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Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

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Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#351

Post by fg137 »

reverius42 wrote: post #333
fg137 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it's "completely solved" unless you can point me to an existing, complete solution. Providing a nice backend with a WYSIWYG editor and access control as well as varying level of customization is not a trivial problem for anyone, technical or non technical, and you can easily mess it up.

You don't need a backend. You don't even need a static site generator. Just sit a non-technical person in front of Claude Code and tell them to tell the computer what they want (including what the content should say). For something as simple as a static site (that the user can themselves look at and read) there's nothing to mess up -- if something looks out of place, a non-technical user can just tell the computer th…

You need to get out of your bubble. That's all I can say.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#352

Post by gregory23 »

dofm wrote: post #35
Shank wrote: post #2

> “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…

You could say "he's behaving irrationally" or even "he seems to be experiencing severe burnout".. But your exact phrasing is way too close to an "online diagnosis" (which is not a valid way to assess a mental illness - afaik no psychiatrist would ever diagnose anyone without ever talking to a person). On top of that, it's too close to an ad hominem - even if you didn't mean it that way.

Everyone is fighting their own demons. Some people are neurodivergent, but nothing good ever happens from an unsolicited "diagnosis" or slapping labels like "unglued". Every one of us can snap under enough pressure. Let's not go there.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#353

Post by paimapi »

elevation wrote: post #264
flomo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

> it is super-reddit to diagnose If I see a person with a broken bone protruding from their arm, I don't need an undergrad med-terms class to know "this person needs medical attention" even if I am not qualified to render it. Similarly, there are certain thresholds of human behavior that indicate mental illness -- you don't have to be licensed to treat it in order to recognize that there is a serious problem.

actually interpreting the DSM-V and running diagnostics is exclusive to clinically trained psychologists and psychiatrists. even LCSWs are remiss to offer a 'diagnosis' after years of talk therapy with a client. most official diagnoses happen within a matrix describing a cluster of symptoms paired with an eval of severity and impact on life, and a battery of tests that have been empirically and rigorously validated

as my wife (who does have an MD and specializes in psychistry) is fond of saying when people ask her to diagnose someone she doesn't know, "Sometimes people are just weird"

it could be that the guy here is just very burnt out and stressed and his healthier coping mechanisms aren't working so he's resorting to worse ones

you can be empathetic to that without calling someone 'mentally ill'

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#354

Post by toast0 »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #197
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide some examples of these errors? Asking genuinely.

The biggest one was probably 2 years back, the dispute with WP Engine, a hosting provider for WordPress. He used WordPress infrastructure to force all instances hosted there to break, then removed the extensions they built from the plugin store, and then replaced them under the exact same name and identifier with his own. He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, withou…

> He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, without discussing it with his lawyers.

As I recall, some of his posts indicated he was knowingly posting against the advice of his lawyers. Although he probably didn't discuss individual posts.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#355

Post by Bogan_Justice »

gkoberger wrote: post #8

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…

I have some sympathy for the guy. I've met him and he's genuinely kind and engaging. He has put his life into the project and company. I could be wrong, but I just don't think he matured quickly enough as the project and company changed. Not to say he's not smart - he is, but some of the antics make folks question the emotional maturity and sense of judgement, when compromise, conciliation and level-headedness are needed. I personally hope he seeks out the help he needs and leaves all the sniping on social media to others. A good outcome would be that he seeks healing, then concentrates on the stewardship of wordpress.org and steers the product in a collaborative and kind way.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#356

Post by toast0 »

safety1st wrote: post #229
FreakLegion wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Decker insofar as I can tell is one of the suits who ran Yahoo into the ground.

I don't think that's really right, but it's hard to tell. In my mind, as someone who was there from 2004-2011, things were going ok while she was there. The Microsoft acquisition would have been nice from a $ point of view, and I think they could have been convinced to give all the employeed an Xbox 360, but Microsoft would have smothered the brand and its products... It's possible the acquisition would have been held up in anti-trust for a long time and a large period of uncertainty.

IMHO the running into the ground really started under Carol Bartz with the ads and search deal with Microsoft whereby Bing was supposed to take over everything. But performance in terms of latency, quality, and $/search was worse than when Yahoo was doing it and the ads and search teams at Yahoo didn't shrink as expected, because the work didn't shrink as expected. Not surprisingly, when you drop revenue and don't drop costs, financial performance does not improve.

Partnering with Google would have made more financial sense, but that wasn't an option because of anti-trust... Probably should have accepted the acquisition and accepted fate... partnering with Microsoft later was a bad choice, maybe they could have backed out once the numbers were clear.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#357

Post by philistine »

triceratops wrote: post #292
flomo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

"Mentally ill" is just a polite way of saying "out to lunch". I like the old phrases too - so much more color. But whatever man.

He's as crazy as a coocoo clock.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#358

Post by mthoms »

photomatt wrote: post #340
tshaddox wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you win (like Jobs against Flash/Adobe) you're a hero, if you lose people trash your name. A lot of stupid people are swayed by the bots paid by the dark PR firms that PE engages to astroturf things and two-brain-cell "technical" YouTubers that have never optimized milliseconds off code that runs billions of times a day, never set up a rack that terabits flow through...

[flagged]

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#359

Post by cindyllm »

Bogan_Justice wrote: post #355
gkoberger wrote: post #8

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…

I have some sympathy for the guy. I've met him and he's genuinely kind and engaging. He has put his life into the project and company. I could be wrong, but I just don't think he matured quickly enough as the project and company changed. Not to say he's not smart - he is, but some of the antics make folks question the emotional maturity and sense of judgement, when compromise, conciliation and level-headedness are ne…

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