Matt Mullenweg & Automattic/WordPress vs WP Engine

I’ve been attacked so much the past few days;
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How come??? Poor baby!

the most vicious, personal, hateful words poisoned my brain,
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Through no fault of your own!

and the original version of this post was mean.
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How did that happen?? Did someone write a bunch of mean shit? Maybe you?

The passive voice and refusal to own his shit is exactly what I’d expect out of Matt Mullenweg. I’m enjoying this show, but I have a feeling it’s about to get even better (for observers, not Matt, who’s fucked).
 
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The judge has been assigned, then changed.


Case Management Statement due by 2/20/2025 no later than 12:00 PM PST. Initial Case Management Conference set for 2/27/2025 at 10:00 AM in San Francisco, Courtroom 10, 19th Floor.
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Also an interesting detail

The assigned judge participates in the Cameras in the Courtroom Pilot Project.
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So we might get to see the case livestreamed :story::popcorn:
 
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the two active mods in the wordpress subreddit have stood down, leaving otto - an automattic employee, as sole moderator (archive). the subredditdrama subreddit has a thread on it too (archive).

matt made a blog post addressing the allegations & lawsuit surrounding his mother and two nurses. matt is getting dragged because it's being alleged he tried to "silence" the nurses by quashing it before it goes to trial. (archive).
susan robenstein, the lawyer representing the nurses responded in kind (archive):

While I would like to respond in detail to the false and self-serving statements made by Mr. Mullenweg, I believe that it is the better practice to not comment on a case that is in active litigation. Because his comments were made online, I do feel compelled to state that I stand by all the allegations set forth in the Complaints filed on behalf of each of these women. I do not file spurious complaints, nor do I “recruit” clients. The complaints were not sent to the press, nor are any of the allegations contained therein exaggerated. Last, Mr. Mullenweg’s claim that he was told by me that unless he paid a specific sum of money, the Complaints would be filed, is also false.
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matt offers to jump on a call with someones concerned clients, gets turned down (archive).
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WP Engine did send out another email to customers but it's just boring CEO talk, there's nothing really of substance there. If you're still curious, you can check it out here:
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matt has also been getting dragged on twitter with this interaction with a prior automattic employee (archive). you'll have to make-do without a screenshot as it's too long.

kinda boring few days compared to last week, there's some minor hubbub with a few plugins either:
a) removing themselves from the wordpress.org repo
b) siding with matt and refusing to provide support with WP Engine customers
no major plugins are involved that i can see. he hasn't posted on hackernews or reddit for a few days, likely because he wasn't getting much support in either.
 
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there are rumblings that automattic is doing another round of "voluntary layoffs". the first one was for either 30k or 6 months wages, whichever is higher and ~9% (~150 people) took the offer. this was before matt made his dubious moves with wordpress.org though. if true i'd bet another 10-20% of his workforce to be leaving, we'll probably have confirmation before the day is out.
 
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skunt said:
there are rumblings that automattic is doing another round of "voluntary layoffs". the first one was for either 30k or 6 months wages, whichever is higher and ~9% (~150 people) took the offer. this was before matt made his dubious moves with wordpress.org though. if true i'd bet another 10-20% of his workforce to be leaving, we'll probably have confirmation before the day is out.
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Rumor has it, this time they're offering 9 months of wages, and he gave employees 4 hour to decide on that one (in a company that's spread across the world in all timezones, so some people would be sleeping and wouldn't even wake up before the deadline is up).

I don't really believe in that rumor because there's no good source and it sounds too dumb to be true.
 
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Kola said:
Rumor has it, this time they're offering 9 months of wages, and he gave employees 4 hour to decide on that one (in a company that's spread across the world in all timezones, so some people would be sleeping and wouldn't even wake up before the deadline is up).

I don't really believe in that rumor because there's no good source and it sounds too dumb to be true.
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Here's the alleged offer:

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 your 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.
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Kola said:
I don't really believe in that rumor because there's no good source and it sounds too dumb to be true.
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Matt continues to surprise us. The offer is real. Can you imagine the WPE's lawyers, laughing as Matt walks himself into their jaws.

Matt "Stalin" Mullenweg is purging the dissenters :story:

Burn baby, burn!
 
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So what the hell is Matt's endgame with all this? My schizo theory is that he took Ayahuasca and just wants to burn his life to the ground.
 
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Inside your walls said:
I'm not sure where to post but I do think this is a point of interest mentioning here, since our dear Leader loves watching Silicon Valley techies and their DEI hires cannibalize each other.

Matt Mullenweg the CEO of Wordpress and Tumblr is being sued by one of his employees
for wage theft and human trafficking (initially).

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Tweet

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Link 1
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However as shown in the documents, the name Kathleen Mullenweg appears too. That's because she's the CEO's mother
that's also getting sued for allegedly creating TAXIC environment to work in and saying hateful remarks about minorities
such as how she wouldn't let black people use her toilet because they're dirty and how all Asian women are gold-digging
whores/sluts. She also allegedly powerleved about her son's sex life to his employees too.

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While human trafficking charges are not being filed, the allegations do feature a pattern of human trafficking control such as sleep and food deprivation, constant surveillance, economic deprivation, housing control, continuous harassment, which are behaviors done on purpose to prevent the victim in these situations be unable to get out due to feeling burned out and having no time.

There's also a github dedicated to documenting Matt Bullenweg's ordeals. I guess this dude isn't really liked that much.
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gonna quote this effortpost from the MatI thread because it has some good deets on matt's other pasttime, human trafficing
 
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matt is so blasted about people sharing DMs that he's added it to the wordpress code of conduct (archive).

matt also made a news posting thanking salesforce for providing slack access. matt LITERALLY, does not get ONE sentence into this news post without crying about WP Engine (archive). He actually does it twice!
(And we may need to go to their enterprise grid, to support e-discovery in the lawsuit attacks from WP Engine, which would cost even more.)
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