[HN Gopher] Restructuring Announcement
___________________________________________________________________
Restructuring Announcement
Author : markx2
Score : 250 points
Date : 2025-04-02 18:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (automattic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (automattic.com)
| refuser wrote:
| Not especially surprising, but there's an awfully large elephant
| in the room that likely directly contributed to this necessity
| that goes completely unmentioned.
| uoaei wrote:
| Is the elephant in the room with us now? (Mind filling in?)
| maccard wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2y7eyp3zpo
| 65 wrote:
| Matt Mullenweg is the elephant.
| wiether wrote:
| Since Matt regularly comments here, and given the
| expression chosen; I'm pretty certain that they know who
| the elephant is.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Matt commenting here was part of the reason he is in the
| mess he is in.
| foobarchu wrote:
| His account has been inactive for almost all of 2025, I
| think his legal team must have taken away the password.
| lolinder wrote:
| He has alts he uses that are probably still active.
| alphager wrote:
| The legal threats against WPEngine and their customers, the
| lawsuits between WP/Automatic/WPF and WPEngine, the banning
| of several contributors, the takeover of WP Plugins on
| WP.org, the shenanigans with several check boxes on the login
| pages of WP.org.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| While it wasn't as damaging from a legal or (business)
| reputational perspective, he also peeked into the Tumblr
| database in order to doxx people who were making fun of
| him, which doesn't say great things about his stability or
| fitness to run a company.
| bananapub wrote:
| the author of that email has been having a very public
| breakdown for months now, mostly consisting of being a prick
| and trying to harm the community and a competitor.
| xd1936 wrote:
| https://mullenweg.wtf/
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20241026031947/https://bullenweg.
| ..
| stevage wrote:
| Holy moly.
|
| I never heard of this drama before.
|
| This was crazy:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/comments/1hlp08d/what_dram
| a...
| ornornor wrote:
| That was wild.
| mgdev wrote:
| Matt's only real problem is not owning his ambition openly.
|
| Trying to publicly argue the moral high ground was a stupid,
| unforced error.
|
| It didn't need to be moralized at all. Just make the changes
| you want to make, piss off a vocal minority, then get back to
| winning and making boatloads of money by executing
| exceptionally.
|
| The problem, I suspect, is that Matt values how certain people
| perceive him more than he values winning. It's unfortunate,
| because he's clearly a very good executer and strategist. He's
| getting in his own way.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| IMHO moralizing wasn't really the problem.
|
| The extremely erratic behavior, the ego, the fixation with
| vengeance, harassing organizations legally using the
| Wordpress name, abusing his power at the wordpress
| foundation, using it to punish Automattic competitors...
|
| He pissed off a lot of people, but worse: he made a lot of
| people nervous.
| reshlo wrote:
| If more people valued how others perceive them more than they
| valued winning, the world would be a better place.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Ignore the financial valuations, man is a worm. I'd call him
| a _' hack'_ but that might imply talents given where we are.
|
| Through his shitshow, he tried - and failed - to curry favor
| with an OSS puppet. Not any particular software... like one
| might think, but the whole _" thing"_.
|
| There was never any moment where WPEngine was beholden for
| offering WordPress services. Everything was strained to the
| point he was trying to redefine OSS.
|
| He got in his way, ours as members of the public, and that of
| WPEngine. Repeatedly... and I don't see enough
| reflection/reason from Matt to believe this will change.
| Personally, I'd hesitate to promote his strategies or skills.
|
| Hamfisted is a better message. Or none, take the wind away.
| We don't _want_ his ambition or to hear about it. It 's
| demonstrably shit.
|
| Edit: just in case this needs saying, I've never been
| affiliated with either company. Don't waste your limited time
| looking for me, Matt.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| > he's clearly a very good executer and strategist. He's
| getting in his own way.
|
| Apparently not. I'd argue he was _perceived_ as such but has
| thoroughly proven the opposite by now. There were so many
| stations to get off the train.
| solardev wrote:
| Drupal's sudden popularity?
| zem wrote:
| on the positive side, it's a small thing monetarily, but
| retention of company laptops is a nice goodwill gesture
| bmulholland wrote:
| Eh, from the company's perspective this is logistically easiest
| --the laptop's value is hardly worth the effort.
| zem wrote:
| a lot of companies ask for equipment to be returned due to
| security concerns, or just on principle
| igleria wrote:
| klarna allowed us to buy our work phone and macbook paying
| only the tax value. We had to give them the devices so they
| would be wiped out by a third party, then they mailed them
| to my home.
| runako wrote:
| This is a G move, without a doubt the best way I've heard
| of this being done.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| MacBooks and iPhones are amongst the easiest to wipe
| remotely.
|
| You can wipe them fully (which would be the
| recommendation for MacBooks) and remove just work-
| installed apps on an iPhone.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Absolutely. I was in charge of that at a previous job,
| and telling Jamf to nuke the device did the job the next
| time it was turned on.
| deelowe wrote:
| When I left microsoft, I kept everything EXCEPT data
| bearing devices. I got the sense they REALLY didn't want to
| have to collect the laptops either, but the VPs were forced
| to by compliance.
| jelder wrote:
| A company which is even moderately "OK" at IT will already
| have the means to instantly lock and securely wipe devices
| of any employee at a moments notice. Doing this during a
| RIF is a hell of a lot better than making the mail room
| deal with a bunch of filthy laptops.
| oblio wrote:
| A large bunch of big companies, including some of the
| biggest on the planet don't even sell past-end-of-life
| laptops to their current employees.
|
| Let that sink in. They're not even willing to <<sell>>
| old laptops, they would rather scrap them and contribute
| to pollution and overall waste.
| preinheimer wrote:
| If you scrap a laptop you get a nice, auditable, chain of
| custody from the end user to the company that will
| certify it's been destroyed. If you sell someone their
| old laptop you need to ensure that it's actually been
| wiped, not just "I copied my files over and started using
| the new one". I've seen a few IT departments be not great
| at "Sam got their new laptop two weeks ago, someone
| should follow up now to see if the wipe on the old one
| happened".
|
| One choice won't get you fired, the other might save you
| a bit of cash.
| oblio wrote:
| I'm talking about some companies that should have the
| best IT departments on the planet.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Writing off equipment through depreciation is a time
| honored thing for corps. If they sell them, they are no
| longer a write off. That's now more work for the bean
| counters.
| oblio wrote:
| Then donate them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't that essentially what they are doing when the let
| the employees keep them?
| oblio wrote:
| My original comment in the thread:
|
| > A large bunch of big companies, including some of the
| biggest on the planet don't even sell past-end-of-life
| laptops to their current employees.
|
| It's good that Automattic is doing it, I was wishing it
| was an industry standard procedure, for all past-end-of-
| life hardware, not just layoffs and not just laptops.
|
| Right now FAANG, for example, which you'd expect to have
| the very best of everything, as far as I know don't give
| old laptops (and other old hardware) to employees, they
| don't even sell them. They send them to be recycled or
| whatever, but the best action is to reduce and reuse,
| recycle should be the last option.
|
| Plus an employee is likely to be willing to accept their
| old device since they know it's performance and general
| behavior.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| If they sell to (ex-)employees they sell to consumers.
| This then includes consumer warranties etc.
|
| However what large companies do is to get an agreement
| with a refurbishing company, which will collect and
| refurbish them and and pay the corporation some share.
|
| This works in some mix calculation - the well treated
| machines can be sold well, some machines can be used to
| reuse some parts and some machines are nothing but cost
| for disposal.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| One former employer had this policy, and also refused to
| provide a way to ship said equipment back. No one was happy
| with my alternative solution: leaving it at the police
| station instead.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Is that what you proposed or what you actually did? I
| want a story!
