159 Employees Leave Automattic as WordPress CEO Escalates Fight With WP Engine (techcrunch.com) 31
Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has seen a reduction of about 8.4% to its workforce after 159 employees accepted severance packages, CEO Matt Mullenweg said. The move follows disputes over the company's direction and its clash with web host WP Engine. Most departures hit the WordPress division, with some from other business units. Employees received $30,000 or six months' pay, but are ineligible for rehire, Mullenweg added.
Only valid until... (Score:3)
"Ineligible for rehire" is only valid until Mullenweg is out, and he seems to be working really hard towards that end...
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Is it possible to get rid of him, though? He seems to be "dictator for life". I'm not a fan of him ever since his non-apology for putting third-party trackers in the Jetpack plugin and the Wordpress dashboard.
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Everyone should ditch Jetpack, terrible plugin, slows your site down, and far from the most effective features it offers. Here's a few free plugins to consider for the features I used it for:
* Duplicate posts: there are a few with this name (posts/pages)
* Site Down Notification: UptimeRobot.com is awesome, monitor 50 sites for free
* Firewall/Brute Force: Wordfence & Turnstile have been MUCH better
* Stats: lots of Google-related options, I prefer Independent Analytics which doesn't rely on Google, pretty
"You can't fire me, I--actually, please do." (Score:2)
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When you are bought out... you basically sign a contract saying you'll never work for them again.
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Actually that would be exactly why they are ineligible... but point taken about nonsense in CA.
When you are bought out... you basically sign a contract saying you'll never work for them again.
Most companies that do layoffs don't have terms like that in their severance agreements, because most of them want to keep the doors open for those employees to take other jobs at the company if and when they open up. I guess WP is reasonably certain that they won't be staffing back up, and that even if they do, they'll want people with different skills than those employees offer.
Still, those sorts of terms are broadly illegal in California as of January 1, 2020. The only exceptions are when the severance
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Actually that would be exactly why they are ineligible... but point taken about nonsense in CA.
When you are bought out... you basically sign a contract saying you'll never work for them again.
Most companies that do layoffs don't have terms like that in their severance agreements, because most of them want to keep the doors open for those employees to take other jobs at the company if and when they open up. I guess WP is reasonably certain that they won't be staffing back up, and that even if they do, they'll want people with different skills than those employees offer.
Still, those sorts of terms are broadly illegal in California as of January 1, 2020. The only exceptions are when the severance involves someone suing the company as part of a settlement and when the severance is because the employee was groping the secretary in the elevator or other sexual misconduct.
I'm assuming there wasn't a huge sexual abuse scandal at WordPress that is being covered up, so those no-rehire bits are almost certainly not allowed.
Actually, no, I read it wrong, as did a lot of other people, apparently. That law applies only if the employee has previously complained about the company in some form, either internally or externally. That said, the definition is broad enough that it could apply to a rather large percentage of employees, so having those clauses does open up the company to a lot of risk.
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It's probably legal, but it's also stupid.
If, in the future, there is an opening that one of those ex-employees would be ideally suited for, is the company really going to not hire the ideal candidate? Is the company really going to hire second-best, or worse?
Never burn your bridges.
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If, in the future, there is an opening that one of those ex-employees would be ideally suited for, is the company really going to not hire the ideal candidate?
Is the company really going to hire second-best, or worse?
Yes. Companies make that [bad] decision all the time.
"No rehire" is a common condition in buyout agreements, and companies will enforce it.
And yes, this is perfectly legal, even in California. "Took a bunch of money to go away" isn't a "protected class".
P.S. The exact legal terms of the buyout agreement may be "No rehire without CEO approval" or something similar. The company can rehire somebody if they really want to, but in most cases, they won't.
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Steve Jobs was probably, at least on paper, "ineligible for re-hire" at Apple but we all know how that turned out.
Hubris is the downfall (Score:5, Insightful)
From a 30,000 foot view, this has all the hallmarks of an ego driven leadership losing control after making a large number (or one REALLY bad one) of disastrous decisions made by a petty tyrant.
I'm not saying this is the case, because I do not actually know. Its just a pattern I've seen.
If I had any advice, I would suggest the Board that controls the C-Suite start looking for new Leadership ASAP, or there won't be enough company left. Hubris sank the Titanic, not the iceberg.
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Yeah. Mullenweg should have kept his mouth shut instead of talking shit about WP Engine. WordPress can run on other hosts. He could have just steered users (nicely) to some of those.
People (normal ones) just don't like stepping into the middle of someone else's ego battles. So, avoid WordPress and WP Engine. I've build some pretty good sites using vi.
Re: Hubris is the downfall (Score:3)
If you need a site to do the things a CMS does then you'd be crazy to develop it from scratch. Security is hard. Of course, WP is bad at it, so you'd also be crazy to use WP, but clearly there's no shortage of crazy people out there.
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There are a number of good or even great CMS solutions available that are better than WP. WP is easy and yet highly customizable, which is why its popular. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, I've installed it for a number of clients. Joomla, Drupal, and a slew of others are available, with varying degrees of openness.
Something stinks in open source world (Score:5, Insightful)
WordPress and OpenAI are just a couple of examples where end users adopt open technology and then have that support converted in to profit focussed entities. It borders on fraud.
Full power to the lawyers! (Score:1)
"ineligible" yeah (Score:2)
> but are ineligible for rehire, Mullenweg added.
A company like this is ineligible for me to apply to work at, so there is no real problem here.
Yeah, they are on my "ineligible employers list."
Mullenweg specifically is on my "ineligible bosses list" - and I didn't even have to pay him 30 grand for the privilege!
And, I'm trying to figure out any/all ways our business might be using or supporting theirs to get out of those arrangements ASAP.
That's the "ineligible to do business with" list.
Capitalist asshol
Ineligible for rehire (Score:2)
What does that mean?
If WP needs someone with a particular skill set and product knowledge/experience, they would not hire them because they were 'ineligible'?
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Of course. They betrayed the Family by not being Team Players, so they are now Ex-Communicated, and any remaining employees found to be in contact with them will also be shot.
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Smart layoff? (Score:2)
Public Corporate Hissy Fits (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the deal with all the public meltdowns and hissy fits from tech C-Suites these last few years? Used to be this sort of shenanigans was kept private, now every one of them seem to think the public needs to see how much of an asshole they can be. They flaunt their inanity. It's both hysterical, and troubling that this is what we consider the cream of societies crop.
$30,000... (Score:4, Informative)
Severance was "$30,000 or six months pay"? Are those two values equivalent at Automattic? If so, I'm surprised they've only lost 8.4% of their workforce.
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I'm assuming that was a "whichever is greater" sort of thing.
One guy resigned 2 days after being hired (Score:2)
... and walked away with $30K.
I'm appalled nobody is talking about that employee.
That is the definition of "lawful evil" if I've ever seen one.
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Back around 2001/2002, I had friends who received $k signing bonuses and then $k severance bonuses, all without leaving school. Such things are corporate round-off error when compared to related overhead expenses. Don't blame the worker who has to find a new job, especially if they relocated.
Re: One guy resigned 2 days after being hired (Score:2)
What's evil about accepting an offer? If they didn't want him to take it, they shouldn't have offered it.
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I didn't say "evil", I said "lawful evil".
https://www.wnyc.org/story/the... [wnyc.org]
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We don't know what position he gave up to move to suddenly be given this news.
Hopefully he had other irons in the fire too.
Wish I could get severance like that! (Score:2)
I would take the deal in a heartbeat.
The best I've ever done in a layoff, was a month of pay. In other cases, zilch.