{"id":640481,"date":"2024-10-04T10:51:57","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T07:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/159-employees-are-leaving-automattic-as-ceos-fight-with-wp-engine-escalates\/"},"modified":"2024-10-04T10:51:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T07:51:57","slug":"159-employees-are-leaving-automattic-as-ceos-fight-with-wp-engine-escalates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/159-employees-are-leaving-automattic-as-ceos-fight-with-wp-engine-escalates\/","title":{"rendered":"#159 employees are leaving Automattic as CEO’s fight with WP Engine escalates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said on Thursday that 159 employees (roughly 8.4% of staff) accepted a severance package<\/a> that the company had offered to those who disagreed with his direction of WordPress and his handling of tussle with web hosting provider WP Engine. <\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a>, Mullenweg said the package offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, but the employees who took it would not be eligible to be re-hired by Automattic. <\/p>\n

Nearly 80% of people who took the offer worked in the company\u2019s Ecosystem \/ WordPress division, and the rest were in Automattic\u2019s Cosmos businesses, consisting of app<\/a>s like Pocket Casts, Day One, Tumblr and Cloudup.<\/p>\n

Mullenweg, who co-created WordPress and is arguably the face of the open-source project<\/a>, tried to put a positive spin on the announcement, writing that the company \u201cdecided to design the most generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHR added some extra details to sweeten the deal; we wanted to make it as enticing as possible,\u201d he wrote, and later on added: \u201c159 people took the offer, 8.4% of the company, the other 91.6% gave up $126M of potential severance to stay!\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone, you aren\u2019t expecting them to resign or be fired [indicating a person who joined two days before the deadline took the offer]; you\u2019re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit,\u201d Mullenweg wrote.<\/p>\n

Mullenweg and Automattic have been in a skirmish with WP Engine for almost two weeks now, in which the CEO has called WP Engine a \u201ccancer to WordPress,\u201d accusing it of wrongfully using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks, and banning the company from accessing the open-source WordPress.org resources.<\/p>\n

Both WP Engine and Automattic have sent each other cease-and-desist letters. And WP Engine earlier on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg, accusing the company and its CEO of \u201cabuse of power,\u201d extortion, and saying the WordPress co-creator has conflicts of interest in handling WordPress as an open-source project.<\/p>\n

Automattic has so far called all of WP Engine\u2019s claims meritless. \u201cI stayed up last night reading WP Engine\u2019s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court\u2019s consideration of their lawsuit,\u201d the company\u2019s legal representative, Neal Katyal, said in a blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the last few days, several<\/a> people<\/a> on X<\/a> have hinted about a severance offer being circulated among Automattic employees. Mullenweg also allegedly DM\u2019d a former employee who posted about the offer<\/a> and accused her of attacking the company and him.<\/p>\n

Today, some Automattic employees<\/a> who opted to keep their jobs posted messages<\/a> in support of the company and Mullenweg.<\/p>\n

You can contact this reporter at im@ivanmehta.com or on Signal: @ivan.42<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology<\/a><\/span> category.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said on Thursday that 159 employees (roughly 8.4% of staff) accepted a severance package that the company had offered to those who disagreed with his direction of WordPress and his handling of tussle with web hosting provider WP Engine. In a blog post, Mullenweg said the package offered $30,000 or six…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":640482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/matt-mullenweg9.jpg?resize=1200,800","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[76849,151451,152059,152169,152060,152061],"class_list":["post-640481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-wordpress","tag-commerce","tag-matt-mullenweg","tag-severance-packages","tag-wordpress-org","tag-wp-engine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}