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I actually did it. This was back in the times when you
| could get a job the next day, and my new employer didn't
| want me keeping anything from the old employer by the
| time I started. Old employer was dragging their feet on
| the shipping label and made it clear that failure to
| return the equipment would be considered theft. I gave
| them a week of daily reminder emails with an approaching
| deadline (no response), then handed it to the cops as
| abandoned property. Got a few HR calls immediately
| afterwards asking how to pick it up, and an annoyed
| police call asking me not to do it again.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I love this. Bravo.
| goldchainposse wrote:
| > made it clear that failure to return the equipment
| would be considered theft
|
| Is "please arrange for a courier to retrieve it" not the
| end of your obligations?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| In a situation where everyone (including me) was acting
| reasonably, sure. But I was slightly gruntled from being
| pushed out for filing a safety report, and keeping it in
| my possession would have technically violated my new
| contract. Giving it to the police was clearly not
| stealing it and didn't require going out of my way to
| help them solve a problem of their own creation.
| goldchainposse wrote:
| On the other side of this, I doubt the police would have
| done anything if they reported it stolen.
|
| There are questions online about "what if a former
| employee doesn't return their laptop." They almost always
| end with "send a threatening letter in legalese." They
| stop after that because the the next step is get a $300
| per hour lawyer involved for a $600 laptop.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| A former employer said that FedEx shipping info would be
| attached to my separation email. It was not. I emailed
| the two people at HR who had been involved in my
| separation. Three times each. No replies.
|
| I still have the laptop. And a hard copy of the emails.
|
| Also, as an aside, it is ABSURDLY easy to bypass MDM and
| DEP on a Macbook Pro, even a later M series laptop.
| Absurdly so (anyone here could do it in about a minute or
| less, and have a de-MDMed, fully updatable, no weirdness
| laptop. Theoretically).
| javawizard wrote:
| And yet only one company I've ever worked for went this way.
|
| I wish more did; it really is such a small goodwill gesture
| to departing employees.
| etchalon wrote:
| We always let our ex-employees keep their laptops because a.
| why not? and b. I don't need laptops for positions that no
| longer exist.
| gopher_space wrote:
| "Welcome to your new job at HighSpeed TopFlight. Here's an
| old, used laptop."
| ornornor wrote:
| I've had that happen to me at a new job. It disnt make my
| new employer shine.
| gopher_space wrote:
| One of my key metrics for evaluating employers is Time To
| Second Monitor.
| MDGeist wrote:
| I was at a company that let people keep laptops (after they
| were wiped) largely because the severance was so meager it
| seemed they expected people to sell the laptops for some
| extra cash. :p
| dylan604 wrote:
| doubtful it was considered extra cash, but just now not
| needing to spend cash on replacing the laptop with
| personal money
| slt2021 wrote:
| companies that collect their laptops from laid off => where do
| these laptops go? how they recycle them?
| viraptor wrote:
| It's a huge "depends". Different areas have different
| recycling opportunities. Some hardware providers have their
| own buyback/replacement programs. Also some companies may
| want to reimage and reuse the returned hardware. Finally you
| want some stock of temporary laptops available for people who
| are waiting for repairs so some functioning used ones are
| great for that.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Yeah at the BigCorps I was at, old laptops (as long as they
| weren't more than 3-4 years old) were usually reimaged and
| kept on hand as spares or for interns, etc. But I imagine
| after a large layoff they ended up with way more than
| they'd ever actually need.
| rs186 wrote:
| Redistributing them to new employees/interns is very common,
| especially if the laptop is only 1-2 years old.
| icedchai wrote:
| Many of them are fully depreciated and worth nothing, or nearly
| so, on paper anyway. Any new employees won't want an old
| laptop. And it will cost time and money to deal with shipping,
| storage, cleaning, re-imaging, etc. On average, the bean
| counters must figure it's cheaper to let people keep them.
| rs186 wrote:
| Worth maybe $1000, not even half a month's rent in almost any
| major US city
| paulcole wrote:
| They do say they have employees in 90 countries...
| anon7000 wrote:
| They're mostly high specced, newer M model MacBook pros
| rs186 wrote:
| I suggest that you look up the price of second hand M2
| Macbook Pros.
| sidcool wrote:
| This is well handled.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Tough break for Matt Mullenweg, who unfortunately was caught up
| in this reduction in force. I am sure this unexpected change will
| afford him new opportunities. Wishing him the best!
| swyx wrote:
| for others who took this at its word, this sarcasm. matt is
| unaffected.
| jsheard wrote:
| As a great man once said: _" some of you may die, but it's a
| sacrifice I am willing to make"_
| anthomtb wrote:
| > This restructuring will result in an approximately 16%
| workforce reduction
|
| Probably the most salient detail for non-Automattic employees.
| Everything else was generic fluff.
| blatantly wrote:
| Plus severance will be paid but didn't say how much.
|
| I was thinking this is a boilerplate firing email though!
| duskwuff wrote:
| I wonder if it's better or worse than the voluntary
| termination deal they offered to employees last year (first 6
| months, then 9 months pay).
| lsinger wrote:
| Much worse.
| beaucollins wrote:
| It's worse. Max I'm seeing is 9 weeks.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Yikes. Meanwhile, the people who took the buyout last
| year got 6 months (or 9 if they waited for the second
| round).
| Jare wrote:
| > how much
|
| With so many countries and legal frameworks to comply with,
| there's never going to be a single answer for this.
| beaucollins wrote:
| It's looking like countries with better worker protections
| saw zero layoffs.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > non-Automattic employees
|
| non- _Automatticians_. Yes, they literally used this term in
| TFA.
| munificent wrote:
| I know this really bugs some people but every tech company
| these days has a demonym for its employees.
|
| It doesn't mean that employees have some cultlike adoration
| for the company. It's just very convenient inside the company
| to have a single short word to refer to all employees of the
| business.
| rchaud wrote:
| Just say "all employees" then. Lots of companies use
| contractors who don't have employee benefits, do they count
| as "Googlers" or whatever the stupid stand-in moniker is?
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I get it, it's just kind of a meme at this point after a
| couple years of these boilerplate RIF announcements. Cmd-F
| for "difficult decision" + whatever the demonym is and
| you're basically guaranteed hits.
| tylerrobinson wrote:
| > a single short word
|
| > "Automattician"
|
| The word you're looking for is employee.
| munificent wrote:
| I checked my list, and the fact that employees of
| Automattic are called "Automatticians" did not make my
| list of things to be outraged about. Maybe next week.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Pointing out the error in your claim implied nothing
| about outrage.
| munificent wrote:
| "Employee" is ambiguous because it doesn't convey which
| business someone is an employee of. A company-specific
| demonym is short and precise.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Some companies even have a name for people after they left
| the company, like "xooglers" for Google and "outfluxers"
| for InfluxData
| eppsilon wrote:
| get hired back to become a refluxer, train as a hardware
| engineer to become a flux capacitor...
