Economics & Finance / Business & Management / Organizational Behavior & Management

Zero Emails, No Pants: The Radical Future of Work at WordPress

The Year Without Pants

Scott Berkun

Imagine a billion-dollar tech giant where no one cares if you wear pants. No office politics. No rigid schedules. And most shockingly: almost zero emails. Sounds like a disaster? It actually powers a massive chunk of the entire internet. Welcome to the radical world of Automattic, the remote-first company behind WordPress. Scott Berkun, a veteran management expert, stepped out of his comfort zone to lead their engineering team. He documented this mind-blowing journey in his bestselling book, The Year Without Pants. It completely shatters everything we thought we knew about corporate management. Prepare to have your traditional workplace logic destroyed page by page: Slide 1: Results Trump Traditions Clocking in is a joke. Face time is entirely useless. The only thing that matters is what you actually produce. Slide 2: The Death of Email Traditional companies drown in private emails. Automattic killed them. Email makes up only one percent of their communication. Everything is out in the open on public team blogs to destroy information hoarding. Slide 3: The Ultimate Hiring Hack Job interviews are fake. They use paid trials instead. You build real things. You fix real bugs. If you survive the trial, you get the job. Slide 4: Executives Answer Support Tickets Every single new hire must do customer service for weeks. Even top executives. It destroys corporate arrogance and forces empathy for the user. Slide 5: Working Without Safety Nets Code goes live dozens of times a day. Too much safety makes people lazy. Removing the guardrails forces adults to act like adults and focus intensely. Remote work is not just about logging into daily meetings. It is about stripping away the nonsense and bringing dignity back to the creator. Steal these exact frameworks to revolutionize your own company culture today.