Earlier quoted context omitted.
See his other comments in HN in the previous wp “incident”, simply said he _is_ nut
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Hello matt this is your lawyer speaking. I am advising you today to please keep posting this shit
Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
221–230 of 315 posts
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#222Earlier 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…
> 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…
I think he has cultivated a group of yes-man to surround him and that he is so out of touch with non-WP reality that he thought he would be seen as a hero defending open-source ethics. He didn't account for the fact that everyone that he doesn't pay isn't under his spell, and that everyone saw the selfishness behind the heroism.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
No. In this case “Arctic Monkey” is just the pseudonym used by the guide writer.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#224After reading about his behavior over the past couple of years, I'm sad that it took this long. He has far too much hostility for the community to continue.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#225Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#226> “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…
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…
Let's leave the diagnoses to the doctors please. The guy was public about being under a lot of stress and that's fine and salient to acknowledge. But it's misleading to use medical terminology unless you're actually his doctor and have evaluated him following the protocols of your profession.
Which we know you are not -- if you were -- you would be bound by patient confidentiality, and not posting a diagnosis here.
So just say his job performance was suffering and he appeared to be stressed. Don't medicalize it.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 p…
It just sounds like the behaviours of an unprofessional douchebag to me, not mental illness
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Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#228> “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…
I 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.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he has 84% voting share, can't he just fire the board?
In most venture-backed companies no, because board seats are one of the things you give major investors in exchange for their money. In this case? Possibly! Ann Dunwoody and Sue Decker look like independents, and he might be able to unilaterally replace either or both of them.
I've always wondered about these two. Dunwoody is a retired Army general. Decker insofar as I can tell is one of the suits who ran Yahoo into the ground. As a platform technology company why would you want these people on your board? I could see having the right sort of government suit on it, maybe. I couldn't see "turned Yahoo into an irrelevant hellhole of ads" as relevant experience.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#230Earlier 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…
Let's leave the diagnoses to the doctors please. The guy was public about being under a lot of stress and that's fine and salient to acknowledge. But it's misleading to use medical terminology unless you're actually his doctor and have evaluated him following the protocols of your profession. Which we know you are not -- if you were -- you would be bound by patient confidentiality, and not posting a diagnosis here. S…
I am "evaluating" him as someone who feels he has come unglued in a similarly severe but less public way and recognises a fellow traveller. I'm fully entitled to say this, am I not? It's just my opinion.
I am not "medicalising" it — not least because the medical profession does not recognise burnout as mental illness (because it gets it backward and assumes it is an occupational health issue).
I am saying he is, to me, evidently mentally ill in the way I feel I have been mentally ill. I wouldn't accept a doctor telling me my problems are work stress.
"His job performance was suffering and he appeared to be stressed" is IMO classic American-influenced minimisation of middle-aged male mental ill-health. I would be shocked if what is going on is in any meaningful way limited to his "job performance" and that apart from the job everything else is going fine.