You’ll be surprised, shocked, delighted, thrilled and inspired by how WordPress.com gets work done. I was!Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

I’m only a matter of weeks into my new role, working for Automattic, and I’m regularly asked how it’s going and what it’s like to work for them, particularly the change in culture. Having come from a corporate role, working for the same company for 27 years, it’s a huge change. But, I have to say, one I was happy to embrace.

It has always occurred to me, working for a company over 150 years old and with a familiar, old-school office set-up, that there must be newer and better ways to work. Automattic is not just about working from home but in how it approaches the work/life balance but also the entire relationship it has with its employees and they with each other.

However, I am still new, so answering the question is still hard. Am I liking it? I’m loving it. But with so little experience so far and so much to look forward to, I still only have a small grasp of what the company is about.

Scott Berkun, a former Microsoft Manager, decided to find out what working for Automattic was like by being employed for a year, with the intention of writing a book about it. It’s titled ‘The Year Without Pants‘ (pants, in this case, being the Americanised version of trousers – don’t worry, we don’t all sit naked from the waste down) and I can highly recommend it for anyone wishing to learn more about Automattic or, indeed, how things can be done differently (and better).

However, to answer the original question about what it’s like to work for Automattic, I can turn to the quotes on the book cover – all of which are from individuals, including authors and managers, from the industry…

…will make you ask all the right questions about your own company’s culture

The future of work is distributed. Automattic wrote the script. Time for the rest of us to read it.

Some say the world of work is changing, but they’re wrong. The world has already changed!

Most talk of the future of work is just speculation, but [he] has actually worked there.

WordPress.com has discovered a better way to work…

And, to these, I can add nothing else.