These two messages show the problemat(t)ic relationship between Matt, Automattic, and WordPress. Is WP Engine taking advantage of Matt’s personal website? Or are they taking advantage of the Open Source community? Which is it?
Also, “We believe it’s important to prioritize the community’s contributions…”. Really? Is that why he’s been banning contributors left or right for speaking out against his bullying? That’s caring for the community?
It’s very common for bullies to accuse their victims of exactly what they are doing. This makes them feel like their actions are a fair reaction instead of an intentional attack. Matt has been acting surprised that WPE filed a lawsuit against him after he spent a whole week attacking them.
Another common tactic is for the aggressor to try to make their problem the problem of others. Matt continues to say that WPE is attacking the WordPress foundation and the opensource community. No, they are not. They are suing Matt for weaponizing the opensource community.
Matt states “Freedom of Speech is not Freedom of Reach”. Hmmm…. like how he blocked all WPE users and employees from accessing the opensource platform? Like how his has repeatedly banned random people for as little as adding emojis to his childish posts? Is that speech, or is it reach?
Hey Matt, have you looked in the mirror recently?
Matt might be kind most of the time. But anyone who’s been in the community long enough knows that he has also frequently been a petty bully, willing to pay $100K to buy a domain and steal traffic from a business or call a journalist’s boss to try and get them fired.
As with most bullies, they usually pick on weaker people who have no chance to retaliate. This time he picked a fight with someone that might hit him back.
On the afternoon of Wednesday October 16 Matt Mullenweg, CEO posted a follow up buy-out offer to his staff:
“New alignment offer: I guess some people were sad they missed the last window. Some have been leaking to the press and ex-employees. That’s water under the bridge. Maybe the last offer needed to be higher. People have said they want a new window, so this is my attempt. Here’s a new one: You have until 00:00 UTC Oct 17 (-4 hours) to DM me the words, ‘I resign and would like to take the 9-month buy-out offer’ You don’t have to say any reason, or anything else. I will reply ‘Thank you.’ Automattic will accept your resignation, you can keep you [sic] office stuff and work laptop; you will lose access to Automattic and W.org (no slack, user accounts, etc). HR will be in touch to wrap up details in the coming days, including your 9 months of compensation, they have a lot on their plates right now. You have my word this deal will be honored. We will try to keep this quiet, so it won’t be used against us, but I still wanted to give Automatticians another window.”
He added that this about the offer:
“We have technical means to identify the leaker as well, that I obviously can’t disclose,” he continued. “So this is their opportunity to exit gracefully, or be fired tomorrow with no severance and probably a big legal case for violating confidentiality agreement.”
Within the hour he announced that he had just spoken to the leaker and accepted their resignation. Within minutes a post to the Access-Checklist P2 would reveal the identity to the entire company.
When asked if the offer was still valid he confirmed that it was. Shortly after he would board a flight to Hawaii.
Other Automatticians had messaged him to accept. A single additional name would be added to the Access-Checklist P2. With no further updates many assumed that only two people accepted this offer.
Slowly through calls, texts, and rumors word began to swirl that several other people had messaged him to accept the offer but the promised acknowledged response never came. The previous offer came the day ofter Mullenweg announced that going forward all resignations would be effective and have their access removed the same day.
The purgatory of limbo would stretch over two days before a question was posited about the status of the offer. Mullenweg replied:
“I’ll work on an official statement. Probably after we do the hiring offer for WPE employees. We’re really short staffed at the moment!
That may be awkward for someone who DM’d and will have a later last day (could be next year, even), but my priority is people staying, not people leaving. I’m hearing from people staying that they’re stretched thin right now, so we need to hire and ease that overload.
It’s not a time for a bunch of people to leave at once.
So, I ask people to continue fulfilling their confidentiality and work contracts.”
As a response to a question it’s unclear how many Automatticians are aware of this reply and of this ongoing limbo or what it means for their employment. The stress of having been put into a situation where they had to make a life changing decision about their future within hours, in many cases after having only been made aware of it from friendly colleagues who contacted them to let them know another window of opportunity has opened must be significant.
Aside from the tortuous human impact of such a switcheroo what he’s done may not be legal in California according to section 12964.5(b)(4) of the CA Gov Code which stipulates that employees are to receive a reasonable time of not less than five business days to consult an attorney when receiving an offer of separation.
And don’t forget that he’s also planning to make offers to WP Engine staffers. Prioritizing his petty vendetta over the well-being of his current staff.
Barbaric.
If you have, somehow, been missing all of the drama, you should really catch up. I am not going to summarize it all here or anything, and it would be a betrayal of trust on the level of Photography Matthew’s own to provide details that are not already publicly available.
However. There is a fairly good blow-by-blow that is being hosted on the site Bullenweg. It’s not exactly brief, but it’s great 🍿 material. Theo of t3.gg has also been doing so good videos discussing the drama (this one in particular is fantastic).
I think that the biggest lesson that we can all take from this is that no amount of wealth can make you either likeable nor sane.
And following closely behind this is that there’s probably an argument somewhere in here for there to be some significant guardrails surrounding this kind of power. Think about all of the things that you rely on in your life. Who actually has control of them? Is it just one single person? If they went off the rails, would there be anyone to stop them from setting it all on fire?