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It doesn't mean that employees have some cultlike
| adoration for the company
|
| No, but it does mean that the company wishes that employees
| had some cult like adoration. The line between proud of the
| company one works for and being cult like is not rigid, and
| moves depending on the company
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| Mentioning "our revenue continues to grow" seems quite out of
| place in an announcement like this.
| Arainach wrote:
| I disagree - it's not properly addressed, but it's nice to see
| it at least brought up.
|
| Layoffs are always awful, but seeing companies talk about
| "changing economic realities" amongst continuing revenue and
| profit growth - often all time highs - is a real morale killer
| for those who are left behind.
|
| Microsoft/Amazon/Alphabet/Google are trillion dollar megacorps
| who are insanely profitable, but they're firing people because
| they no longer have to pretend we care about you at all and
| will instead try to cater to Wall Street (who will never be
| happy - if I had $10000 for every quarter where a big tech corp
| "beat expectations" and the stock dropped anyway I'd retire).
| It's a hard pill to swallow and will increase bitterness and
| cynicism in the remaining workforce and kill any chance of your
| employees caring about your vision or putting in any extra
| effort.
| fwip wrote:
| I might agree with you, if the "why we're making changes"
| section had listed even one reason to lay people off.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Our revenue continues to grow, and will be even more
| profitable as we lay off 16% of the employees.
|
| The tone being set is not a good one to be sure.
| onli wrote:
| Are they being profitable? Didn't automattic take venture
| capital somewhat recently, suggesting that's not the
| case?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| When was anyone naive enough to think their company cared
| about them?
|
| On the other hand, why should a company keep people around
| that they don't need?
|
| And the last point, speaking more about
| Microsoft/Amazon/Google, if you have worked for either
| company for any length of time, there is no excuse for you
| not to have a nice nest egg to tide you over especially
| considering the severance amounts they give you.
|
| You might be forced to sully yourself and become an
| "enterprise developer" and make around what most of the 2.8
| million developers in the US.
|
| And yes, I did a bid at Amazon and within three years, I paid
| off some debt, saved a chunk of change, got my 3.5 months
| severance package and found another job quickly that was my
| target compensation (not enterprise dev).
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| > they no longer have to pretend we care about you at all and
| will instead try to cater to Wall Street
|
| The company isn't "catering" to wall street, wall street is
| their boss. The owners of the company vote on what they want
| the company to do, and hire the person in charge of the
| company. And besides, do you care about your company? If you
| got a job offer to make twice your salary doing something
| you'd enjoy more than what you do now, would you stay with
| your current company out of care for them? Maybe you would,
| but I know of almost no one who feels that way towards their
| employer, outside of those working for small tech startups
| with their friends.
|
| For almost everyone I know, their mindset is that they're
| going to do the best job they can right up until something
| better comes along, at which point they'll switch to
| something better. And I fully expect that if my best work is
| no longer worth more to them than my salary, they'll lay me
| off. In the meantime, they're paying me a ridiculous amount
| of money to do a job I enjoy. It's a deal that 99% of the
| world is envious of, and I don't think it should inspire
| bitterness and cynicism
| fn-mote wrote:
| > they're paying me a ridiculous amount of money to do a
| job I enjoy
|
| > It's a deal that 99% of the world is envious of, and I
| don't think it should inspire bitterness and cynicism
|
| First of all, I think it takes a lot of guts to continue to
| have this attitude in the current economic climate. Or, in
| your case, immense skill, but not everybody - not even
| everybody in the big tech companies - has that.
|
| I think the bitterness and cynicism stems from not enjoying
| the work. As crazy as this sounds - it's the intangibles as
| much as the cash: for example, knowing the company will
| _fight_ your efforts to improve things.
| lolinder wrote:
| In this case, the "our revenue continues to grow" is not
| transparency, it's deliberately obfuscating the increase in
| expenses that led to layoffs being necessary. Not mentioned
| is the insanely expensive legal battle that they launched
| with WP Engine, which is already a massive drain on resources
| and a huge financial risk given how strong WP Engine's case
| is.
|
| "Our revenue continues to grow" doesn't matter if unnecessary
| expenses outstrip it.
| altairprime wrote:
| If opex is growing at a faster rate than revenue, and it's not
| a VC situation, then layoffs are a popular way to curtail opex
| -- typically business leadership cannot effect changes that
| would eventually impact themselves, so, the board and executive
| layer prefer to mass-layoff workers _and_ middle management
| first and then let the remaining leadership fight for their
| life to present optimized plans. This is of course a terrible
| approach, because -- as Taskmaster quite enjoyably demonstrates
| -- even the smartest people tend to make a lot of asinine
| judgment calls under duress and deadlines; but when the
| alternative is to admit weaknesses of _leadership_ , it's
| certainly a logical enough course of action.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I think it's just saving face. That statement could be true if
| revenue was growing at 1% or 10% or whatever.
| chris_wot wrote:
| This might not have happened if Mullenweg hadn't sued his
| competitor, then went off the deep end and hurt _everyone_.
| 1shooner wrote:
| Another interpretation would be a common cause for both this
| and the litigation, i.e. pressure to improve financials.
| chris_wot wrote:
| That's an unbelievably terrible course of action. If you have
| financial issues, don't try to get out of it by litigation.
| Only litigate if you absolutely have to, _and_ you have been
| wronged. Don 't do it because you are trying to improve your
| bottom line.
| 1shooner wrote:
| Yes, i think that's the consensus. But it didn't start with
| litigation, it started with a 'creative' approach to
| generating new licensing revenue.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It may also have been part of his _reason_ for doing so. Panic
| /desperation.
| DannyBee wrote:
| I think this is a bit unfair.
|
| Who among us can really say they haven't gone off the deep end,
| burned every drop of good will that ever existed towards them
| and their projects, sued a competitor and got hilariously
| burned by the judge, all while burning hundreds of millions of
| your companies value (blackrock marked them down 10%, which is
| 750 million)
|
| This is just a normal thing that happens. It could have
| happened to anyone.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Given what I know of the situation (which admittedly isn't much),
| wouldn't the best course of action be to shitcan the CEO?
| wmf wrote:
| With apologies to Louis XIV, Matt is Automattic.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| wait, did he put his name in the company name?
|
| if so, that's what we in the narcissist-identifying business
| call a "tell".
| duskwuff wrote:
| > wait, did he put his name in the company name?
|
| Yes.
| Jare wrote:
| Or it just sounded like a fun joke for a good company
| name... I mean you are not wrong, but pretty much any
| successful young entrepreneur must have some degree of
| excessive appreciation for themselves, and this one was
| already achieving that status at 19.
| groby_b wrote:
| Knowing a number of successful entrepreneurs, many having
| hit success early as well - most don't need to enshrine
| themselves in the company name. It is indeed a tell.
|
| If that wasn't enough of a tell, his behavior in the last
| few months spelled it out clearly, circled the relevant
| parts with a big fat red marker, and installed a blinking
| neon sign saying "narcissist".
