Category: Matt

Since our November 2024 lookthrough of Glassdoor reviews, Automattic’s overall rating is now at 3.0. That’s down from 3.8 and well below the industry average of 3.9. Matt’s approval rating has also plummeted from 62% to 36%. To use the same comparison as last time, WP Engine’s Heather Brunner continues to hold a 95% approval rating (with WP Engine’s overall score at 4.0.)

The following is a collection of reviews that have been posted publicly since last November, all from former or current employees of Automattic.

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November 1st, 2024:

I noticed complaints about the CEO’s disruptive “Matt bombs” and uncomfortable rants during events from day one. While I appreciate the company’s openness, the dismissal of this behavior as “just him” raised concerns about accountability and its impact on morale.

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November 4th, 2024:

The board needs to remove Matt as CEO and do a clean sweep of all the sycophants who contribute nothing to the day-to-day operations.

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November 6th, 2024:

The CEO has lost his mind and is trying to bring the entire WordPress Community down with him.

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December 29th, 2024:

The leadership team consistently fails to align with company values, particularly regarding our commitment to open source. The CEO’s decisions often contradict our established principles, creating a chaotic work environment. Management changes direction frequently without clear communication, making it difficult to maintain steady progress on projects. The company culture has suffered as executives seem more focused on short-term gains than upholding our original mission and values.

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13th January, 2025:

Matt is extremely difficult and demoralizing to work with. He gives vague and terse directives, won’t answer clarifying questions, and then micromanages you retroactively. There’s even a long-standing and widespread term for when he notices something he doesn’t like (and often doesn’t understand) and then drops in to criticize everyone involved: it’s called a “mattbomb”. He’ll demand unrealistic and counterproductive changes, then disappear again.

He’ll make rude and unprofessional comments about people on internal blogs that are available to everyone in the company, while simultaneously preaching “good intent”. He seems to have no empathy, and refuses to change his negative behaviors. We did an engagement survey twice a year, and he always got very negative feedback from a large part of the company. The closer you work with him, the more you saw the real him.

In the past few years, he seems to be going off the rails more and more.

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16th January, 2025:

The CEO is a complete embarrassment to the company. The board really should force his resignation. Not surprisingly, he has surrounded himself with low level ‘leaders’ that are even less effective than he is, I presume to preserve his fragile ego. Massive global orgs operate much more effectively than A8C. It shocks me how a ‘tech’ company can be so analog, bureaucratic, slow, and directionless.

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9th March, 2025:

Stressful environment due to CEO’s conduct

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2nd April, 2025:

CEO has gone off the deep end lately. Erratic moves, not listening to his lawyers, or anybody for that matter. The most recent event of 16% layoffs was done with zero notice and without reason other than “financial situation” despite admitting revenue has been increasing.

Matt, don’t lose your humanity completely. I know you used to be a good person

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3rd April, 2025:

Extremely toxic environment. No leader has actual leadership experience so it’s essentially leaderless at all levels. Any external leaders that join are quickly pushed out.

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3rd April, 2025:

The CEO is not a good leader and has no principles despite him stating otherwise. Look at his actions, not his words, and be the judge yourself.

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5th April, 2025:

Top leadership is erratic and inexperienced, at times abusive and paranoid

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12th April, 2025:

– The leadership is clueless about how to grow revenue, and the company has been going downhill since 2023. There is leadership rot due to which obvious solutions to some business problems never get implemented.

– The CEO doesn’t believe in data-driven approaches nor in marketing, and that shows in the company culture. Products are launched according to the whims and fancies of a few who think they know what will work, only to discover a few months later that their feature tanked revenue. It is then rolled back. Rinse and repeat multiple times a year.

– Several silent layoffs happened since 2023, and then in 2025, they laid off 16% of the workforce, which includes tenured and high performing engineers. Company claims their culture is based on kindness, but it all started going downhill since 2023.

– CEO worship culture. Internally called Matt-bombs, a single comment from the CEO is enough to change the entire direction of the business unit overnight.

