Build1 publisher3 min readPublished
Automattic's CFO held the CEO job for 2,000 minutes
Matt Mullenweg went on leave last Thursday and was back by Saturday, with CFO Mark Davies standing in between the two notices. The company timed the absence to the minute and has declined to explain what changed.
The Engineer · Build desk
What happened
- Automattic issued a notice last Thursday confirming that CEO Matt Mullenweg was on leave.
- A Saturday alert said Mullenweg was back in his position and that he had been away for only 33 hours and 20 minutes.
- Automattic has not publicly explained what changed between the two decisions, and it declined to explain the circumstances of the leave and the return.
- WordPress sits under the Automattic brand alongside Tumblr, the WooCommerce e-commerce plug-in service and the Beeper messaging client.
Compiled by The EngineerSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Milyushkevich's point is that staff cannot act confidently on authority they cannot trace to a process, so the open question after the reversal is the escalation path for the next disagreement, not the current org chart.
- contradiction The company clocked a 33-hour absence while Mullenweg's own message refers to 48 hours of events still to be sorted out, so the two published windows cannot both bound the same dispute.
- exposure According to D'Olivar, engineers and executives weighing a job at Automattic now have to consider whether decisions they are authorized to make would be backed when challenged.
Two time windows sit in Automattic's own account of the week, and they do not match. The Saturday alert put the absence at 33 hours and 20 minutes [3]. In Slack messages that The New Stack said a further report reproduced [18], Mullenweg wrote: "Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I'm in control of Automattic. A lot happened in the past 48 hours that we need to sort out, and I hope much of it was a misunderstanding, because I have huge respect and regard for those involved." [7] The absence and the events he wants sorted out differ by about 14 hours and 40 minutes [17]. The absence itself is 2,000 minutes exactly [16]. Somebody was watching a clock.
The record fixes the office and its holder. The CFO, Mark Davies, stood in until Mullenweg was reinstated less than a day and a half after the Thursday notice [1][2]. Roman Milyushkevich, CEO and CTO at HasData, told The New Stack that a company can survive a CEO departure but struggles when employees cannot tell which governance process is real [9]. On the coup reading he was careful: "it certainly looks like a failed attempt to change control, but I would not call it a coup as an established fact," Milyushkevich said [10].
He listed four ways the 33 hours could have gone: a second board agreement, internal or possibly external negotiations, directors reconsidering the practical consequences of removing the founder, or an internal resolution that has not been disclosed [11]. Each of those leaves a different escalation path in place for the next disagreement. "The most important thing Automattic can establish now is not who won the dispute, but whether the board and CEO have a clearly understood process for handling the next serious disagreement," Milyushkevich said [12].
Both of the people The New Stack quoted located the consequences in employment, delegated authority and investor confidence [15][14]. "Reinstatement answers who is in charge today. It does not, by itself, explain how a future disagreement would be resolved," said Ricardo D'Olivar, a behavioral scientist and visiting professor at FIA Business School in Sao Paulo [13][19]. He also drew the line on how far the inference can be pushed: "These are possible responses, not verified effects at Automattic. The information shared internally may also be more complete than the public account," D'Olivar said [14].
WordPress sits under the Automattic brand with Tumblr, WooCommerce and Beeper, and Mullenweg co-founded WordPress in 2003 before establishing Automattic in 2005 [8][5]. The report describes no change to any of those products. The company's on-record position is one sentence from Megan Fox, its director of communications, who said: "Matt Mullenweg is the chairman and CEO of Automattic, with full support of the board." [6]
What to watch
- Whether Automattic publishes anything about the board's escalation process or the terms of the reversal.
- Whether Davies's role, or the composition of the board, changes in the next company notice.
- Whether any of the executives described as supporting Mullenweg leave in the coming weeks.