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> “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 Automat
by Shank 7d ago
> “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.
- SaltyBackendGuy 7d agoIn 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.
- datakan 7d agoHad 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.
- actionfromafar 7d agoAh, but they take the big risks, you see. Someone has to do it.
- gottorf 7d agoIn 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.
- consp 7d agoI 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.
- DemocracyFTW2 7d ago> I don't think stealing $20 makes the local news these days https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Emmely https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Emmely Got fired because she redeemed two orphaned bottle deposit slips worth 1,30€ (in 2009, so more like 1,50€ in today's money /s). Caused a nation-wide discussion.
- skissane 7d ago> Steal 20$ 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.
- compiler-guy 7d agoThere 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.
- ThrowawayR2 7d agoSo 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.
- ehnto 7d agoMaybe if there were consequences, there wouldn't be so much corruption that leads to these silent firings.
- mcmcmc 7d agoSatisfaction? It’s about truth and justice, investors deserve to know about executive malfeasance
- ThrowawayR2 6d agoWeird to see so many posters suddenly pop up that are anxious to protect investors (who have the access and means to protect themselves) at the expense of harming employees and workers. Glad to see you all getting into the ultra-capitalist spirit of Hacker News I guess?
- mcmcmc 6d agoBad companies who do bad things should fail. Why are you so obsessed with protecting criminals from consequences? If an exec is sexually harassing employees should they still be protected? What if the bad behavior is abusing workers and committing wage theft? Should that still be swept under the rug? Forgive me for not really caring about the stock grants of people who are in the top 10% of earners. Actual working class people aren’t getting equity
- ThrowawayR2 6d ago
- Aurornis 7d ago> 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.
- dylan604 7d ago> 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 $20 is just strange
- mauriciolange 7d agoYou are comparing robbery with ineptitude. They are two different things. If your ineptitude makes a 20$ 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.
- petesergeant 7d agoRobbery and ineptitude are different things, but the situations described by OP are often special blends of the two.
- patternMachine 7d agoBarring truly bad behavior this is how executives get fired.
- tibbydudeza 7d agoSpend more time with my family :).
- telotortium 7d agoThose 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.
- adw 7d agoFidji Simo has well documented chronic health issues so there’s no reason to assume that the ostensible and actual reasoning are far apart there.
- telotortium 7d agoBut 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.
- hodgesrm 7d agoPeople 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.
- recursivegirth 7d agoLike sama? (Hope I don't get dang'ed for being political, especially against a ycombi founder...)
- 0xbadcafebee 7d agoFiring a CEO makes your company look bad. Even if you are firing them, you don't say you're firing them.
- a012 7d agoSee his other comments in HN in the previous wp “incident”, simply said he _is_ nut
- photomatt 7d ago[flagged]
- rrherr 7d agoHello matt this is your lawyer speaking. I am advising you today to please keep posting this shit
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- 12_throw_away 6d agoI'm just posting to say hi to the various paralegals and clerks putting together their exhibits in the case. Hope you're having a good one!
- discopicante 7d agoExecutives 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.
- dofm 7d agoHe 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.
- muglug 7d ago> 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.
- dofm 7d ago> 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.
- lukestevens 7d agoWho 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-files-suit-against-matt-and-automattic https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt#102-wp-engine-fi...
- jongjong 7d agoI'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.
- fwip 6d agoIt seems that the typical CEO has enough yes-men that it bruises their ego to have anyone suggest that they aren't great in any respect.
- neya 7d agoI 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.
- kakwa_ 7d agoYou 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.
- Wowfunhappy 7d ago> If you’re doing this type of accusation [...] odds are you’re never coming back. [...] Crashing out and waging war on the board will lead to that outcome. ...one exception comes to my mind, and it's Steve Jobs. Probably a total outlier case, but, still.
- domador 5d agoIt Jobs a long time to come back, though, and it looks like he had to prove himself (as a businessman) in other ways while he was in exile. The board seems to have been filled with different people at the time it came back. It's probably much harder to come back under the same board with the same people, and it doesn't sound like Jobs was an exception to that aspect.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7d agoSounds 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.
- pwillia7 7d agoJust 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.
- boutell 7d agoThere are quite a few CMSes that do static builds natively. If you hand one of those to Claude Code, you can get a more flexible and maintainable result more quickly. You can also point Claude Code to a CMS starter project in folder A And a vibe coded static site in folder B and pull them together. That being said... if you're the sole author of your site, anything goes and yeah, you probably don't need a proper CMS. I certainly built my own share of 100-line Perl static site builders back in the day.
- eloisant 7d agoIt's easier to generate a static site using a WP hidden behind a VPN than building a mini cms on top of a static site.
- jcarrano 7d agoMy impression was that the major argument against static site generators is the unfriendly UX for non-technical contributors to the site, and with LLMs that problem is completely solved.
- cebert 7d agoI don’t have any skin in the game with this, and I don’t use WP. It appears Matt needs help right now. I don’t think he’s reacting rationally based on what he’s posting online or allegedly inside his former organization. I don’t know him, but it’s hard seeing people in a difficult time who need help.
- sidewndr46 7d agoThis doesn't really sound like an accusation. It sounds like fact. It'd probably hold up under a deposition in a courtroom. I really don't think the board has any reason to even dispute this account of events.
- fwip 6d agoMatt "photomatt" Mullenweg is fundamentally incapable of not crashing out. It's very predictable for anyone at all familiar with the WPEngine saga, or slightly earlier, his personal beef with Tumblr user predstrogen (which involved him following her off of Tumblr after he banned her to harass her on Twitter).