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2nd May, 2025:

I’ve been with Automattic for years, and it’s heartbreaking to say that the company has completely lost its way. The recent layoffs were handled in the most brutal, tone-deaf manner, with no known criteria, especially for a company that once prided itself on its ethical values. The CEO has lost all credibility, and the company now feels like a cult, where fear and insecurity dominate the culture.

While the flexibility and talented colleagues were once the highlights, everything else has become a struggle. Leadership is silent, career growth is non-existent, and employees are treated like disposable assets. The company has become a shadow of what it used to be.

If Automattic is to survive and regain its former strength, management needs to make a change at the top. The CEO must go. The talented people who remain deserve better leadership, transparency, and a culture of respect.

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3rd May, 2025:

This used to be a tremendous place to work, but has been in decline since too-rapid growth post-Covid. Late 2024 CEO got the company involved in some nasty and very expensive litigation by provoking a rival to sue, and it has been downhill from there, resulting in two voluntary redundancy rounds and one mass layoff. This has decimated the culture and trust. Products are outdated and unable to keep up with technology or the market, largely because the whole company is built around the CEO/Founder’s ‘baby’ WordPress, plus piecemeal acquisitions according to his tastes and whims. Another big issue is that career advancement may be very wobbly. You can progress internally but find yourself unemployable after exit since the company invents its own roles, metrics and structures making it very hard to compare like for like when applying elsewhere. Fundamentally permanently USA-centric despite attempts to be globally minded.

I don’t know how to suggest Matt extricates himself from the litigation at this point, and I fear he will lose the company he built. He should re-read Jerry Colonna’s “Reboot” and learn to consider whether he might sometimes be in the wrong. Otherwise he will go down with his ship and take the global workforce with him.

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22nd May, 2025:

Bad, really bad, outdated products, that break at the seams, that bleed customers, that are difficult to setup and maintain, and the most terrible leadership, with a CEO that should not be allowed near a computer

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22nd May, 2025:

Unfortunately once an amazing place to work is now a pretty horrific place to work. The main cons are:

– Some of the leadership are scared of the CEO i.e. offending him and just do as he says without question. I don’t know why this is, it’s not a criticism aimed at Matt but those who work closely with him. Advise him better. People just things that are absolutely pointless to appease him.

– The legal issues with the rival organisation currently on-going has totally messed up the culture at Automattic, there were a lot of things that were just outright childish and to be honest really weird. Automattic lost some amazing people because of this. I will add however I believe although Matt gets a lot of negativity, I do believe the alignment offer he made was generous.

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25th June, 2025:

– Everything you read here about the CEO is true. He used to be awesome, but people like Musk rubbed off on him and now he’s a spoiled rich kid who leads by fear and intimidation and decisions that make absolutely no business sense and he gets away with it because he was indeed successful the first 10 years and he’s been on autopilot the last 10.

– Yes men culture, the few higher ups under Matt are outside hires that do not challenge him and encourage him to do nonsensical things for our products

– Everyone is afraid they will get fired for voicing their opinions

– Coldhearted layoffs. After two rounds of insanely good buyouts, the remaining employees that were loyal had a surprise 16% workforce cut that was instant and for an incredibly low severance that was absolutely nothing compared to the buyouts

– Likely nosediving financially due to bad legal actions, unimproved products and services, and so many of the best talents taking the buyouts or being laid off. Do not apply, run far far away

Get rid of the CEO, #1. Get rid of every single lacky directly under him. Rebuild in a new era without fearmongering and control.

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11th July, 2025:

Fish rots from the head. Get rid of all the incompetent yes-man in the leadership, and put someone else then Matt at the helm. Automattic build an amazing and rigirous hiring process, and not they are surprised that they have “feedback inflation”. Duh – you hired the best of the best, and they perform as expected. Since they can’t performance manage folks out, they just lay off people based on certain person’s gut feeling/rubric.