| em-bee wrote:
| i don't think that is how a tell works. of course now we
| know. hindsight and all that.
|
| to decide whether it is actually a tell, we need to look
| at statistics of company names containing references to
| the owners/founders and their behavior. and i don't think
| that statistic bears out. naming your company after
| yourself is the traditional thing to do. "automattic" is
| just on the more clever side.
|
| the tradition is changing only because it is becoming
| more and more popular to name your company after the
| product you are selling. now, putting your name into the
| product name, that maybe could be a tell. but even here
| there are exceptions: debian for example.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| Yes. He also calls the employees Automatticians. So they're
| all just Matt.
| zem wrote:
| guess their jobs were just automatted away!
| yallpendantools wrote:
| It's easy to call that a "tell" in light of Matt
| Mullenweg's recent activities. No one was saying shit when
| Wordpress was the darling of Web 2.0.
|
| Justifiable evidence of Matt Mullenweg's
| unhealthy/excessive narcissism only surfaced within the
| past year or so (I'm fuzzy on the timeline, cut me some
| slack ya?). Automattic the company has been so named for,
| goodness, close to twenty years now.
|
| It could be Matt's been a narcissist from the start. But
| people also change and not always for the better so maybe
| he became a "narcissist" much later in life and his chosen
| company name just so conveniently fell into the narrative.
|
| There are CEOs in bigger spotlights with a bigger case for
| narcissism who don't put their names on any of their
| _companies_ (emphasis on the plurality). One of them has a
| name with a similar inflection pattern to other well-known
| albeit fictional narcissist, Tony Stark.
|
| I don't know what "Automattic" as a company name says about
| Matt as a person. I'll tell you what it is though: a damn
| good pun, one I would gladly score myself given the chance.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Yeap, Automatic is not a good trade name but Automattic
| is great!
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Yes but this isn't really much of a crime or tell to me.
| The name is great as far as I'm concerned.
|
| And he's full of himself and completely wrong in this
| crusade he launched for some reason, completely
| indefensible acts left & right for over a year.
|
| Both true.
| pjc50 wrote:
| L'etatt, c'est M'att.
| o11c wrote:
| For the unaware (or under-aware):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi
|
| Probably apocryphal. A lot of people these days only know
| it from Star Wars.
| em-bee wrote:
| i am unaware of the star wars reference. can you explain
| that one please?
| Philpax wrote:
| "I am the Senate": https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comm
| ents/bjj2ry/politics_b...
| dangrossman wrote:
| From Reddit discussions, if they can be trusted, there is
| nobody who can remove Matt from any position. It's a private
| company and the investors were given non-voting shares.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| he'd already be out if it was simple to force him out
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Let this be a lesson to anyone investing in a startup:
| don't give any cash unless there's real corporate
| governance.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Same with trading your time for stock options (that you
| hope are eventually negotiable shares); trust is earned
| in drops and lost in buckets.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Dilution is a real problem. If they want you to act like
| a Founder, you should have protected equity like one.
| em-bee wrote:
| but the opposite is true too: don't take money from
| investors unless they let you keep control of your
| company. for every case like this there are probably a
| dozen cases where investors took control of a company and
| ruined it for the sake of making money.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| How did they "ruin" a company if that company made money?
| diggan wrote:
| Not all humans are driven by the same motivations.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Presumably if you as a founder are not driven by a desire
| to make money and your investors are, you 100% should be
| ousted. This is the principal-agent problem at work.
| diggan wrote:
| > Presumably if you as a founder are not driven by a
| desire to make money and your investors are, you 100%
| should be ousted
|
| Presumably, the real world is a bit more nuanced than
| that.
|
| There is no reason why you cannot run a company for
| different motivations than "get as rich as possible"
| while still accepting investments from people whose sole
| motivation is "get as rich as possible". While difficult,
| it is possible to align people even when they have
| different motivations.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _It 's a private company and the investors were given non-
| voting shares._
|
| My understanding is that the investors signed proxy voting
| rights over to Matt. They are mostly ordinary shares, and may
| be revocable. [1]
|
| [1] https://ma.tt/2021/08/funding-buyback-hiring/
| rs186 wrote:
| I am confused -- so if investors don't like the CEO, there is
| nothing they can do? Other than maybe taking their part of
| the money out?
| wavemode wrote:
| Even "taking their part of the money out" is not
| guaranteed. Again, it's a privately traded company, so
| there's no open market. You have to find someone willing to
| buy your shares from you and make a deal with them.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I wonder if the CEO throwing a tantrum that another company was
| using "their" open-source (thus, not theirs) code wasn't the real
| problem, but it made investors take a closer look, and they
| noticed that Automattic has less of a moat then they thought.
| Kye wrote:
| There's a parallel timeline where he admitted he messed up,
| stepped down, hired a real CEO, put someone else in charge of the
| nonprofit, and the downward slide he caused started to reverse.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > They also have our enduring gratitude for their time with the
| company.
|
| I hope the RIF'd employees can pay rent with that gratitude.
|
| If I were considering using Wordpress for anything, which I am
| not, this would end those plans. If they're laying off and
| keeping the CEO, they must be in dire financial straits. That
| message says "we're doing all the right things and have good
| leadership with a track record of making good decisions, but we
| have no alternative but to fire a sixth of our employees". That's
| not a good sign.
| melbourne_mat wrote:
| From an alternate universe:
|
| I apologize for my erratic behavior which has tarnished our brand
| and created unnecessary turmoil within our organization.
| Regrettably, we will need to implement a 16% reduction in
| headcount to address the financial challenges we now face. I have
| decided to step aside and hand over control to my deputy, who I
| believe will provide the steady leadership needed to rebuild
| trust and restore our company's vision.
| solardev wrote:
| If only we had real leaders...
| facile3232 wrote:
| You can trust me, facile3232, instead. I will improve upon
| all things the leader of automattic.com failed to improve
| upon.
| systemswizard wrote:
| You got this random internet stranger
| animuchan wrote:
| This messaging is compelling. Are you also perchance
| against all bad things, and in favor of all good things?
| ike2792 wrote:
| You can't just say "perchance."
| joquarky wrote:
| We do, but the sociopaths outcompete them.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| He'll never admit he was wrong or step down. He'll drive
| Automattic into the ground and Wordpress along with it (until
| someone forks it, like say...WP Engine, heh. Or Redhat, or IBM,
| or some huge web design firm, etc.)
|
| He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over from
| the original author who was abandoning the project.
|
| It reminds me of the rage-bender Jamie and Jim Thompson went
| on, attacking OPNsense for "stealing" their work and doing a
| lot of immature things taking over opnsense's domain, their
| subreddit, etc. via legal actions. And at least one lawsuit.
| They lost on every front - reddit gave the subreddit back to
| the opnsense developers, ICANN gave them back their domain
| name, etc.
|
| Attacking OPNsense for "stealing" pfSense was pretty rich given
| pfSense's origin; netgate slapped their logo on m0n0wall and
| started working on their fork. Which is exactly what opnsense
| did that enraged them...
|
| Especially as pfsense software started getting more user-
| hostile and shifting functionality into the paid versions,
| pfsense has rapidly become less and less popular. I almost
| never see anyone recommend it anymore.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| > He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over
| from the original author who was abandoning the project.
