Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

Shank

> “And the biggest news: I won't be able to make the ELT tomorrow,” Matt wrote in an Announcement Slack. He continued, writing that Mark Davies, current Automattic Chief Financial Officer, has “conspired” with Automattic Board of Directors members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker “behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence. I voted against that.” If you’re doing this type of accusation in the company wide announcements channel, odds are you’re never coming back. A board coup rarely happens without a good reason, but a “leave of absence” isn’t a firing. It’s still pretty bad, but it’s not a firing. However, crashing out and waging war on the board will lead to that outcome.

_fw

I briefly worked in the web agency SaaS space and hoooo boy, I have never known a more gossipy or dramatic industry. That’s not to pass comment either way on Mullenweg It’s just WordPress folk are nuts.

ramon156

Reminds me of the first season of Succession

hermitcrab

>Most recently, Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic.” What is wrong with these people?

bellowsgulch

Good, get him the fuck away from Wordpress. Though frankly, a better solution might be for businesses to ask themselves whether or not they need Wordpress anymore. In the mean time, if you're unable to derisk Mullenweg out of your business stack, this is a good first step.

gkoberger

Unfortunately, this is for the best. WordPress powers a large percentage of the internet, and I'm not sure what's going on with Matt (who I've always liked) but something turned the past few years. He's been behind unforced error after unforced error as CEO, and I hope a break helps him gain some perspective (although I don't see him being brought back). WordPress has been his life for 23 years. Doing the same thing for 23 years likely makes it difficult to have a proper perspective.

dcrazy

I guess when people vote the same way, it’s technically a conspiracy?

garbagepatch

Here is the whole saga until May 2025: https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...

solarkraft

I’m a bit relieved. Only knowing it superficially through its larger public actions, Automattic used to be one of the “good guys” companies to me. I envisioned myself applying there at some point. This has obviously changed over the last 1-2 years. I don’t doubt that the good parts were largely Matt’s work, but well ... I think a lot of us followed his semi-recent public actions. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t pull the plug earlier given they could have. Hasn’t he already caused vast damage? Still, he has done a lot of good for the internet and world at large. I don’t want to discount that. I just hope he manages to chill a bit.

ValentineC

I'm shocked. I always thought that Matt held the majority of the voting shares, and that the board of directors was mostly there as a rubber stamp.

ChoosesBarbecue

I am so curious why now, what changed? The WPEngine saga was started two years ago.

reticulates

I think it is easy to underestimate how big of a deal this is. Matt has a stranglehold on Automattic and Wordpress, it is not possible to remove his control over the ecosystem and he is volatile. Ousting him as CEO is almost certain to cause a major reaction from Matt, so, for Automattic to make this decision is a very big deal. The right decision for the long term but the hard decision. I expect we will see Matt try to punish Automattic’s board, it will get worse for Automattic before it gets better. Here is Matt talking about his control: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42657150

0xDEADBEEFCAFE

Anyone could have forked WordPress at any time or spun up their own multi tenant instances if they were truly concerned, this just seems personal. It’s a bad day for founders IMO.

echoangle

> Most recently, Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic.” Real austin powers vibes > He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.

josefritzishere

The best line was buried at the bottom. Did Automattic really attempt to claim it owns the word “automatic?

chris_wot

This is likely how they pull out of the disasterous legal actions Mullenweg has taken.

pier25

It's impressive this took so long.

bedroom_jabroni

Quick, somebody back up the WP Plugins repository.

CqtGLRGcukpy

Bypass paywall at either https://web.archive.org/web/20260909213058/https://www.404me... or https://archive.ph/7J5TB . https://www.theverge.com/tech/993022/wordpress-automattic-ce... also has a writeup which takes some quotes from the article (and a statement by Automattic).