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17th July, 2025:

The CEO is now well past the point of redemption. He operates like a textbook bully—dodging accountability, incapable of empathy, and oblivious to the damage he causes. His inner circle either cowers in silence or has gladly traded integrity for a paycheck. Product innovation at Automattic is on life support. For years, the CEO openly dismissed the value of Product Managers and mocked their contributions. What little creativity exists comes from outside, through acquisitions that are quickly smothered by arrogance and mismanagement. Here’s a challenge for Matt: every two years, require your executive team to secure compelling job offers elsewhere. If they can’t prove the market actually values their skills, let them go. I’d bet 30–60% of them wouldn’t survive that test. And to the Board: if anyone’s still paying attention: either step down or take action. Letting the CEO hemorrhage millions in legal costs because he can’t control his impulses is not just negligence but a stain on your own reputations. Enough is enough.

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21st July, 2025:

Wish I had left years ago

The founder/CEO certainly landed on something special with WordPress over 20 years ago and rode some fantastic tailwinds through 2020. Unfortunately, his growth as a leader (and human) was completely arrested. When facing true adversity for the first time, Matt completely undermined the culture (and therefore value proposition) of Automattic as an employer. He fired and sidelined all the true leaders and handed things over to all of the most toxic yes-men. He somehow has learned all the wrong lessons and spent the last couple years doubling and tripling-down on poor strategy while repeatedly disrupting promising initiatives. It’s a toxic mess mess shrouded in false-positivity. The tech stack is an outdated mess and managed by a disaster of systems/engineering “leader” (which is killing engineering velocity and product innovation). Despite the Automattic creed, please be warned that you should NEVER question the status quo. When you interview, you’ll doubtlessly encounter some excellent humans (they’re still there and will be prominent on the hiring team), but the reality on the ground is bad. You will not be insulated from toxic leadership. Your career will stagnate. Your skills will become less marketable. Your mental health may very well be impacted long term.

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6th August, 2025:

Automattic used to be the gold star for remote work and company culture, but now it’s a culture of fear, instability, and distrust. Leadership blames ICs and team leads for what is really a lack of solid leadership and vision from the top. ICs and team leads are tasked with driving profit, but are not empowered to make the changes necessary to do so. Matt-bombs destroy promising efforts that could lead to drastic improvements of a8c products, and whatever morale is left is quickly snuffed out by Matt-meltdowns, both publicly and privately.

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You know, in case you ever need to do one again. NEVER STOP LEARNING, Y’ALL!

1. Make a public statement three months earlier that you are not going to do any layoffs.
2. Announce that you’re laying off 16% of your staff on an internal blog. Start cutting access before people have a chance to read it.
3. Do not inform affected employees’ leads that their teammates are being laid off. Maybe they can catch up afterwards on LinkedIn or somewhere.
4. Lay off entire teams that were performing well. Don’t give a reason why!
5. Let laid off people know via email that their jobs have ended and then cut their access right away, even though your company rarely uses email. Maybe their friends will find out first and text them to check in, and they can figure it out that way.
6. Cut off access while someone’s stepped away from their desk for lunch.
7. Cut off access while someone’s in the middle of a conversation with their lead.
8. Cut off access while someone’s IN THE MIDDLE OF A VIDEO CALL WITH A CLIENT.
9. Create a comprehensive program for non-developer employees to build their skills and move into developer roles. Let them work as developers for a couple years. Then lay most of them off.
10. Set up a way for employees to help out in understaffed areas by rotating to other divisions for a set period of time. Then lay them off while they’re on rotation, even though no employees from their home division were laid off.
11. Offer impacted employees severance amounting to less than half of what you offered alleged “leakers, traitors, and dissenters” in an “alignment buyout” six months ago.
12. Refuse to reimburse company expenses. Make up some administrative excuse.
13. Thank them for their service! Wish them the best! But don’t negotiate the terms of their severance.
14. Tell your remaining employees that this was the result of “feedback inflation” and that no other layoff are planned (wink wink!)

