alt Hacker NewsAutomattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
Comments
> One person speculated that the timing may have something to do with Mullenweg’s annual trip to the Burning Man festival, after which he tends to return “with ideas.”
This line is so perfectly on the nose it could be in a McSweeney's article and yet here it is in reality. We are truly on the weirdest timeline.
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.
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
Oh that's who Mullenweg is? I had a bit of an argument with him on one of the socials, I was making the argument that Zuck has very much jumped the shark but he seemed to be a big fan.
He didn't have particularly good arguments though, given the abject failure to create anything interesting since the original Facebook site (they've been making also-ran clones before buying the competition OR going into new markets and failing since the early 2010s). He has obviously ran the core money machine ruthlessly once he won social.
Here is the whole saga until May 2025: https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
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.
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.
Good riddance! His neurotic public harassment of anyone who is remotely aligned against him (cf. Tumblr moderation and AspirePress) is simply childish and leaves much to be desired.
His behaviour has shown him to be unfit to be a CEO.
Long overdue. Matt needs to get some professional help or support, some of his actions have been incredibly harmful to the WordPress community.
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.
Quick, somebody back up the WP Plugins repository.
Enforced by checkboxes on every login form, no doubt. Less sarcastically: I hope his corporate access is thoroughly controlled; we've seen him in 'full force', before.
Article says no change for .org... this will almost surely become interesting.
They should have voted on if pineapple deserves to be on pizza while they were at it. The guy had to go.
I am so curious why now, what changed? The WPEngine saga was started two years ago.
I am surprised it has taken the Automattic board so long, just don't understand that.
Hopefully, WP will get better. At the moment, WP itself, its ecosystem, and community are such a cesspool. It should not be used for anything more than just basic blogging. Even then, there are better alternatives. Especially in this day and age, when an AI model can easily write you what you need. It can write you something better than the trash adware on the plugin/theme store.
Breaking news big tech guy gets to do nothing and still get paid
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).
Finally
This is fantastic news. Matt is an ass and unfit to lead a small HOA, let alone a company and open source project.
pro tip: don’t go public. don’t get a board. maintain full control.
> One person speculated that the timing may have something to do with Mullenweg’s annual trip to the Burning Man festival, after which he tends to return “with ideas.” This year’s festival ended on September 7.
HN needs to allow some html in comments so we can put ‘lmao’ in <blink> and <marquee> tags
Finally.
This is likely how they pull out of the disasterous legal actions Mullenweg has taken.
Finally.
I guess when people vote the same way, it’s technically a conspiracy?
>Most recently, Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic.”
What is wrong with these people?
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.
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The best line was buried at the bottom. Did Automattic really attempt to claim it owns the word “automatic?
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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.
If the board is going behind his back... then how does he know he was put on leave?
> 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.
> “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.