> “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.
Sounds like it's something that must have been painful, all around.
Boards really don't like doing things like this, as it signals instability, and shareholders hate instability. That's why so many boards leave clearly non-optimal CEOs in place, so often.
This is not something that has been a focus of my attention, except when it was shoved into my face. I'm really too old for that kind of agita.
I do run a couple of WP sites. I'm considering switching a couple to static sites, (via a generator, or maybe LLM-generated static sites), but I need one of them to remain WP (for now), as that hosts my blog.
Just vibe code your own mini cms on top of your static site. Seriously though, I did this recently with mine and have had great results. It's not a Gutenberg WP experience, more like a decapCMS kind of thing.
He is surely very evidently mentally ill.
This is a man who, to be fair to him, has been beneficially bullish and iconoclastic in the WP community's favour for decades, as well as writing a big chunk of what was "early modern" WP. Before he came unglued.
The fact that he looked, sounded, talked the way he did, was involved, put his own money where his mouth is, and was press-available to the extent he was is a lot of why WordPress was ever taken seriously. Given the level of control he has, it was used pretty judiciously for the longest time.
I am of the opinion that his broad charge against WP Engine was valid; I think he handled it insanely.
But as I say, he has come unglued. I'd be surprised if he returns to the job. I wish him well as I think anyone who has made money because of WP should. Things have gone wrong but there was a long run of things going remarkably well.
I do think this was overdue, for everyone including Matt, even though he evidently cannot see it. I hope, but am not hopeful as it were, that he sees that this is a message from the world to change track. I would instead expect to see a bit of revenge.
> He is surely very evidently mentally ill.
I agree and upvoted your post. But can I just say that it is super-reddit to diagnose someone based on your B- undergrad psych classes.
We should go back to the classics like "he went off his rocker!", or "he's totally unhinged!" or "completely delulu!"
(of course the people who know, know, and they shouldn't tell you.)
Agree as well he has lost his mind in the battle and does not appear to be trustable in such a competitive market at current state of things (well .. ai).
Probably a good move to move on with someone else that doesn't need to get microdosis at burning man yearly to get ideas.
> He is surely very evidently mentally ill.
I don’t think that’s accurate or helpful.
I think he found himself in a situation that he could not cope with in a rational manner. I suspect that many people, myself included, would struggle in similar situations.
Occasionally a person can find themselves in a place where quitting is the best option for everyone involved, but the person at the centre is so dug in that they don’t even consider the possibility.
> I don’t think that’s accurate or helpful.
There are, to me, abundant signs that he is severely burned out, dysregulated and irrational.
(In this statement, in other statements, in his actions that wilfully worsened his own case against WP Engine, in his blog posts etc.)
These are mental health issues. I have experienced many of them myself (I am indeed recovering from them now) and do not know what else you could possibly call them.
He is very evidently experiencing continuing poor mental health. I don't know why the board would say "leave of absence" if they were not themselves alluding to his health. He clearly needs a break from the thing he does for his own benefit.
I absolutely wish him well and hope he steps back and takes care of himself for a while; none of this is worth worse health.
I'm no expert, but I suspect that a pattern of lashing out against opponents during in a high stakes business dispute would not typically be considered clinically significant on its own. I don't know how you or others in this thread are intending to use terms like "mental illness" or "mental health issues," but generally I don't think they're appropriate unless you're talking about problems where there's evidence of an underlying dysfunction and no other obvious immediate cause (like exhaustion). Of course, some may argue it's not appropriate to diagnose public figures either way.
I dont know any clinical information, but some (many, in fact) people assume mental illness when someone behaves in such a way that they believe their world view and mental model is absolute and fight to the last tooth and nail against any opposing view points (to the detriment of their own well being and others).
It just sounds like the behaviours of an unprofessional douchebag to me, not mental illness
Exactly. Don't use "mental illness" as an excuse, he's just incredibly arrogant.
But when the same person was extremely professional, kind and helpful, six months before a sudden shift in behaviour?
People change. A change may or may not be the result of mental illness.
I know many people who have changed greatly for the better because of life experiences or their own choices, and many people who have changed for the worse. We all do it to some extent, though maybe not dramatically or publicly.