“WordPress 6.7 is right around the corner and it’s difficult to get excited for it. How many people contributed to the release who can no longer contribute?”

That was the question posed by Jeff Chandler on October 18th. Matt’s response?

“That’s a good question. You used to be a journalist, you should count. My guess: 2 or 3, definitely under 10, out of 600+. See also: People think they’re a lot more important than they actually are.”

6.7 was released on November 12th along with a list of its 780 contributors. Let’s take a moment to thank 11 people from that list (i.e. definitely more than 10) who have since paused their contributions:

• • 1. Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko, core component maintainer for Date/Time, announced he has stopped contributions “given recent WordPress actions against community and me personally.”
  • 2. Andy Fragen, core committer, has taken a hiatus due to recent events.
  • 3. Brian Gardner, core contributor, is blocked from contributing to future releases as he works for WP Engine.
  • 4. Damon Cook, Editor Triage lead for 6.7, another WP Engine employee blocked from further contributions.
  • 5. Gerardo Pacheco, Gutenberg contributor.
  • 6. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the project’s executive director, announced she was stepping down.
  • 7. Robert Anderson, Editor Tech lead for 6.7, lead for multiple other releases, and a key contributor to Gutenberg.
  • 8. Scott Kingsley Clark, prominent community member for over 15 years, stepped down, leaving a gap in Fields API leadership. His goodbye notice stated he was “done making excuses for Matt’s actions and will not associate with core any longer.”
  • 9. Vicente Canales, core contributor.
  • 10. Tonya Mork, core committer, lead for numerous releases, and long-time contributor, announced she is pausing contributions due to being “greatly concerned about the well-being & eroding trust of contributors & users.”
  • 11. Zack Krida, core and Openverse contributor.

The list is not complete. It took less than 30 minutes to come up with. It also doesn’t include people like Carrie Dils, Naoko Takano, Angela Jin, and many more who, though they didn’t contribute code to 6.7, added immeasurable value to what makes WordPress special. A thorough investigation would no doubt reveal even more losses, each one incredibly important to the project.

6.7 has been bittersweet. It is the community who have enabled WordPress’ success over the years. I hope every single person who has left knows that they are actually far more important than they think they are. Their absence will be felt.

Everyone who has worked at Automattic knows Matt has a well-documented history of abusive behavior. Senior leadership knows, HR knows, and the board knows. No one can credibly claim otherwise. We all share varying levels of responsibility for allowing his behavior to grow more and more erratic over the years.

Included with this post are some reviews from Automattic’s public Glassdoor profile, which testify to that behavior. Automattic actively solicits positive reviews from employees, yet the company’s overall rating (3.8) remains below the industry average, with Matt’s CEO approval rating at 62%. For comparison, WP Engine’s Heather Brunner holds a 95% approval rating on Glassdoor.

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October 2nd, 2019:

Everyone is scrambling to please the CEO. And what pleases the CEO changes on a whim. There is little to no direction so everyone is left to guess about what they should work on. Many smart people left recently and you can feel the drain.

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December 3rd, 2020:

an environment that allows bullying, trolling, and anonymous forums to shame people and teams

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August 15th, 2021:

Every day you just hope [Matt] doesn’t look in the direction of your team/project or else who knows what will happen. I’ve worked at startups before but never seen an environment where literally every “suggestion” or “thought” the CEO has suddenly must be done right this second. And there is no room for people to disagree. Discourse is “welcome” but that’s because he assumes you will eventually see how he is right. Only yes-people survive and thrive here when you have to interact with Matt.

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February 18th, 2022:

An extremely toxic culture that claims to support well-being, but practices a deeply engrained hypocrisy and dysfunction that fosters work insecurity, a lack of psychological safety, and renders the creed (values) void in many if not most instances. The toxicity is driven largely by a juvenile, ill-run, incompetent HR function that isn’t up to the task. HR does an extremely poor job of developing and enabling competent, mature leadership and fostering an environment that facilitates genuine, high employee morale and productivity that drives results.

