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.
Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
201–210 of 309 posts
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#202> 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.
Many Burning Man guides, including the original arctic monkey guide that I first read about 20 years ago, specifically warn against making any life altering decisions for weeks after Burning Man. Decompression is a bitch when coming down from half a dozen psychedelics.
Well shit. I'm a huge fan of the band Artic Monkeys but I know nothing about festival guides. Is there a connection?
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#203> 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.
Many Burning Man guides, including the original arctic monkey guide that I first read about 20 years ago, specifically warn against making any life altering decisions for weeks after Burning Man. Decompression is a bitch when coming down from half a dozen psychedelics.
I have seen way too many people in my surroundings go off their rockers after too many ayahuasca trips, especially if they do it in a short time frame, they get emotionally unregulated.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#204> “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 accusa…
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.
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.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#205Here is the whole saga until May 2025: https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
There is also this video that dropped last week if people are interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC8zIESRyVs
" WordPress powers about 41% of the internet. It took Matt Mullenweg twenty years to build that. It took him about ninety days in 2024 to lose the trust of the community he built it with — the agencies, plugin developers, hosts, and translators who bet their businesses on the update button still working next Friday. This is the full timeline: how a blog fork in 2003 became a movement, how Automattic became a company, how WP Engine became the target, and how one keynote at WordCamp US turned into cease and desists, lawsuits, forked plugins, mass resignations, and a preliminary injunction "
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#206Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
> 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!
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
from my own observations: a) you don't want the WPEngine case going to trial and that is coming to a decision point soon. chances are the new CEO and board settle. b) wordpress is being absolutely obliterated by ai. work for commercial plugin authors and agencies has dried up while the platform and ecosystem see major security issues and worms exploit a large number of sites every week. wordpress and automattic haven…
Just side note that AI is not destroying one of the largest e-commerce platform, Woocommerce on top of Wordpress.
Ok, Shopify is then.
If you've ever used Woocommerce, the one thing you want to do is stop using Woocommerce.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#209The more I see, the more convinced I am that Silicon Valley was actually a documentary.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#210> “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 accusa…
> 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.