You are forgetting that he is a rich and famous person. Those people can't be mentally ill, they can be eccentric, bizarre, funky or outlandish. But never actually mentally ill, that word is reserved for the plebeians like us.
That is mental illness. It doesn't imply that a virus took hold of your brain cells. It can be inability to cope with the real world. I suspect most of us will go through it at some point in our lives.
I am saying this as someone who has had repeated and ongoing issues with WP Engine as a hosting platform: no, Matt Mullenweg was not even valid in his basic assumptions motivating his lawsuit against WP Engine. The idea that a hosting platform is leeching off the WordPress ecosystem is absurd, for two reasons:
1. WordPress is free and open source software, developed under reciprocal licensing (GPL). Hosting companies are neither legally nor morally obligated to contribute back to WordPress core. They are already a beneficial part of the ecosystem.
2. WP Engine was contributing back to the WordPress ecosystem, just not Matt Mullenweg's corner of it.
WordPress is a modular platform and plugin and theme developers are just as important to WordPress's continued success as core development is. WP Engine happens to own Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is basically WordPress's answer to the Drupal Fields API[0]. ACF is what lets you add arbitrary fields to WordPress's page edit screen without having to write a bunch of custom metabox hooks and forms. It was a huge timesaver before things moved to page builders[1] and it's still useful even if you're using a page builder.
[0] Formerly Content Construction Kit
[1] Full disclosure: I hate Gutenberg. It is not WordPress, it's a React development kit tumor shoved inside WordPress. Any other page builder would be preferable.
WP Engine didn't make ACF, they acquired the company who acquired the OG creator of the plugin.
Their contribution to the plugin was a switch to a subscription-based model and they also started reaching out privately to theme authors with ambiguously-worded emails that could be interpreted as them forcing you to stop bundling the plugin with your theme (we had a lifetime license) and directing customers to their sales. Personally I chose not to engage with that communication.
The fight between Matt and WP Engine was messy and I agree with most of your points but I also do think that forking ACF into SCF was a net positive for the community.
> WP Engine happens to own Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is basically WordPress's answer to the Drupal Fields API.
The speed with which Matt hijacked that plugin was one of the funniest parts of this saga. All while complaining they don’t contribute!
Finally a sane comment. If you actually watched the interview with Theo, he openly admits to just randomly throwing in a demand of arbitrary percentage of their sales. The whole episode is actually insane.
> WordPress is free and open source software, developed under reciprocal licensing (GPL). Hosting companies are neither legally nor morally obligated to contribute back to WordPress core.
Many an old open-source project ran into this trap. Elasticsearch is one good example. Back when the old GPL era open-source projects were invented, the idea of third parties taking open-source software and just making a shitload of money with it was unthought of - and certainly not at the scale of Amazon AWS.
The only counterexample was Wikipedia's MediaWiki, it similarly is GPL but from the start it was clear that there would be at least one commercial side actor - Wikia, nowadays called Fandom.
There's no need to diagnose Mullenweg when his behavior could easily be explained by being a run-of-the-mill arrogant asshole.
He never seems to have broken from reality or suffered a mental breakdown. He seems to just treat people (including his employees, customers, and competitors) like garbage who are beneath him.
That is a question of interpretation. But based on my own life experiences I think there is enough evidence that he is in deep, rolling burnout.
He is making severely self-sabotaging actions that appear to be designed to force clarity through extreme choices, he regularly writes emotionally in a way that seems desperate and polarising. These are the signs of a man in crisis.
No doubt he has always been a bit of an arrogant arsehole (nothing unusual in that) but he is so clearly dysregulated now.
Mental illness is not just big splashy stuff like psychosis or full on breakdowns. Burnout at this point is not just some occupational health thing, it’s more like a chronic disorder.
He is unwell, I think, and I hope he gets better.
In recent memory of companies I've worked for, even the absolute WORST executives haven't gotten fired. They always announce that "it's time for another adventure" or "I am taking a break". So I am not shocked they didn't fire him, although the board is now probably wishing they did.
Had a President make a big ordeal about leaving "for health reasons". His LinkedIn had him at a new company within a couple months doing the same thing.
