Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/automattic-has-a-new-board-after-failed-attempt-to-put-ceo-on-leave/

44•ilamont•1h ago

Comments

pinkmuffinere•1h ago

1. Wow his profile picture is so extremely fluorescent

2. I guess I should move my blog off Wordpress

eknkc•1h ago

How the hell does this look like it is burning a hole in my screen?

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1998201848008679424/OGH...

BalinKing•1h ago

It's an HDR image, I think.[0] At the moment, only some browsers show it as brighter—Firefox on macOS, for example, doesn't support HDR images and I had to open the page in Safari to see it for myself.

[0] see, for example, this submission from the front page a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402521.

dtf•12m ago

It's an 8-bit PNG of a magenta patch (with a dash of white), but the ICC profile is set to Rec.2020 PQ. So I think the high 255 values of 8-bit magenta/white will get mapped to very top of the PQ curve, which is like 10,000 nits (or whatever brightness your display can muster)

flerchin•1h ago

It says he has 84% of the voting shares. Is there any possible way that the board could have been successful? Regardless of Mullenberg, (and I know he's controversial) a coup that is pre-ordained to fail seems like value destroying negligence.

jordanb•58m ago

They could have known they wouldn't succeed but they could have decided their fiduciary duty requires them to either try or resign.

hoten•55m ago

Didn't they craft themselves a nice golden parachute if fired? Then proceeded to kick off events that would guarantee their dismissal?

That's less fiduciary duty and more hacking a payday.

collingreen•38m ago

Getting out of a toxic job while failing up. Business can be strange sometimes.

throw0101a•31m ago

> That's less fiduciary duty and more hacking a payday.

A large golden parachute for firing a board member could be a disincentive mechanism to do it: a 'poison pill' of a kind.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan

They could have felt they were doing the right thing, and making a public statement of the situation, but knew it was a bit of a kamikaze tactic and so made it more painful for when the eventual backlash occurs.

bloudermilk•1h ago

How does a CEO pull off resisting an ouster and firing the board?

doikor•58m ago

By personally owning 84% of the voting shares. This coup was doomed to fail from the start.

dylan604•44m ago

Being on the board is a Sisyphean effort based on the weighted voting setup. Some seem to be slower to realize this. At that point, they could quit and walk away with nothing, or as others have suggested, this could have been done deliberately to at least get a payday on the way out.

jordanb•56m ago

Apparently corporate structure gave him power over the board. Historically this kind of structure was considered undesirable and illegal in a public company, but beginning in the 2000s there was this idea that "visionary founders" should be able to demand absolute control, ex: Zuckerberg

VCFundedGenYer•49m ago

The same way Mark Zuckerburg does - he maintains majority control.

xnx•56m ago

Fireship pointed out that the board members gave themselves a generous severance package in the very brief interim, so that was very possibly the whole plan.

ImPostingOnHN•42m ago

That was my guess:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692654

tptacek•20m ago

Yeah, if Mullenweg really did control a majority of the voting shares, the previous board are the villains in this story no matter what you think of Mullenweg.

bastard_op•53m ago

I'm surprised anyone still uses wordpress after this whole sh!tshow, but outside HN folks probably don't even know. Just reading about it about it puts me off from the product and company.

slopinthebag•46m ago

its also hard to move off of

collingreen•39m ago

What makes it hard, these days?

I did plenty of WP back in the day and I agree, historically, but each of the strong answers I had in my mind (db integration, editor, plugins, themes) are weakened substantially by the AI agents' ability to port a working site to a new framework. I totally agree for normal users still but for devs taking jobs on this do you think the barriers to switching have come down in size?

slopinthebag•29m ago

its getting buy-in, especially from people entrenched in their workflows, convincing management and sometimes legal depending on what plugins are being used.

sixothree•38m ago

It certainly is. But I won't be recommending it for new projects. Imagine how bad that would make you look.

monkey_monkey•4m ago

[delayed]

dj_rock•46m ago

Come at the king you best not miss...

smoovb•33m ago

Wordpress does not seem long for this world. How much of the Wordpress ecosystem is pure wasted resources, trying to be accommodating for all possibilities? As people see how easy Claude or Codex makes it to get off flat price Wordpress hosting and on to usage based platforms like Vercel, Wordpress usage will fade out. Feels like bloatware has no place in they coming world of AI customized software builds.

sosborn•19m ago

Most of the organizations/departments running wordpress aren't interested in customized software builds and all of the infrastructure that requires. They want something they can pay a simple monthly fee for, and host it with a company that deals with security, backup, etc.

dghlsakjg•8m ago

So many people in this thread completely misunderstand what WP is being used for and by who. Most users simply have no idea that Automattic exists and probably wouldn’t care if they knew what’s going on.

WP users want a mature, easy to use framework, with lots of plugins, and a tutorial that can show you how to get anything done. Wordpress is the piece of software that kind of defines that genre. The fact that every host offers a Wordpress package seals the deal.

tecleandor•26m ago

Looks like the Altman Maneuver...

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Show HN: Jev Plays Pokémon Red

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Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

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