|
| Non Wordpress user here, not a blogger, don't use CMSs.
| Curious about this line. Reading the history on Wikipedia,
| the original b2 was the precursor. It was pretty small and
| being abandoned. Matt proposed forking it in January 2003,
| and worked with Mike to bring the first version to fruition a
| few months later. 22 years later it's a goliath.
|
| Given that history it seems totally fair for Matt to consider
| WP his thing. You don't seem to think so, can you explain?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| That's all true and does not conflict. There is nothing to
| explain.
| gregoryl wrote:
| Huh.
|
| >> There are no layoffs plans at Automattic, in fact we're hiring
| fairly aggressively and have done a number of acquisitions since
| this whole thing started, and have several more in the pipeline.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hxnh73/automatt...
| pityJuke wrote:
| How infuriating for anyone recently hired caught in this trap.
|
| It seems to me the obvious, from both a business & human
| perspective, is to stop hiring at first signs of trouble,
| before layoffs. To do so otherwise is cruel.
|
| I doubt Matt had zero idea about this possibility two months
| ago.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Those lacking empathy don't know how to not be cruel. They
| keep filtering to the top unfortunately. Something that
| remains to be solved for.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| There is nothing to solve - you are in the game of
| capitalism (the American Edition) and the job is to
| maximise shareholder value. They are paid big bucks because
| they only work for that without empathy/cruelty or such
| emotions. The only way to solve is to change the game but
| that's next to impossible because most powerful players
| like it that way and will turn on anyone trying to change
| their fattening ways.
|
| The best part is that the pawns keep getting sacrificed and
| do nothing to change it; not only that, they refuse to
| support anyone trying to change the game to make their
| lives better. It's amazing.
| paradox460 wrote:
| This will continue until there are actual consequences for
| those responsible.
|
| I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they
| should start from the top And work down.
| alvah wrote:
| >I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs,
| they should start from the top And work down.
|
| Oh, to be young and idealistic again! So in your world, the
| people running the business should fire themselves first?
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| not the parent, but accountability is supposed to be
| assumed _up_ the org chart while responsibility is
| delegated _down_.
|
| so, yeah. the people ultimately accountable for _fucking
| shit up_ should probably be held accountable first and
| foremost.
|
| (this is why CEOs often resign in the wake of a scandal)
| mathgeek wrote:
| > So in your world, the people running the business
| should fire themselves first?
|
| If they are needed to continue leading, they should
| consider cutting their own salary until the problems are
| fixed. Let them take their entire compensation in just
| their equity for a time.
|
| However we all know this won't be the norm, and that's
| OK. Not great, just OK.
| dboreham wrote:
| Jim Barksdale enters the room.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| Been there and done that. One startup I was at instituted
| a 50% pay cut for senior execs, 25% for the level below
| that and no cut below that. The CEO took a 100% pay cut.
|
| This let us get through a short rough patch without
| layoffs.
| leosarev wrote:
| I worked at middle-sized company that instituted a pay
| cuts, cutting all bonuses and stopping raises. After
| year, company lost almost every person in tech managenent
| and most of team leaders, their clients actively
| executing forking rights and no one believes in company
| future now.
|
| I once heard wise words from some CEO. In harsh times,
| clients do not want cheaper and worse services from us.
| They want less services. So we are moving out headcount
| down, while keeping pay and even execute raises for those
| who stay.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Can you explain why this is wise? I'd say most execs
| leaving is usually a net positive. You are framing it as
| a tragedy and I am just not seeing it.
|
| From where I am standing, leeches that are only there for
| fat bonuses left. Where's the loss?
|
| And the measure you described also doesn't follow. Bad
| times always end and then you have a worse product. Will
| the execs pick up the new tech work?
| hinkley wrote:
| I do know of one guy who took a pay cut because unless he
| hamstrung his own team badly he was looking at needing to
| lay off about 2.3 people and so he cut his own salary to
| make it 2 instead of 3.
|
| That's one story surrounded by a hell of a lot of
| shitheel stories.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| It's been done.
|
| Bob Mercer and Peter Brown laid themselves off from IBM
| when they were told to execute 10% across the board
| layoffs. They had argued their team was one of the
| highest performing teams in the company but were told
| that they had their quota. 10% of their team was 2 so
| they took the hit.
|
| From there, they went on to run Renaissance.
|
| IBM should have kept them.
| icehawk wrote:
| If they're running the business, and it's at a point
| where it needs layoffs; sounds like they're not doing
| their job properly, and should be replaced with people
| who can-- like every other position in the business.
|
| Not that they will-- too much self-interest.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| If they have to fire people, they're running it poorly,
| so yes?
| alvah wrote:
| If you've spent any time in business at all, you know
| it's always the tea lady who gets fired first and the
| managers last. Many commenters here seem to live in some
| kind of fantasy world.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _> the people running the business should fire themselves
| first?_
|
| You were questioning whether they _should_ , not whether
| they _will._ That 's what people are responding to. They
| understand perfectly well who will get fired first.
| alvah wrote:
| I was questioning the idealism actually. There's not much
| to be achieved by wishing the world was a certain way,
| it's generally more useful to deal with the world as it
| is.
| no_wizard wrote:
| If we don't talk about what we feel is ideal, we can
| never strive to achieve it.
|
| Its really important to discuss idealism for that reason
| alone
| alvah wrote:
| Good luck with changing human nature, i.e. persuading
| managers to voluntarily act against their own self-
| interest. That's just not how people work.
|
| What you say is true in some cases, but not in all cases.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Can't even try if we don't talk about it. The issue with
| line of 'clear thinking' is it leaves no room for change.
|
| If enough people take talk into action, we could
| reasonably see a change in behavior. It may come from
| sources than we don't expect, but it can happen all the
| same and we only have a chance at getting there if we are
| wiling to talk about what is ideal and raising that
| awareness. Its an important piece of that puzzle
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| What idealism? The person you responded to said they
| didn't expect things to change unless there were real
| consequences. Not expecting things to change is the
| opposite of idealism.
|
| But even if they were idealistic, arguing with people for
| wishing the world was better is a genuinely odd thing. If
| you followed your beliefs, wouldn't you understand that
| telling people not to wish for things is pointless? If
| you actually dealt with the world as it is, you would not
| argue with people on the Internet because changing
| somebody's mind, particularly in the way you are
| attempting to do it, is just as much wishful thinking as
| hoping that CEOs will fire themselves.
| copypasterepeat wrote:
| An honest question: why is this being downvoted? I
| thought that downvoting is meant to be used when someone
| is trolling or bringing the level of discussion down, not
| when you simply disagree with someone's point. I mean
| sure, it's stated a bit sarcastically, but my gosh if
| we're going to downvote every sarcastic comment, that
| would include a good portion of HN comments.
| alvah wrote:
| I probably failed to account for the differing
| backgrounds of HN commenters & the resulting overly-
| literal interpretation of sarcasm, to be fair to the
| downvoters. Of course the owners & managers should take
| responsibility for poor corporate performance.
| itishappy wrote:
| My read is that the parent is immature and needs to be
| reminded that "starting at the top" means the people in
| charge. What does it add to the discussion?
| alxjrvs wrote:
| Imagine the organization you are imagining in your head.