Had a CISO leave for "personal" reasons. Talked to him a couple years later and yeah, he was fired.
Steal 20$ out of a cash register and make the local news. Waste a billion dollars at a corp and make insane decisions and ride out on a golden parachute. Its a fucked up world.
In fairness, I don't think stealing $20 makes the local news these days, unless you live in a town of 300 people. There's a lot of antisocial behavior that goes unreported.
But moreover: I guess there's a presumption, whether fair or not, that well-paid executives overseen by wealthy boards of directors are pre-vetted and act in good faith, whether or not those actions pan out and make money; versus robbery or violent crime that people recoil from, that assumption of good faith isn't there, because it's self-evident to ordinary people that there is no justification for such actions.
I would argue there is a broad difference in ethicality and reason between the bottom and top of the food chain, making these examples less clear cut. If your plan as a low level employee doesn't work out you still get fired and the consequences are far greater.
> I don't think stealing $20 makes the local news these days
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Emmely
Got fired because she redeemed two orphaned bottle deposit slips worth 1,30€ (in 2009, so more like 1,50€ in today's money /s). Caused a nation-wide discussion.
I don't think anything will beat
https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15148829
School principal fired and loses $130k pension for overfilling coffee (about 50 cents).
It was the being fired that made the news; not the stealing.
You are comparing robbery with ineptitude. They are two different things. If your ineptitude makes a 20$ loss you may not be fired as well. Billion dollars wasted at corp still is not billion dollars at the exec pockets (that would be theft and he would be facing charges). That the exec pockets millions regardles of the losses incurred by corp, even when it sounds awful to you or to me, is a problem between the corp and the exec.
Robbery and ineptitude are different things, but the situations described by OP are often special blends of the two.
> Steal 20$ out of a cash register and make the local news. Waste a billion dollars at a corp and make insane decisions and ride out on a golden parachute. Its a fucked up world.
I think if we are just looking at the media:
Most journalists wouldn't consider some nobody stealing $20 to be newsworthy in itself.
Most corporate scandals receive extensive media coverage. Even a CEO who was merely incompetent instead of corrupt, is still likely to get some bad press.
Now, you are completely right that the non-media consequences are very different – significant chance of criminal record (although in many jurisdictions, there are mechanisms which first-time offenders on minor charges can use to escape getting one) vs a multi-million dollar severance payment.
The issue with "golden parachutes" – if someone's employment contract creates an entitlement to a severance payment (and in some jurisdictions employment law creates one even if the contract itself doesn't) – then you generally have to pay them unless you terminate for "misconduct" (often even "serious misconduct"). The problem with terminating for "misconduct", is it creates a big incentive for the terminated employee to sue to try to get the severance payment they'd otherwise receive, and the larger the payment, the bigger the motivation – which creates an expensive legal and PR headache. The PR issue is especially acute for senior executives–a junior employee suing over a severance dispute will get a lot less media coverage than a former CEO doing it. So, unless the conduct was extremely egregious, there is a strong incentive for the employer/board to just pay the severance out and make the legal and PR headache go away.
There is also the issue that the next person stepping into their shoes to clean up the mess is being recruited exactly during this time. And if your company gets a reputation for not paying out prenegotiated severances or nitpicking over them, it makes the next candidate that much more wary.
So you would prefer a media circus and investor scrutiny when your employer's executives are fired for failures or misconduct? This is likely to cause the price of the shares to drop, including any ESPP and stock grants you and your coworkers have vested. Is the satisfaction of seeing an executive dragged through the mud worth losing a chunk of your net worth to you, no matter how much the exec deserves it? I'd rather keep the money, personally.
Maybe if there were consequences, there wouldn't be so much corruption that leads to these silent firings.
Satisfaction? It’s about truth and justice, investors deserve to know about executive malfeasance
Yes, I’d prefer that investors know that the new executive is not going to continue the same crap and same level of poor judgement. Want them to know the replacement is looking to do more than wear a golden parachute.
Imagine if investors actually thought the personnel change was a positive one…
> So you would prefer a media circus and investor scrutiny when your employer's executives are fired for failures or misconduct?
