Matt Mullenweg Offers Severance Packages Amid Dispute with WPEngine
TapTechNews October 4th news, Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and the CEO of Automattic, recently offered severance packages to employees who disagreed with him on the fight against WPEngine. The amount is $30,000 or 6 months' salary (whichever is higher). Mullenweg updated the information on Thursday night, stating that a total of 159 employees accepted the proposal, accounting for 8.4% of the total number of the company.
Automattic is responsible for operating WordPress.com and its commercial services and has recently been in a public dispute with the third-party hosting service provider WPEngine. Mullenweg called WPEngine a 'cancer' of the WordPress community and banned its access to WordPress.org. He claimed that WPEngine violated the WordPress trademark and criticized it for not giving back to the WordPress open source project. In response, WPEngine, owned by the private equity firm SilverLake, filed a lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automattic on Wednesday, accusing them of racketeering. Automattic called the lawsuit 'groundless'.
'SilverLake and WPEngine's attacks on me and Automattic are baseless, but they worked,' Mullenweg wrote. 'Obviously, many colleagues at Automattic don't agree with my approach and actions.' He asked employees to decide by October 3 whether to leave the company, and the departing employees would not be rehired.
According to Mullenweg, The departure mainly affected the company's WordPress ecosystem department, and 79.2% of the employees who accepted the severance package came from this department. 'This week has been like a roller coaster ride,' Mullenweg wrote. 'But now I feel a lot easier. I thank all the colleagues who accepted the severance package, and I am even more inspired by those who chose to stay instead of taking the $126 million (TapTechNews note: currently about 887 million yuan).'
In addition, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy confirmed that she has left the company.