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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

#381

Post by domador »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #210
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…

> 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.

It 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.

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

#382

Post by forshaper »

mebizzle wrote: post #378
pibaker wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so eager to gatekeep who gets to call others mentally ill? I don't understand it. I don't have to be a doctor to say that someone who is constantly coughing and having a fever is sick, nor do I have to be a doctor to call someone with no legs disabled. What's different about mental illness? I don't disagree that there might be more subtle cases that are hard to tell by a lay person. But Matt is not lik…

Because some people would go insane without having an external authority to appeal to; the extant systems of academia and qualification create an "objective" truth these peoples' psyches can cling to.

Without the certifying board, one might wonder about the nature of problem described.

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

#383

Post by zrn900 »

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…

> Unfortunately, this is for the best.

Is it? The chief FINANCIAL officer took control of the company after Blackstone's investment in Automattic lost 50% of its value in the last two years. Has there been ANY case in which a private equity firm trying to recover lost investments did good for open source & the community?

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

#384

Post by zrn900 »

qlte wrote: post #316
ibejoeb wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open to correction here, but I understand it to be like this: the kernel of the contention is about the use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks, not the software itself. Essentially, WP Engine is a commercial entity profiting from the use of the trademark. Regardless of how it has been handled, it does not seem to be a frivolous claim.

They were using the trademark on the website to describe WordPress the software project under nomitative fair use in the same way many, many hosting providers have been doing for decades. He openly admitted in online comments to trying (and failing) to extort their CEO in private to give Automattic huge payments, and if they declined that he'd destroy their valuation by cutting off their access and buy them for penni…

> nomitative fair use

No, WP Engine has been highlighting WordPress and using the word in a way that it did make a lot of non-technical people believe that WP Engine was 'WordPress'. In that, Mullenweg has a point.

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

#385

Post by zrn900 »

biglyburrito wrote: post #12
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…

" Unfortunately "??

Unfortunately, Mullenweg, for all his faults, is a very good open source project leader. He carried WordPress to success, and he kept it at the top and as relevant for two decades, successfully navigating a lot of trials while also creating a community and spreading open source culture. During all of this, he protected the community and the interests of the project's users to the maximum extent.

Again, for all his faults, he is a very good project leader. Not unlike Linus, who has the habit of going postal when any discussion about any change to the Linux kernel reaches the 'Linus in CAPS' stage of discussion. I dont see such stuff as bad things. But as side effects. I can live with those if the project is healthy enough.

In any case, if he does anything new, there would be a lot of people who would support him for those reasons. Yeah, he needs to mature personally somewhat. And that's not really easy when you are entering midlife and your parents are getting old and whatnot. But everyone passes through those hurdles. And he will also pass through them.

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

#386

Post by patcon »

muglug wrote: post #48
dofm wrote: post #35

Earlier 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 found himself in a situation that he could not cope with in a rational manner.

This framing is so generous and I'm grateful for it. Thank you. Makes me optimistic about public discourse to see iterative reframings toward observations like this

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

#387

Post by mthoms »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #372
mthoms wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> You're a dinosaur Why is this necessary?!

Dinosaur is often used to describe someone who has grown out-of-touch with their industry. It aptly describes the technical skills Matt was just breathlessly boasting about.

In case you missed it, Matt's boast was part of his attack on people like me who disagree with him ("stupid people swayed by bots") and his direct personal attack on YouTuber Theo Browne, whom he described as having "two brain cells".

In the context Matt established himself, "dinosaur" is pretty tame, no?

Yes, two wrongs don't make a right. I'll tone it down. But if you're going to police the comments, kindly consider applying the policing equally. Just because someone is a quasi-famous tech celebrity, it shouldn't give their behaviour a pass.

Edit: I just noticed that elsewhere in this thread he calls his opponents (myself included) "idiots", yet there's no policing on that comment. Apparently, it's only "dinosaur" that crosses your red line.

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

#388

Post by dofm »

gregory23 wrote: post #352
dofm wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

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…

It certainly and very clearly was not an ad hominem. Stop projecting things onto what I said so you can criticise me.

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

#389

Post by zrn900 »

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.

> As a platform technology company why would you want these people on your board?

Investors tell you to put them on the board and you do it. The worst mistake WordPress made was taking investment from private equity and assorted Wall Street types.

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

#390

Post by moralestapia »

gregory23 wrote: post #376
moralestapia wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, if you see someone naked on the street, screaming at a wall, eating a pigeon or whatever, are you really going to think: "I don't know if this person is mentally ill or not, I need an expert to come here and apply the DSM-V"? Oh and also, the DSM-V is not even used to diagnose those things ...

Someone "naked on the street, screaming at a wall, eating a pigeon or whatever" could be having a bad trip on some drugs, not necessarily mentally ill. The drugs will wear off, and they will be a regular neurotypical person again. But by slapping a mental illness label onto that person, you've proven that you have no clue what you're talking about, and you shouldn't be diagnosing anyone. Our brain is designed through…

Addiction is a mental disorder within the mental health spectrum, and it matters.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41449521/

But nice try with the throwaway account and everything. 8/10, pal.

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