at that picture, it looks like some kind of backroom place in some
store where employees gather to have lunch.

------
carroccio
What type of work can one do without double monitors and a mechanical
keyboard?

~~~
wolfgke
Mechanical keyboards make annoying noise that will disturb other people
working there.

~~~
mrob
Buckling springs are always noisy (you can reduce but not eliminate the noise
by putting vibration damping materials inside the springs). "Clicky" switches
like Cherry MX Blues are always noisy. Other key switches are much quieter,
and most of the noise comes from operator error. You're not supposed to press
them all the way down like a membrane switch. The operating point of
mechanical key switches is near the middle of the travel. If you press too
hard they'll bottom out and make a lot more noise, as well as tiring your
fingers more. If you're prone to doing this by accident you can fit soft
o-rings around the keycap stem to cushion the end of the stroke.

~~~
wolfgke
> and most of the noise comes from operator error.

This argument reminds me of the "you are holding it wrong" excuse by Steve
Jobs concerning the reception issues with the iPhone 4:

> [https://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-
> ipho...](https://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-
> iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/)

~~~
VLM
The problem is "buying it wrong" a seller like wasdkeyboards (or others) has
dropdowns for half a dozen types of Cherry brand switch and a couple dropdown
options for sound dampening o-rings.

At home I use an original model M and I'm quite happy with it and frankly it
just isn't that noisy. If people don't like the noise, the problem is they're
packed in too closely; perhaps my loud breathing also offends them if they're
that deeply invading my personal space.

