159 Employees Leave Automattic as WordPress CEO Escalates Fight With WP Engine (techcrunch.com) 47
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
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"Ineligible for rehire" is only valid until Mullenweg is out
Errr no. Quite often ineligible for rehire is a legally binding term based on legal and taxation requirements. Redundancies are often treated very differently than firings or quitting in many places, not just for the employer but also for the employee. Making someone redundant and then rehiring them can depending on where you are result in you facing very big legal dramas.
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Not in Germany.
Being free to choose your job is a constitutional privilege.
And I seriously doubt other countries are different.
"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
Re:"You can't fire me, I--actually, please do." (Score:4, Informative)
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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you basically sign a contract saying you'll never work for them again.
That makes no sense.
If the company doesn't want to rehire them, they can just ... not hire them.
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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.
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If they're anything like a couple of companies I've worked for; once they realize how badly they screwed up, they'll bring these "ineligible for re-hire" people back as 1099 contractors at twice what they were paying them as FTEs. Or they will try to, at any rate. Because some people don't care for 1099 work or others will have already moved on or because some people won't go back to a company that's fired them unless the new compensation is ridiculous and exorbitant or just won't go back to a company tha
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.
"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
This is the correct response (Score:2)
I never paid much attention to Dudebro before he apparently lost his mind. But he has effectively speed-run from "vaguely know who he is" to "I'd rather work for a rabid wombat" in just a couple months.
He used that time to prove himself untrustworthy, capricious and more than a bit nutty. And based on what I can see in the press and from a read of the WPE lawsuit, he seems pretty stupid, at least in terms of strategic thinking. Unless there's something big we don't know yet, I don't see how WP doesn't come
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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Re: Ineligible for rehire (Score:2)
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.
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"What's the deal with all the public meltdowns and hissy fits from tech C-Suites these last few years?"
The rejection of hiring businessmen to run the business.
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It would be easy to say "DEI leadership", but I'm thinking these businesses are letting harmful, child-like idiots do the decision-making and that's the core problem. Arrogance and incompetency, Dunning-Kruger/Peter principle style.
We may just be seeing the results of two+ generations of kids raised by electronics instead of parents. Big flashy non-substantive meltdowns are cool entertainment, so why not turn yourself into a flashy non-substantive meltdown having clown to entertain the population? It's reinforced by the fact that the ultimate non-substantive meltdown king Trump got himself elected president, so clearly some segment of society appreciates it.
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$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.
Re: $30,000... (Score:2)
He bragged that the rest of the company gave up $126million to stay. That works out to an average salary of around 60k for the entire workforce that didnâ(TM)t leave
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If so, I'm surprised they've only lost 8.4% of their workforce.
There's a lot of things wrong in your post.
Firstly we're talking about the greater of the two, meaning that the $30k is the floor of your redundancy payout.
Secondly a workforce doesn't all get paid the same. One person is manning the reception and getting paid less than $30k every six months. The other is a star programmer driving a Porsche to work. The next guy is a graduate getting paid fuck all, while the one after that is VP who has been at the company since inception. You'd be an absolute fool to draw
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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I didn't say "evil", I said "lawful evil".
wat
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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.
That's not lawful evil (Score:2)
That's chaotic neutral.
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.
ForkPress - Time to start new (Score:1)
Blog entry: How to nuke your co. in 2 easy steps (Score:2)
Any questions?