{"id":10712,"date":"2026-09-11T23:45:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T03:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?p=10712"},"modified":"2026-09-11T23:11:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T03:11:27","slug":"automattics-board-voted-out-mullenweg-with-less-than-an-hours-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/automattics-board-voted-out-mullenweg-with-less-than-an-hours-warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Automattic&#8217;s board voted out Mullenweg with less than an hour&#8217;s warning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Matt Mullenweg found out he&#8217;d been put on leave from his own company the same way most of his employees did: over Slack, on a Thursday morning, with barely an hour&#8217;s notice before the board vote that decided it.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Mullenweg, who founded <a href=\"https:\/\/automattic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Automattic<\/a> and built it into the company behind <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">WordPress.com<\/a>, Tumblr and Pocket Casts, told staff the board had voted him out as CEO in favor of CFO Mark Davies serving as interim chief executive. He said he&#8217;d received the resolution just 50 minutes before the meeting started and asked repeatedly for time to have it reviewed by independent legal counsel, even a few hours. The board said no. He said he voted against the move himself, which apparently didn&#8217;t matter.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Board member Toni Schneider framed the decision differently in her own Slack message, saying the board had asked <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wordpress-governance-cracks-show-as-mullenweg-reverses-committer-decisions-weeks-before-7-0-ships\/\">Mullenweg<\/a> to step away and expressing confidence that Davies would steer the company well in his absence. Davies, for his part, said he intends to support Mullenweg, the board, and the company through what he called this interim situation, while promising nothing would fundamentally change during the transition. An Automattic spokesperson later confirmed the leadership change to reporters, adding that the board has full confidence in Davies&#8217;s ability to lead.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">None of this happened in a vacuum, though. Mullenweg spent the past few years locked in a public legal fight with <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/wp-engine-escalates-legal-fight-claims-broader-royalty-push-by-automattic\/\">WP Engine<\/a>, sparring with critics on social media and his personal blog along the way. In 2024, he offered employees who disagreed with his positions a choice: take six months of pay or $30,000, whichever was larger, but lose their work access that same evening with no path back. A hundred and fifty-nine people took the deal and left. He later threatened remaining staff who spoke to reporters with termination and no severance, and more recently, Automattic tried to claim ownership of the word &#8220;automatic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Whether this leave marks a genuine reset for <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/automattic-just-turned-wordpresss-23-year-old-admin-panel-into-desktop-os-in-three-days\/\">Automattic<\/a> or just another chapter in a run of controversies depends largely on what Davies does with the interim role, and on whether Mullenweg&#8217;s board seat gives him as much influence as everyone involved is currently insisting it will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Mullenweg found out he&#8217;d been put on leave from his own company the same way most of his employees did: over Slack, on a Thursday morning, with barely an hour&#8217;s notice before the board vote that decided it. Mullenweg, who founded Automattic and built it into the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr and Pocket Casts, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[1656,8068,8067,1658,8066],"class_list":["post-10712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-automattic","tag-automattic-leadership-change","tag-mark-davies","tag-matt-mullenweg","tag-wordpress-parent-company"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Automattic&#039;s board voted out Mullenweg with less than an hour&#039;s warning - Web Hosting News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/automattics-board-voted-out-mullenweg-with-less-than-an-hours-warning\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Automattic&#039;s board voted out Mullenweg with less than an hour&#039;s warning - Web Hosting News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Matt Mullenweg found out he&#8217;d been put on leave from his own company the same way most of his employees did: over Slack, on a Thursday morning, with barely an hour&#8217;s notice before the board vote that decided it. 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