This unicorn company has no meetings or emails, and all employees work from home.

Tiger sniffing note: the topic is still difficult to get rid of the cliche, and the word "unicorn" is used. The market share of WordPress, the content management platform, has exceeded 25%, and there are 1/4 Internet websites based on WordPress. Interestingly, this company does not organize meetings, does not use e-mail, and most employees work from home. So how do they unite their employees? This paper gives the answer.

Automattic has the most popular blog platform in the world and is a very beautiful "unicorn" company. In fact, the most unique place of this company lies in its maverick corporate culture.

Scott Berkun, a Microsoft employee and former executive, even wrote a book, The Year Without Pants: WordPress. And the future of work ". You may guess from the title that Automattic is a telecommuting company without strict office rules, but its corporate culture is not just telecommuting.

Let's get to know this company and its founder first. In 2003, at the age of 19, Matt Mullenweg dropped out of the University of Houston and developed WordPress with Mike Park Jung-soo. Two years later, Mulenvog and his partners formally established Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, and became the CEO. In five rounds of financing, Automattic financing was USD 3,654,380,730,000, and in May, 2065, it was USD 4,380,600,000. By the end of 20 15, 1, more than 23.3% of the top websites in the world have used WordPress products. WordPress is also the most popular blog management system in the world, with more than 60 million websites based on WordPress.

Fully realize telecommuting, but provide employees with the best working conditions.

Although Automattic has a beautifully designed office in San Francisco, most employees work remotely.

Automattic's office in San Francisco. Image source: Network

"At Automattic, we are concerned with what you have created, not whether you meet the ideal standards of a good employee." Mullenwog once wrote in Harvard Business Review: "We are making an open source software, which is a decentralized product, so it is a smooth chapter to liberate our employees from the traditional nine-to-five office model."

Automatic internal communication is conducted online. The company does not organize meetings or even use e-mail, but communicates through chat rooms, Skype, Google Hangouts or P2, a blog tool independently developed by Automattic.

"At Automattic, we knew from day one that we didn't need to work in the same place because the first four employees were in different cities around the world." Mulenvog said in an interview with Business Insider, "Almost in 2009, four years after the company was founded, we found that we used email more frequently than our own blog, so we decided to change the concept of blog and turn it into a tool that can leave messages and conversations without leaving the home page, which was later P2."

Since there is no fixed office and no dedicated IT staff to deal with equipment failures, Automattic provides all employees with the latest Apple equipment to ensure that everyone has the best working tools.

At the same time, all new employees can get a sum of $2,000 to improve the office environment. They can use the money to buy desks, office chairs or any office products they want.

The CEO personally screened the resume, and the whole interview was a text exchange.

Because of telecommuting, Automattic can recruit talents on a global scale without geographical restrictions. Automattic currently has 3 15 employees worldwide. But can you imagine that with such an international team, Automattic will not arrange interview time, send interviewers around the world, or even make a phone call?

Mulenvog explained why Automattic changed from a traditional recruitment interview to a new recruitment strategy: "We gradually realized that we were influenced by various interview performances-such as the way someone spoke or his performance in a restaurant-but this could not explain the interviewer's performance in the actual work. Some people are extremely good at interviewing and have great personal charm in the process of talking with others. But if their work has nothing to do with showing personal charm, their interview performance can't predict their performance as employees well. "

Dave Martin, director of Automation Design and Business Development Group, recently wrote an article on his personal blog, revealing the recruitment process of Automatic.

It is worth noting that Mulenvog personally participated in the recruitment process from the beginning-he personally browsed and screened every resume he received, which occupied 20% to 30% of his working time.

"The success of recruitment depends largely on whether the CEO himself regards it as the top priority of the company." Martin said. There are three advantages for CEO to personally screen resumes: first, CEO can confirm that every candidate is really suitable for the company; Second, the CEO himself is the person who knows best which field of the company needs to expand resources, so personally participating in recruitment can improve recruitment efficiency; Third, it can make the hiring manager more confident to face the job seeker first, because he knows that the job seeker he is facing has been initially recognized by the CEO.

