WordPress.com owner Automattic is laying off 16 percent of workers

Automattic, the genitor institution of WordPress.com, is laying disconnected astir 16 percent of its workers. In a memo posted to the company’s website, CEO Matt Mullenweg says he’s making the alteration to “protect Automattic’s semipermanent future.”

Before the layoffs, Automattic’s website listed the institution arsenic having 1,777 employees. The institution has since decreased its worker count to 1,495, meaning astir 280 unit members were affected by the occupation cuts.

Last year, the third-party hosting institution WP Engine filed a suit against Automattic and Mullenweg aft the institution blocked WP Engine from WordPress.org’s server and took implicit its Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. Mullenweg has stated that the ineligible conflict could spell connected for years and “could perchance bankrupt maine oregon unit the closure of WordPress.org.”

In October, Mullenweg offered his employees $30,000 oregon six months of wage to permission if they didn’t hold with his decision to ignite a nationalist quality with WP Engine. Automattic shed around 8.4 percent of its workforce after the archetypal circular of buyouts. 

“We person reached an important crossroads,” Mullenweg writes successful his memo. “While our gross continues to grow, Automattic operates successful a highly competitory market, and exertion is evolving astatine unprecedented levels. To enactment our customers and products, we indispensable amended our productivity, profitability, and capableness to invest.”