TL;DR
Automattic's board voted founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg into a paid leave of absence and handed the interim CEO job to the CFO, while Mullenweg publicly called it a conspiracy behind his back.
Matt Mullenweg is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company holding WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts and other things vast numbers of people use every day.
One Slack message blew the company up
On a September morning Mullenweg posted in the all-company Slack that the board had voted to put him on paid leave, and that he had voted against it. He said CFO Mark Davies had worked with three board members behind his back, that he got the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting, and that his repeated requests for even a few hours to have outside lawyers review it were denied.
A replacement who says nothing changes
Davies became interim CEO. In the same channel he thanked Mullenweg, said he would support him and the board, that nothing would change for the company, and that he would need some time to get up to speed. Board member Toni Schneider also spoke up, stressing that Mullenweg remains a director and will still have a voice in direction.
Mullenweg has had a rocky few years: a legal fight with WP Engine, a 2024 'alignment' buyout in which 159 people who disagreed with his stances took the money and left, and threats to fire employees who talked to the press, telling them to 'exit gracefully, or be fired tomorrow with no severance.' Lately the company even tried to claim it owned the word 'automatic.'
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