Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave(techcrunch.com)

16 points by kevmarsden 4 hours ago | 10 comments

cisc 4 hours ago |

> To replace the board, Mullenweg leveraged his voting shares — he controls 84% of the vote

Then what can any board ever do?

gigatexal 4 hours ago | |

Absolutely nothing. Too bad he revealed who he really is and turned out to be not a good dude. And yet his company runs the majority of his niche of the web. Ugh.

Grombobulous 3 hours ago | | |

I think all this drama shows that Automattic is not going to last as far as their future business prospects.

I can’t think of a good reason to use Wordpress in a world where AI can whip up a completely custom site in minutes.

And if we think about things like “oh well websites AI creates aren’t that good,” well, that’s as of right now, which is the worst it’ll ever be moving forward.

This is also considering the fact that Wordpress is mostly a good option due to the ecosystem and relatively low cost. It’s not particularly easy to use or “good” in a lot of other measures.

jrflowers 3 hours ago | |

Write little notes about how cool and smart Matt is, carve a heart shape with MM + WP in it on the trunk of a mighty oak, take a picture of him to their hair dressers, nuru massage

RobLach 4 hours ago |

This is gonna make things messy re: fiduciary duty and liability.

4d4m 3 hours ago |

Good. Matt brought the internet forward in a huge way. Wordpress is awesome - bringing many people and businesses online in a way that didn't completely rely on subscriptions at inflated value.

Anyone saying it's too complicated a CMS and isn't the right technical fit is so wrapped up in their own world they don't realize that they're not the userbase. It enabled people of every technical skill level to do great things. It brought millions of jobs and gigs to designers, coders, and plugin developers. Wordpress is a tool - and its success proves it was the right solution for those users back then and still today. Your average user isnt asking AI to set up a custom cms every time they want to make an update.

Woocommerce on WP is STILL one of the few ways to self-run a ecomm shop for next to $0 - where the big competitor charges $40 to 300+ a month.

jmathai 14 minutes ago | |

Matt? Is that you?

stevenicr 3 hours ago |

Glad that is settled.

Matt has been one of the most important leaders in WordPress and in making publishing on the web accessible to everyone.

I’ve disagreed with plenty of decisions made by WordPress, Automattic, and Matt over the years, but that doesn’t erase the enormous contribution he has made to the open web.

Surprised the TC article did not mention info from a different TC article recently:

'In the 33-hour window between Mullenweg being put on leave and his return, two key executives at the company signed off on generous exit packages for each other. Davies, who became interim CEO during that window, and Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan, each signed the other’s severance agreement,'

$8 million siphoned from the company in 30 hours when they ousted Matt, and doing so knowing that he had 80% voting power to replace anything, seems even more sus than the first time I read it.