Like any new employee, Scott Berkun had the jitters on his first day at Automattic. He was a little older than most of the people at the company, having spent the previous nine years at Microsoft. Although he witnessed firsthand the excitement of the tech giant’s glory days, office life was still rather conventional.
Now, in 2010, Scott was joining a young company with no offices, and — prior to his hiring — no managers. Before Scott joined, everyone in the company reported more or less directly to Automattic’s founder Matt Mullenweg and then-CEO Toni Schneider. Scott had been hired based on his own advice as an Automattic consultant. He had observed that the company had grown too large to operate efficiently with a flat structure. Scott suggested a turn toward a more conventional approach — the company needed hierarchy.