After the initial review of resumes, the hiring managers of all departments will review resumes again and select more suitable candidates. Martin said that whether job seekers will be interviewed or not, Automattic will contact them and even encourage unsuccessful job seekers to keep in touch and apply again. "In fact, many of our employees were hired on the second or third application."

Then go to the "Interview" link-because there is no interview, there is no voice communication, 100% carries out text communication through Skype, and the interviewer is not required to answer in real time. Martin thinks it's good for both the interviewer and the interviewer, because neither side has to worry about the time difference or other work arrangements.

Another advantage of this "blind selection" mechanism is that the interviewer can avoid prejudice against the interviewer to the greatest extent (think about why the judges turn their backs when the players sing in their voices. )

Job seekers must do projects for Automattic before they can take up jobs.

If the hiring manager is still satisfied with the job seeker at the interview stage, the recruitment process will enter the most special recruitment stage of Automatic: the job seeker will complete a task for Automatic in the form of contract workers ($25 per hour). Tasks are all automated real projects that need to be completed, and job seekers can freely control the completion time without time limit.

During the probation period, the hiring manager will communicate with job seekers through WordPress blog. The task assigned to each job seeker is related to his job search direction: if you are applying for the position of customer service, you can talk to the customer directly; If you are an engineer, you will be asked to write code; If you are a designer, you will do a design project.

"We pay special attention to whether job seekers are self-motivated, whether they are good at written communication (because most of us telecommute and we rely heavily on instant messaging) and how to face mistakes." "We don't expect perfection, but we are more concerned about how quickly they can find mistakes, how to communicate with colleagues and what they have learned from them," Mulenvog said.

In Mulenvog's view, the difference between Automattic and other Silicon Valley startups is that the company wants to establish long-term relationships with employees for decades, rather than treating employees as "temporary workers" who are ready to change jobs at any time. "If you want to develop products that can change the world, you need a long time, so it is very valuable to retain employees for a long time."

Therefore, the trial link in the recruitment process has become very important: it can help Automattic quickly and effectively judge whether the relationship between the company and the job seeker is beneficial to both parties; For job seekers, the trial link can let him experience the Automattic telecommuting mode personally, know whether he is really suitable for this job, and avoid finding that the job does not meet his imagination after joining the job.

Martin's statistics show that the automatic recruitment method really helps to reduce the turnover rate. During his one-and-a-half-year recruitment, he browsed 25 1 resumes, among which 63 people entered the interview stage (about 25% of the applicants), 4 1 people entered the trial stage (about 65% of the interviewees), 15 people got the final chance (37% people entered the trial stage), and 6,500 people entered the trial stage.

Travel expenses are super abundant and meetings are held all over the world.

If you love traveling, coming to Automatic to work will definitely make you greatly satisfied-the money saved by Office Automatic has become ample travel expenses for the company. All teams are free to choose any place in the world as the venue of "Hacker Week". The five most popular meeting places for employees are Lisbon, Portugal, Kauai, Hawaii, San Francisco, California, Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Tabby Island, Georgia.

In Bai Kun's book, he described his first meeting with the players in Athens like this:

"Who will fly to Athens to meet their colleagues? ..... I never understood why we went to Athens, but the effect was immediate and obvious: we were all full of energy and inspiration and wanted to work hard in a great place. "

In addition, Automattic organizes a "big party" every year, and the selected locations include Quebec, Canada, La Paz, Mexico, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, California. "We will really bring everyone in the company together." Marenvog said.

The automated corporate culture has been recognized by employees. On the workplace information website Glassdoor, Automattic got a high score of 4.5 (out of 5). One of the employees praised the working atmosphere and employee benefits of Automattic. Commendable highlights include excellent team, work/life balance brought by telecommuting, competitive salary, generous benefits of American employees, open vacation policy and unparalleled travel opportunities.

If you like this article, please share it and let more people see it!

,