> “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 accusation in the company wide announcements channel, odds are you’re never coming back. A board coup rarely happens without a good reason, but a “leave of absence” isn’t a firing. It’s still pretty bad, but it’s not a firing. However, crashing out and waging war on the board will lead to that outcome.

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SaltyBackendGuy an hour ago | parent | next [-]

In recent memory of companies I've worked for, even the absolute WORST executives haven't gotten fired. They always announce that "it's time for another adventure" or "I am taking a break". So I am not shocked they didn't fire him, although the board is now probably wishing they did.

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datakan an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Had a President make a big ordeal about leaving "for health reasons". His LinkedIn had him at a new company within a couple months doing the same thing.

Had a CISO leave for "personal" reasons. Talked to him a couple years later and yeah, he was fired.

Steal 20$ out of a cash register and make the local news. Waste a billion dollars at a corp and make insane decisions and ride out on a golden parachute. Its a fucked up world.

	▲	gottorf a minute ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In fairness, I don't think stealing $20 makes the local news these days, unless you live in a town of 300 people. There's a lot of antisocial behavior that goes unreported. But moreover: I guess there's a presumption, whether fair or not, that well-paid executives overseen by wealthy boards of directors are pre-vetted and act in good faith, whether or not those actions pan out and make money; versus robbery or violent crime that people recoil from, that assumption of good faith isn't there, because it's self-evident to ordinary people that there is no justification for such actions.
	▲	actionfromafar 4 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ah, but they take the big risks, you see. Someone has to do it.

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telotortium 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those phrases often imply that they were fired or asked to resign - although the deniability can be useful, which is why they’re so often used. As a recent example, Fidji Simo went on leave from her role at OpenAI several months before leaving. Although I don’t know for sure, I would suppose that she was essentially fired when she went on leave, and the subsequent success of Codex after she went on leave confirmed the decision to fire her. It’s possible that, if Codex hadn’t been a success, she might have been brought back, so putting her on leave was useful for optionality.

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patternMachine an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Barring truly bad behavior this is how executives get fired.

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tibbydudeza an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Spend more time with my family :).

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dofm 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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muglug 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> 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 don’t even consider the possibility.

	▲	dofm 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I don’t think that’s accurate or helpful. There are, to me, abundant signs that he is severely burned out, dysregulated and irrational. (In this statement, in other statements, in his actions that wilfully worsened his own case against WP Engine, in his blog posts etc.) These are mental health issues. I have experienced many of them myself (I am indeed recovering from them now) and do not know what else you could possibly call them. He is very evidently experiencing continuing poor mental health. I don't know why the board would say "leave of absence" if they were not themselves alluding to his health. He clearly needs a break from the thing he does for his own benefit. I absolutely wish him well and hope he steps back and takes care of himself for a while; none of this is worth worse health.

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kmeisthax 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I am saying this as someone who has had repeated and ongoing issues with WP Engine as a hosting platform: no, Matt Mullenweg was not even valid in his basic assumptions motivating his lawsuit against WP Engine. The idea that a hosting platform is leeching off the WordPress ecosystem is absurd, for two reasons:

1. WordPress is free and open source software, developed under reciprocal licensing (GPL). Hosting companies are neither legally nor morally obligated to contribute back to WordPress core. They are already a beneficial part of the ecosystem.

2. WP Engine was contributing back to the WordPress ecosystem, just not Matt Mullenweg's corner of it.

WordPress is a modular platform and plugin and theme developers are just as important to WordPress's continued success as core development is. WP Engine happens to own Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is basically WordPress's answer to the Drupal Fields API[0]. ACF is what lets you add arbitrary fields to WordPress's page edit screen without having to write a bunch of custom metabox hooks and forms. It was a huge timesaver before things moved to page builders[1] and it's still useful even if you're using a page builder.

[0] Formerly Content Construction Kit

[1] Full disclosure: I hate Gutenberg. It is not WordPress, it's a React development kit tumor shoved inside WordPress. Any other page builder would be preferable.

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19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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