Seems like nobody is actually reading the TFA which is a shame because what the article describes is truly mind boggling:

>However, the board’s plan did not go smoothly. Seemingly declining to depart, Mullenweg booted other admins out of the company Slack and told employees everything had been worked out and that he was back in control of Automattic

What the article is actually reporting is that no one at Automatic is giving a straight answer not that the board caved and reversed their decision.

It does sound as if he has lost his grip on reality.

> When TechCrunch asked Mullenweg if his comments about being back as CEO were legitimate, he promised a blog post was coming. When it arrived, however, it was about him buying a houseboat. When we asked if his comments about being back were also him trolling, he replied, “I’m not a troll I’m a pirate, obviously.”

And if he's trolling, then I would argue that's also evidence towards having lost his grip on reality.

Recent and related:

Matt Mullenweg tells Automattic staff in Slack he's back in control after ouster - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660104 - Sept 2026 (144 comments)

Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49636283 - Sept 2026 (372 comments)

(I know there have been many other threads in this long saga but I don't have the time (or the stomach) to try to list them)

p.s. We merged an earlier thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49683265) into this one, which is why the timestamps of some of the comments are older.

I don't say this lightly, but this sounds like someone going through a mental health crisis.

So he was on a leave of absense, and now is no longer on such a leave? This is only an attempted coup if you think the leave of absense was a pretense, but they give no evidence of that in the article. I saw it suggested that he usually has wild ideas after returning from burning man, and the board wanted to insulate the company from the effects of that. That he's now back is evidence for a theory along those lines, and contradicts a theory that the board was trying to get rid of him. But I have no insight beyond that.

This title would benefit from editorializing “of Automattic” for those who do not follow the daily drama this individual has created.

ETA: Or better yet a clearer statement that nothing about this is clear.

It surprises me to no end that people continue working for this lunatic. When this company was offering an early severance, I am surprised only 159 took the offer [1]. Per cited article, this was 8.4% of the total workforce. Apparently there was even a second severance offer at around the same time of the CEO's legal fight with WP Engine [2].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/04/159-employees-are-leaving-...

[2] https://www.404media.co/automattic-buyout-offer-wordpress-ma...

Matt is of the opinion that if they’re going to try and take his thing he might as well burn it down, isn’t he xD

I only see the headlines of this drama. All it tells me is to stay far away from any dependency on this company.

So glad I just converted my site to Hugo.. happy to get away from this whole bunch of people.

Looks like he was just at Burning Man so this behavior tracks. https://ma.tt/2026/09/bm-snaps/

I only recently realised why the org is called AutoMATTic

This sounds like a mistake and a part of Automatic. This is not a good look for the brand.

Anytime I read anything about this guy, Automattic, or Wordpress, I—a Tumblr user—get the nervous sweats about my beloved shayla.

What is curious is that there is very little "leak" from insiders regarding what is going on, how employees are living this joke level management.

Despicable. What an obscene leader + board to not have the guts to remove him properly.

Dont these no-code chasing marketing teams have other ways of building their leadgen ponzi schemes instead of bothering with Wordpress by now?

sigh

> and if you search online you can see many top executives and Automatticians supporting him as well,” a company spokesperson shared

Did anyone else think "what the fuck did I just read" after this sentence? Did Matt write it himself while posing as a "spokesperson"? This reads like that time Trump wrote in pseudonymously to a newspaper about how amazing and perfect Trump was.

Oh, I hadn't finished reading. The whole article is a WTF did I just read.

Dupe/existing discussion from a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660104

[flagged]

What a feckless board.

I'm not involved at all in WP, but one thing that I've noticed is that when people talk about Matt Mullenweg online, it's apparently alright to call him mentally ill, scum, unhinged, wish him harm, cheer his setbacks, etc etc.

I've actually never seen anything like it. Is this what the WP community are like? I think that would break me too.

Microsoft has done plenty of awful things in its day, but I've never seen people diagnose Steve Ballmer with mental disorders and wish him harm, let alone that would become just the accepted majoritarian narrative around him, as it seems to be around Matt Mullenweg. It seems wild.

More broadly, why is there a 'WP drama' sub-Reddit? Why are there blogs documenting all of this with glee? Why are people registering domains to post screeds about this? In other words, why has a cottage industry sprung up around - as far as I can tell - bullying Matt Mullenweg?

I don't know what to make of it. Who are the WP community, that this is how they engage? Is there some big 4chan-WordPress overlap I'm not aware of? Is this an outgrowth of teenage faux-radicalism off Tumblr? I genuinely don't know, but it seems very off-putting. If this is what the WP community are like, I sure wouldn't want to become involved in it.

Corporate coup survivors: Matt Mullenweg, Sam Altman, Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark. They should form a club.

That’s a weird thing to say about “coup attempts.”

Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight.

In the world of AI I imagine that Automattic’s core business model is in turmoil.