Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Talks Succession - 'I Don't Want To Pass It To a Committee' (techcrunch.com) 8
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg said on a podcast he aims to eventually hand over leadership to a single successor rather than "a committee," amid growing calls for him to step down following his legal battle with hosting company WP Engine. On a recent episode of Lenny's Podcast, Mullenweg discussed his succession strategy for Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, WooCommerce and Tumblr. "I want to pass it to someone else who could have a role similar to mine, and really sort of try to be a steward," Mullenweg said, comparing the position to "being like a mayor than a CEO" as the leader would remain accountable to users and contributors.
Yeah, no. (Score:2)
You mean like all the times he ignored contributions that didn't align with Automattic's business goals, went against the community on practically everything, took narcissistic and children decisions that adversely affected users and generally acted like a petulant child-psychopath with a martyr-complex?
Re: (Score:3)
You mean like all the times he ignored contributions that didn't align with Automattic's business goals, went against the community on practically everything, took narcissistic and children decisions that adversely affected users and generally acted like a petulant child-psychopath with a martyr-complex?
Isn't that what all leaders are supposed to do?
Whoa, dude, .... chill. And think before speaking. (Score:2)
Matt is a good guy.
As far as FOSS businesses and leadership goes, Matt is a prime example of how to do things right:
Listen to your users and not some aloof ueber-nerds. Iterate in small steps. Listen to feedback. Avoid breaking userland as much as humanly possible. Don't give in to software fads easily. If you take do on new stuff for solid and well-evaluated reasons, go in full and manage that new dependency like it's your own. ... As WP experts might recall, it took a decade for WP to jump on the quite ve
Re: (Score:2)
Found Mullenweg's Slashdot account.
Where and when did you withdraw and apologize for your behavior over WP Engine? That's still ongoing. [techspot.com]
Good and/or Bad (Score:2)
A single leader can often have an Ego get in the way, and be blind of obvious things that need to be corrected, and often such an ego that lends itself running an organization tends to not be retrospective and realize they made a mistake and work on correcting it.
Committee tends to go towards group think. So the simplest to explain idea gets promoted. Which is often the wrong one. As well there is a lot of stuck movement waiting for an idea.
How can we never hear about Matt Mullenweg again? (Score:1)
Does /. have a subscription plan that provides Mullenwang-free browsing? I'm just sick of it.
Except (Score:2)
comparing the position to "being like a mayor than a CEO" as the leader would remain accountable to users and contributors.
Except that he hasn't been accountable.
Which contributors and users exactly wanted him to cut off WP sites hosted on wpengine from one-click and autoupdates?
Which contributors and users exactly wanted him to take over the Advanced Custom Fields plugin (because it was owned by wpengine) and force-fork it to "Secure Custom Fields" (setting off every irony detector on earth)?