|
| Now imagine there is a Super-boss, who is exactly like
| the "people running the business" (attribution needed),
| but one level above them.
|
| If the Super Boss were to look at the situation, I think
| it'd be pretty obvious that the issue would be "The
| people organizing the company at the highest level" who
| are responsible for the failures of the company. That may
| involve over-hiring, which is itself a bad practice that
| causes unnecessary pain and (personal, financial)
| suffering, and would be a good cause to fire them for
| almost crashing my beautiful super-company that I, the
| Super-boss, super-founded.
|
| You're saying that if we return the Super-boss to the
| realm of the fictional, then suddenly it isn't the
| C-suite's fault anymore?
|
| If we're discussing _should_ , then yeah, their heads
| should be the first to roll. I agree its idealistic to
| imagine them having the sort of decency this requires,
| but I agree it _should_ be the case!
| tasuki wrote:
| > I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs,
| they should start from the top And work down.
|
| I'm off the mindset that employment should be voluntary:
| both by the employer and the employee. It makes employers
| reluctant to hire if they know they can't get rid of people
| again.
|
| (I'm a socialist at heart and think it'd be pretty nice for
| the government to take care of people who lost their jobs.
| Just tax the companies a little more!)
| nostrademons wrote:
| The business world changes direction faster than companies
| can adapt. That was my biggest lesson as an entrepreneur:
| entrepreneurs don't really pivot into product-market fit, the
| market pivots into _them_. The reason capitalism works is
| because there 's this huge sea of dream-chasers out there,
| most of whom will go bankrupt, so that when the market's
| needs change there is _somebody_ out there to service them,
| and everybody who 's not effectively servicing them goes to
| hell and gets another job.
|
| Corporations and management basically exist to buffer this
| uncertainty. Employment is actually a really bad deal in good
| economic times; owners reap almost all the windfall of having
| a successful product. But in bad times, the company keeps
| paying you even if they're losing money, at least up until
| they don't. You get a raw deal, but not as raw a deal as the
| people paying you.
|
| Likewise with strategic direction. The market's needs change
| faster than senior executives can adapt: if they always
| produced what the market was actually clamoring for, the
| company would run around like a chicken with its head cut off
| (this actually happens when the CEO panics, and a key CEO
| skill, and part of the reason they're paid so much, is the
| ability to ignore every piece of market data saying "You're
| not hot anymore. Nobody wants you, and the market has moved
| on" and _keep doing what you 're doing_ even though your
| intuition is telling you that you're doomed and going to lose
| your cushy $20M/year job). Much of the job of middle
| management is to buffer senior management's freakouts and
| tell the ICs "Keep calm and carry on; let's see if he still
| cares about this new hotness next week."
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That's a lot of words from someone who doesn't know what's
| been going on for ~6 months or so that is relevant.
|
| Mullenweg lost his mind and attacked a competitor to
| Wordpress hosting (WP Engine) and kept doubling down and
| only served to demonstrate how much of an unhinged asshole
| he was.
|
| Along the way he pissed off the Wordpress community - the
| worry was that if anyone else pissed him off (which could
| include he'd accuse them of using the Wordpress name or
| even "WP", even if it was descriptive (which is entirely
| permitted use of a trademarked name) and run up a bunch of
| legal expenses for them.
|
| Angry-at-the-world blog post after blog post doubling down
| over and over. Taunting people as he banned them from the
| Wordpress slack, that sort of stuff. Then he blocked WP
| Engine from accessing the Wordpress.org plugin and theme
| registries which meant a huge number of sites couldn't
| update plugins or themes.
|
| Then he announced Automattic was going to cut back
| engineering hours to (if I remember right) _one_ full time
| staffer. One person to keep up with security updates and
| bugfixes of a very complicated piece of software used by a
| lot of organization.
|
| Incredibly childish and thoroughly demonstrated to the
| world that he was unsuited for leading a company and being
| the sole person almost completely in charge of a piece of
| software used by a 20-30% of the websites in the world.
|
| This was _absolutely_ foreseeable, especially when he cut
| back Automattic 's engineering to 40hr/week.
|
| I advised a client a few weeks into the drama to at least
| keep in the back of their minds that they might have to
| migrate at some point as "the CEO of the company is off his
| rocker, they probably will start to struggle with security
| updates, and the company may go out of business."
| hinkley wrote:
| I've worked at a couple consultancies who played themselves
| by investing too heavily in one or two customers.
|
| Once a single customer is 1/3 of your revenue they can
| start extracting considerations from you that may not be
| what your employees thought they signed up for. It's a good
| way to end up being a body shop. I don't have a
| philosophical problem with body shops per se, it's just
| that I don't want to work for one, so I pick places that
| should know better, but sometimes don't.
|
| It can also be problematic if 2 customers account for 45%
| of your revenue and they both get the same idea, which can
| happen particularly when the market shifts. You have no way
| to call their bluff and move enough people to other
| projects to make it stick.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >The market's needs change faster than senior executives
| can adapt: if they always produced what the market was
| actually clamoring for, the company would run around like a
| chicken with its head cut off (this actually happens when
| the CEO panics, and a key CEO skill, and part of the reason
| they're paid so much, is the ability to ignore every piece
| of market data saying "You're not hot anymore. Nobody wants
| you, and the market has moved on" and keep doing what
| you're doing even though your intuition is telling you that
| you're doomed and going to lose your cushy $20M/year job)
|
| You know what I absolutely hate about this take? It ignores
| my shared experience I've had with others (IE, its not just
| me). I've worked in this industry a long time. So I've
| inevitably worked for places that ran into financial
| trouble. In multiple of those cases, it could have been
| prevented if upper management actually listened to what
| those of us developing the product had to say about
| shifting customer behaviors and expectations, that what we
| were seeing was different from what they were trying to
| sell and have us develop. It always ended in disaster.
|
| They refused to listen, but never paid the price for that
| failure, my colleagues did and in one instance, I was on
| the receiving end of a layoff along with others as well.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's kinda their job to not listen. CEOs get bombarded
| with thousands of pieces of information each week. If
| they shifted the company direction each time, the company
| would get nothing wrong. In the immortal words of
| Ribbonfarm, "CEOs don't steer":
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/09/ceos-dont-steer/
|
| A _good_ CEO will let in just the little bit of
| information that saves the company - this was Andy Grove
| 's pivot to focus on microprocessors over memory chips,
| or Steve Jobs's turnaround of Apple. You didn't have a
| good CEO, and got your average mediocre CEO that sets a
| strategic direction and sticks with it regardless of what
| the market says.
|
| I'm curious though, if you knew your employer was going
| under, why not jump ship to the competitor that actually
| _did_ understand what customers wanted? Employees are
| economic agents too, and oftentimes competitors are more
| than happy to hire out of their competition.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >A good CEO will let in just the little bit of
| information that saves the company - this was Andy
| Grove's pivot to focus on microprocessors over memory
| chips, or Steve Jobs's turnaround of Apple. You didn't
| have a good CEO, and got your average mediocre CEO that
| sets a strategic direction and sticks with it regardless
| of what the market says.
