Scott Berkun’s The Year Without Pants is a first person narrative of his time employed at Automattic from August 2010 to May 2012. Berkun entered Automattic as employee number fifty six when the company was replacing its totally flat structure with a team-based one.
Berkun’s story centers around his experience managing Team Social, which was responsible for the creation of Jetpack, amongst other projects. His original team members on Social are key characters throughout the book: Mike Adams, Beau Lebens, and Andy Peatling. In addition to these three, many other Automatticians were highlighted, and various employee personality types were profiled in varying degrees. But the main character in The Year Without Pants, other than Berkun himself, is Matt Mullenweg.
Though Mullenweg doesn’t take a key role in many of the stories told, Berkun spends a good deal of time analyzing Mullenweg’s leadership style, along with CEO Toni Schneider’s, and especially how their styles transcend throughout the rest of the company.
A book of stories
Before you think that this book cannot be applicable to anyone outside the WordPress bubble, think again. My favorite part of Berkun’s book was that it didn’t feel like a lecture or a mandate for managerial behavior. It felt like a story. And throughout the story, lessons could be abstracted, sometimes directly but more often tangentially, so that the reader can develop their own lessons based on the story and circumstances at hand.