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February 25th, 2023:

CEO makes a lot of quick decisions that impact other’s quality of life without input.

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The values advertised publicly don’t match what goes on inside. There are good people in there, but the leadership is kinda apathetic towards marginalized people. Very strong cishet-white-man-bro-code culture. No career growth for ICs. Concerns raised by marginalized people/women/queer/ND people are not heard.

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June 16th, 2023:

The way the CEO talks to subordinates is beyond disrespectful and degrading, which sets a toxic example for others in senior leadership. It’s becoming an increasingly hostile place for people in marginalized groups. Lack of project management contributes to slow and chaotic processes.

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December 14th, 2023:

The CEO likes to micromanage, going from project to project. It’s called the M-Bomb and many folks (but not white males) have been demoted or chased out of the company for not working on what he he considers as important. On the other hand, white males are allowed to make huge revenue-impacting mistakes yet not asked to resign.

Despite all the talk about openness, communication as oxygen, pay transparency does not exist, and management actively shuts down related efforts. Anything you say publicly in internal communications can and will be used against you. Many folks whom stood up to the management/CEO have been “let go”.

An entire team can be cut in one day without so much as a warning, no PIP, no documented warnings. Just gone like that, and an outright lie provided as the justification which no one believes.

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April 8th, 2024:

I love working here. BUT, having a CEO that publicly attacks and disrespects individual employees and insinuates that an entire division does not do work is appalling and hurtful. He acts as though we’re not all spending our waking hours trying to make his company better. We are. I would not be surprised if we lose fantastic people because of his behaviours. It’s unacceptable. It’s disheartening to love a workplace so much and to also feel like the leader of our company finds our work to be all but useless.

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April 12th, 2024:

The leadership, specifically the CEO, is more than just problematic—it’s toxic. His public outbursts on Slack, where he berates and humiliates employees, are not just stressful—they’re destructive. This toxicity has had a trickle-down effect, influencing the rest of the leads in the company. Initially, I was feeling a strong dislike towards my own lead, but I later realized that it was a result of the toxic environment created by the CEO. This became evident when he was temporarily replaced during his “sabbatical”, which markedly changed the team’s morale. Matt’s frequent micromanagement and blatant favoritism, despite other divisions significantly contributing to revenue, are demoralizing. His behavior has not only tarnished the company’s reputation but also profoundly affected the mental health of many employees, including myself, leading some of us to seek therapy. Before joining Automattic, I held the company in high regard, but I’ve become disillusioned by the stark reality of its leadership.

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The CEO jumps into all sorts of decisions and things that he should leave to others. It happens so often, there’s a name for it (Matt Bomb).

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July 31st, 2024:

Erratic leadership, especially the CEO, who was recently judged by an independent committee to have bullied and harassed WordPress community members. He also made a controversial situation on Tumblr worse via a public meltdown. The “Automattic” section of his Wikipedia page literally has more space occupied by controversy than business achievements. Internally, the term “Matt bombs” is common. He’s known to be unjustly callous if he takes a personal dislike to someone and dishes out objectively bizarre, out-of-touch, damaging directives. Promotes and surrounds himself with sycophantic yes-men who enable his toxicity.

There have been numerous poorly handled layoffs in which people in underrepresented groups were disproportionately affected. The environment is increasingly hostile to underrepresented groups. I’ve been privy to many misogynistic comments regarding women engineers.

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August 1st, 2024:

You will find most people here are disengaged and checked out. Why? Because they do not listen to feedback. It’s not hard to see why when Matt Mullenweg berates people on slack. It’s one thing to give a team feedback, it’s another to use your CEO role to treat them in a disrespectful and demeaning ways. There is no trust or confidence in his leadership.

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October 30th, 2024:

Abusive leader who will micromanage and publicly put down employees, and who will make surprise (and questionable) decisions driven by ego. He’s surrounded by yes men who excel in saying a lot of words with no substance. No clear direction for product lines or anything that resembles an overall company strategy.

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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.