|
| Still too simplistic. Yeah, they need to filter
| information and say no to things constantly, I get that
| is a core skill. If something is repeatedly being brought
| up by members of your core teams, you should at least
| look at what they're saying and ask where they are coming
| from. That is simply good sense. There is a persistence
| factor in involved in each of these cases that are the
| source of the frustration.
|
| If what constitutes a good CEO is allowing in the 'little
| bit of information that can save the company' (really
| thats a call about identifying useful information before
| anyone else), objectively most companies have terrible
| CEOs, and I question the value of the position entirely
| on that basis, especially at larger public companies.
|
| FWIW, at each of these companies I worked at, the
| headcount was at most in the hundreds. I was only 2
| clicks below the executives in the company tree, there
| wasn't a lot of barrier to interaction there, which is
| what I find even more baffling about the whole thing.
|
| >I'm curious though, if you knew your employer was going
| under, why not jump ship to the competitor that actually
| did understand what customers wanted?
|
| I did this twice. In the one instance I wasn't able to
| get moving faster than things were going down hill.
| Partially, this is a symptom of just how long interview
| cycles have become over the years. Took me longer than
| expected, but moreover, the company conducted the layoff
| faster than I really thought they would. I got the timing
| wrong by a little bit, it happens.
|
| Its not like you identify an issue one time either, its
| the repeated ignoring of what happens despite repeated
| sustained efforts to raise the awareness where it needs
| to be.
| paulcole wrote:
| If you believe you need more people to get out of trouble
| isn't it cruel to _not_ follow through?
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Its not even cruel. Its just dumb. Really dumb.
|
| You are going to invest significant resources into hiring,
| onboarding, and injecting new staff into workflows for people
| that will not be there as soon as they are actually
| productive.
|
| So its not just the cash burn - its the tieup of 3x team
| members to getting new people trained to become effective and
| successful contributor. Time is finite.
|
| It makes no sense to throw away all that time spent by your
| team, who could have use that same time to get a few more
| features out, proposals sent , or projects spec'd instead.
| hinkley wrote:
| The exuberance and self-assuredness that your plans are going
| to work out leads to overreach and I think the lag in
| accounting practices helps make that more acute.
|
| I have had too many experiences where I thought my current
| employer was about to start circling the drain, and I've
| ended up some place that was circling faster. At a guess I'm
| about 50:50, which I suppose I should count as 'lucky' but
| has never felt that way.
|
| Fish-tailing is a common flame-out mode for startups. VCs are
| partly to blame. They don't like to discourage you in case
| you come up with a miracle, but neither do they want to put
| good money and time after bad if it turns out you're going to
| be a break-even play or a loss.
| regularfry wrote:
| The median position is to be hiring, just to backfill
| attrition. "Trouble" might be temporary; it might be noise.
| Hiring is always slow, with cycles longer than "trouble"
| might last.
|
| We might argue about the parameters in this situation, but
| structurally there's a bias towards the low-pass average.
| snitty wrote:
| It's not uncommon for companies to be in a hiring mode until
| they're very much not in a hiring mode any more.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Yeah. I was made a manager in Feb 2022 with 5 directs and 9
| headcount to fill. Hired 5, and then by June 2022 all
| remaining headcount was cut. In January 2023 we had our
| first-ever layoffs in the company's 25-year history.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| It is so hard to fathom that a leader trusted with millions
| of dollars of other people's money can be so disengaged
| from recruiting as to not see a hard wall of cash crunch,
| months if not years ahead.
|
| You can't assume fundraising will always go swimmingly. You
| have to always be in survival mode, and if that means not
| hiring aggressively, then you put on the breaks until the
| money comes in .
|
| Either as a leader you are clueless about your business
| cash needs, you are clueless about risk management, or you
| are clueless about the market, all of which make you not a
| suitable leader for a long-term company.
| nostrademons wrote:
| The issue was interest rates. Money was free in Feb 2022;
| the interest rate was literally 0%, and so _any cash-
| generating investment at all_ is profitable. Fed started
| raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point leaders started
| freaking out because they know what higher rates mean,
| and by Jun 2022 the Fed was raising them in 0.75%
| increments, which was unheard of in modern economics. By
| Jan 2023 the rate was 4.5%, which meant that every
| investment that generates an internal rate of return
| between 0% and 4.5% is unprofitable. That is the vast
| majority of investment in today 's economy. (We also
| haven't yet seen this hit fully - a large number of
| stocks have earnings yields that are lower than what you
| can get on a savings account, which implies that holding
| these stocks over cash is unprofitable unless you expect
| their earnings to grow faster than the interest rate
| drops, which doesn't seem all that likely in today's
| environment.)
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
|
| Now, you'd have a point if you complained about how
| centralization of government and economic power with the
| President and Fed chair, respectively, is a problem. That
| is the root cause that allows the economy to change
| faster than any leader can adapt. There used to be a time
| when people would complain about centralization of
| executive power on HN, but for some reason that moment
| seems to have passed.
| saghm wrote:
| > The issue was interest rates. Money was free in Feb
| 2022; the interest rate was literally 0%, and so any
| cash-generating investment at all is profitable. Fed
| started raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point leaders
| started freaking out because they know what higher rates
| mean, and by Jun 2022 the Fed was raising them in 0.75%
| increments, which was unheard of in modern economics. By
| Jan 2023 the rate was 4.5%, which meant that every
| investment that generates an internal rate of return
| between 0% and 4.5% is unprofitable.
|
| "Unheard of in modern economics" is carrying quite a lot
| of weight there. The last time the rates were increased
| by 0.75% was 1994, and while that's not recent, it's
| pretty silly to imply that CEOs should be making long-
| term investments assuming that it would be literally
| unprecedented for that to happen. Interest rates have
| changed only a few dozen times _at all_ since then, so
| yes, they haven't been increased by that much recently,
| but there's never going to be enough of a sample size
| over a period of a couple decades that it would be
| reasonable to assume a precedent that will never be
| broken.
|
| The crux of your argument seems to be that because the
| interest rates happen to be set a certain way at a
| certain time, it would be irrational not to make
| decisions based on how profitable they'd be at that exact
| moment in time. The problem with this line of thinking is
| that plenty of investments are only realized over long
| enough period of time that by your own admission, people
| can't possibly react fast enough to avoid those turning
| into a loss. My question is, why put yourself in a
| position where you can't adapt fast enough in the first
| place? The way interest rates are set should not be news
| to the people making these decisions in companies, so
| it's not crazy to expect that maybe the people who are
| betting their company's success on something from less
| than three decades before being "unprecedented in modern
| economics" could think at least _a little_ longer term
| than "literally anything is profitable in this exact
| moment, so there's no need to think about what might come
| next".
| nostrademons wrote:
| Because they are publicly traded and subject to lots and
| lots of checks on corporate governance. The CEO actually
| didn't want to lay people off (and did a shit-poor job of
| it when he did). He was getting pressure from the board,
| who in turn was getting pressure from a lot of activist
| hedge funds.
|
| Small-fry who operate secretly are able to take the long
| view and enrich themselves off the masses' stupidity.
| CEOs of a multi-trillion-$ company that is ~10% of the
| retirement portfolio of every American are not. At that
| level you have to go with the market consensus, because
| you will be ousted and deemed not a fit steward of the
| enterprise that you are entrusted with otherwise.
