Inside Automattic: One of the Original Remote-First Companies

Automattic has been fully distributed since it was founded, which makes it one of the earliest and longest-running examples of remote work built as the operating model rather than adopted after the fact. The company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a handful of other web publishing and commerce tools has never had a corporate headquarters, and its approach to hiring, communication, and management has been shaped by that choice since the beginning, not retrofitted onto an office-first company partway through its history.

For anyone evaluating remote-first employers, Automattic is worth a close look: it's had more time than most companies to work out what a genuinely distributed company looks like in practice.

Built Distributed From the Start

Automattic employs people across dozens of countries and time zones, with no central office anyone is expected to report into. That single structural choice shapes almost everything else about how the company runs: decisions get written down instead of decided in a hallway conversation, and processes get built assuming nobody shares a building, rather than assuming everyone does except for a few remote exceptions.

A company that merely allows remote work still often defaults to synchronous, in-office habits for its important decisions. A company built distributed from day one has no synchronous default to fall back on, so the async habits are the system itself, built in rather than bolted on.

How Automattic Actually Hires

The hiring process reflects the same philosophy, and it looks different from a typical interview loop. Early conversations often happen over text, through chat or an internal blogging tool, rather than opening with a video call, because the company wants to see how a candidate communicates in writing, which is the primary way work actually happens there. Exactly how a given loop unfolds varies some by team and role.

Candidates who get further are typically brought on for a paid trial: a period working on real tasks alongside the team before any permanent offer is made. It's a genuine sample of the job rather than a hypothetical interview question, and it runs both ways, giving the candidate a real look at the work before committing too.

That process asks more of a candidate upfront than a standard interview loop. It also means an offer, when it comes, is based on how you actually work rather than how well you performed in a conversation.

What the Day-to-Day Culture Looks Like

Communication happens primarily in writing, through internal blogging tools and chat, and meetings are used deliberately rather than by default. Nobody is expected to be online during a specific set of hours, so collaboration is built around asynchronous handoffs instead of everyone being available at once. Teams do gather in person periodically, but the day-to-day default is remote and asynchronous, not a hybrid schedule with occasional remote days layered on top.

That structure rewards specific habits: writing clearly, documenting your own decisions without being asked, and being comfortable moving work forward without waiting for a same-day reply.

Who Tends to Do Well There

A genuinely distributed, async-first environment isn't the right fit for everyone, and it rewards a particular working style:

• People who write clearly and don't need a meeting to think out loud
• Self-directed workers who can move a project forward without close supervision
• Candidates comfortable being evaluated on a trial period of real work rather than an interview performance
• People who value flexibility in when they work over routine and structure

If you do your best thinking out loud in a room with other people, or you rely on regular check-ins to stay on track, a company built this way asks you to adapt more than an office-first employer would.

What to Know Before You Apply

A few things worth doing before you apply, given how the process works:

• Treat every written communication in the process, including your application, as a work sample. It's being read that way.
• Be ready for the paid trial to take real time alongside whatever you're currently doing; it's not a quick take-home exercise.
• Look closely at the specific team and role you're applying to. A large distributed company still has meaningful variation in pace and culture between teams.

Automattic currently lists open roles on Remote100K alongside other vetted remote-first employers, so it's worth a look if this kind of async, writing-first culture sounds like where you'd do your best work.