Yes, as a warning to the other executives.
Signed,
The Shareholders
> Is the satisfaction of seeing an executive dragged through the mud worth losing a chunk of your net worth to you, no matter how much the exec deserves it?
Yes. There is far too little truth and justice in this world, most especially for corporate executives.
> I'd rather keep the money, personally.
Of course, me too buddy, me too. But some things are more important, don't you think? It would be a much much better world if the wealthy and powerful had to think carefully before acting. Think carefully before that action of misconduct. Bear the responsibility for their actions. Be afraid of the consequences.
And on the flip-side, if it's an exec at another company getting tarred and feathered by the media for their incompetence, it means they probably won't end up at my company in six months' time and do the same thing.
"Someone! Think of the shareholders!"
> Steal 20$ out of a cash register and make the local news. Waste a billion dollars at a corp and make insane decisions and ride out on a golden parachute.
Getting pushed out of a position is very career damaging at the executive level. Those golden parachutes are pretty rare, too. Most of the executives I know from companies you haven't heard of (and some that you maybe have) who were pushed out took a huge hit to their careers after that. The best play is to start calling up executive recruiters and try to get any job as soon as possible once the writing is on the wall that you're being fired.
And come on, stealing $20 doesn't register these days.
> And come on, stealing $20 doesn't register these days
and come on, you know exactly what is meant here. An individual steals something, they get punished. Executives of the largest banks create a scheme that ultimately crashes the world economy and nobody goes to jail. Quibbling on the example's use of $20 is just strange
Ah, but they take the big risks, you see. Someone has to do it.
See his other comments in HN in the previous wp “incident”, simply said he _is_ nut
Yes, I sometimes have a very low tolerance for idiots.
Barring truly bad behavior this is how executives get fired.
Executives do not get fired like other employees. They have contracts that usually prevent standard dismissal unless they have done something illegal. When they are 'fired', they are still a protected class. Hence the narrative spin: a new 'ceremonial' role, spending time with family, etc. etc.
Make no mistake, he has been fired. It just looks different than a call with HR or a manager and office security telling you to pack up your $hit and leave.
Those phrases often imply that they were fired or asked to resign - although the deniability can be useful, which is why they’re so often used. As a recent example, Fidji Simo went on leave from her role at OpenAI several months before leaving. Although I don’t know for sure, I would suppose that she was essentially fired when she went on leave, and the subsequent success of Codex after she went on leave confirmed the decision to fire her. It’s possible that, if Codex hadn’t been a success, she might have been brought back, so putting her on leave was useful for optionality.
People go on leave regularly for health reasons, and Fidji Simo has been quite open about her health. Unless you have evidence of your claim, the official explanation is simplest. That's especially the case here since firing someone on health leave can expose you to lawsuits under labor law in the US and many other countries.
Fidji Simo has well documented chronic health issues so there’s no reason to assume that the ostensible and actual reasoning are far apart there.
But the fact that she went on leave just as it became clear that Anthropic looked to be hitting escape velocity is suspicious, although not dispositive. When she was hired, her health issues also stopped her from coming into the office, but she still worked from home.
Spend more time with my family :).
Firing a CEO makes your company look bad. Even if you are firing them, you don't say you're firing them.
Like sama? (Hope I don't get dang'ed for being political, especially against a ycombi founder...)
I think his recent screwing over of that custom fields plugin team and cutting off access to the plugins repo for WPengine was really a dumb move that has lead him to where he is now.
...one exception comes to my mind, and it's Steve Jobs. Probably a total outlier case, but, still.
Who knows, maybe he can try and blackmail them too[0] to get his way. It's worked out great so far.
[0] https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt#102-wp-engine-fi...
You very rarely fire execs these days, the main reason being you don't want them to sue the company over their loss of reputation.
You want to keep-up appearances and leave some plausible deniability, even if it's generally BS.
I'm surprised that founders still care about all that stuff. They already made tons of money, who cares. None of it means anything. Nothing is fair in this society.
They don't mind the system working unfairly in their favor; they only have an issue with it when it starts working against them. At that point, it's too late; you have no voice.