| saghm wrote:
| > Small-fry who operate secretly are able to take the
| long view and enrich themselves off the masses'
| stupidity. CEOs of a multi-trillion-$ company that is
| ~10% of the retirement portfolio of every American are
| not.
|
| From my math, you're off by several orders of magnitude,
| unless somehow we're not talking about Automattic
| anymore.
| foolswisdom wrote:
| > Fed started raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point
| leaders started freaking out because they know what
| higher rates mean, and by Jun 2022 the Fed was raising
| them in 0.75% increments, which was unheard of in modern
| economics.
|
| You're basically making the case that it happened fast,
| and went up high, but everyone who paid attention to
| interest rates understood it was only a matter of time
| till it had to at least revert back to pre-covid rates
| (whether you think that's 1.5 or 2.3 or something,
| depending on how you measure), and that obviously there
| would need to be real layoffs after.
|
| The excuse is really saying "it turned out more extreme
| than we thought", but was the behavior take responsible
| assuming non-extreme rate changes?
| nilamo wrote:
| Why does the interest rate matter? Unless you have no
| cash on hand and are operating soley off debt??
| PeterFBell wrote:
| If you're venture based and were expecting another round
| sometime soon. With higher interest rates there were more
| compelling alternatives for LPs than to invest in
| Venture, causing a trickle down chilling of the fund
| raising environment for venture backed companies and
| requiring them to come up with accelerated plans to reach
| profitability - including cutting staff and optimizing
| for survival over growth.
| halfcat wrote:
| > _Unless you have no cash on hand and are operating
| soley off debt??_
|
| Bingo
| nostrademons wrote:
| My employer actually has roughly $100B of cash on hand.
|
| The issue is that they're a publicly-traded company, with
| a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. If they're
| investing in an internal product that will make back 1%
| of the money invested in it over the next couple years,
| but they could have been investing in Treasury Bills that
| make back 4.5%, they are committing financial malpractice
| and will be sued accordingly.
| mathattack wrote:
| I've seen many companies have this problem. They base
| hiring against planned revenue instead of current
| revenue. In a sense you have to - if you're planning on
| growing 100% for several years on the back of new
| products and a big sales team you must hire in advance.
| It's what the VC model is founded on. The downside is
| when you miss the revenue, you have to cut deep. And it's
| usually worse because your hiring standards dropped in
| hyper growth.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something
| when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
|
| If you are the CEO saying 'we are planning for bad things
| in the future' while every other CEO is saying 'the arrow
| only goes up' guess which company the stock market
| punishes and who gets removed by the board versus who's
| options become worth more?
| itishappy wrote:
| Not uncommon at all, but perhaps a symptom of poor
| leadership.
| lolinder wrote:
| That was important posturing to make sure that everyone knew
| that his nuclear war on WP Engine was absolutely not going to
| impact his ability to run the business and the WordPress
| project. Whether it was true or not it didn't matter at the
| time, the important thing was to keep up appearances and not
| let anyone on Reddit think they knew better than Matt.
| rob wrote:
| "Either I'm an idiot, or something is going on that you don't
| understand. Let's check back in a month. :)"
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1glejno/comment/...
|
| ...1 month later...
|
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/64/wpengine-in...
| bionhoward wrote:
| HR wranglers? Damn, that's simultaneously hilarious and
| terrifying
| nightpool wrote:
| Haven't seen any public reporting on this yet, but from internal
| conversations this seems to include a 60% workforce reduction at
| Tumblr, which now only has a few remaining engineers.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| i dont mean to kick a dead horse, but a "few remaining
| engineers" for what is effectively an outdated clone of a
| microblogging site, a few engineers, seems like a lot still
| nightpool wrote:
| what microblogging site do you think Tumblr is a clone of?
| and outdated compared to what, exactly?
| treecrypto wrote:
| I actually started paying the subscription for my Tumblr
| account a couple years ago. I don't get much direct benefit
| from it, I do it because it's the only social media site I use
| and enjoy, and I was hoping it would help keep it from shutting
| down. 60% workforce reduction is not great.
| donohoe wrote:
| Yeah, that's my understanding as well
| zellyn wrote:
| "While our revenue continues to grow,"
|
| Hard to read further than that...
| dccoolgai wrote:
| So if you took the deal last year you would have gotten 9 months,
| now the severance is 9 weeks. Way to reward "loyalty". Good thing
| we're so smart and better than everyone else and we don't need
| unions.
| hinkley wrote:
| Financially your best bet is to be in the 1st round of layoffs.
| Ego-wise, it's best to be in the second round. First round
| there's still some money and a lot of guilt, so the severance
| tends to be good.
|
| By the time they lay off truly essential people, you're burnt
| out, and you're lucky if you don't have to sue to get what
| you're owed by law, let alone whatever policy they had for
| paying out vacation time or what have you. You also get to
| enjoy a fun period of survivor guilt when they laid off people
| who you think have contributed as much or more than you have,
| and then know that you'll be next if they laid of <person>
| already.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Your also competing with fewer people when looking for a new
| job.
| phire wrote:
| IMO, if there is any talk of "loyalty" in that first round of
| voluntary layoffs, you should always leave. Even if you were
| previously loyal, the company is changing and you won't like
| the results.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Relevant comment from 24 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43309837
| raspberry-eye wrote:
| AI is eating the world.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >A comprehensive package covering severance pay and benefits.
|
| What does this mean in term of monthly wages?
|
| I was a technical lead for the Romanian branch of an US company.
| They fired me along with my team and other teams. The reason was
| they were profitable but they missed the ARR by a million or
| something. Last year they did the first firing round, this the
| second.
|
| When they announced they will fire us, they also announced they
| will hire more sales people. The ratio of business people/tech
| people was already 7:1 before that. They also said a programmer
| should produce 5 times the money the company spent with him, and
| we were at 4 point something.
|
| Now I have found a position at a local company which takes care
| of its people even in harder times.
| patcon wrote:
| Judgement aside, I've gotta respect the humane way this org does
| layoffs. There's some slags in here about founder being
| "sociopath", but I'm just seeing a really humane founder with
| maybe some control issues.
|
| Trump, who betrays everyone for personal benefit, there's a
| sociopath. Mullenwag's just got some personality vices that
| served him as underdog, and didn't adapt to when he gained power
| emaro wrote:
| I wonder what this means for the future of Beeper.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| I'm wondering the same thing. Considering they were just
| acquired, I'm concerned. Especially since as far as I know,
| they still are operating under a free model.
| bsima wrote:
| I used to be a big admirer of Matt and Automattic, but after this
| whole WP Engine episode I've lost respect. I shut down my old
| wordpress blog, still working on importing the posts as org-mode
| files onto my new site, I no longer recommend WP to non-techies
| that ask me how to build a website.
|
| I hope WordPress (and Automattic) turn the ship around but its
| not looking good at this point.
| ssimpson wrote:
| Executive behaves like a child, labor suffers the consequences.
| huslage wrote:
| This comment thread is just hilarious. When a CEO of a VC-backed
| startup that you admire does things you disagree with, you find
| ways to justify their actions. When a CEO that is running an
| actually successful business and wishes to defend that business
| legally, you trash him. Be better.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Matt needs to be better, you're hilarious - he is the common
| denominator
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