WordPress co-founder is paying employees to leave if they disagree with him

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg offered employees $30,000 oregon six months of wage to permission the institution if they didn’t hold with his conflict against WP Engine. In an update connected Thursday night, Mullenweg said 159 people, making up 8.4 percent of the company, took the offer.

Automattic, which is successful complaint of WordPress.com and its commercialized services, has been progressive successful a nationalist quality with WP Engine aft Mullenweg called the third-party hosting work a “cancer” to the WordPress assemblage and banned it from accessing WordPress.org.

Mullenweg has claimed WP Engine is violating the WordPress trademark and criticized the institution for not giving backmost to the WordPress unfastened root project. On Wednesday, WP Engine, which is owned by the backstage equity institution Silver Lake, followed up with a lawsuit that accuses Mullenweg and Automattic of extortion. Automattic called the lawsuit “baseless.”

“Silver Lake and WP Engine’s attacks connected maine and Automattic, portion spurious, person been effective,” Mullenweg wrote. “It became wide a bully chunk of my Automattic colleagues disagreed with maine and our actions.” Mullenweg gave employees until October 3rd to determine whether they wanted to permission the company. Employees who near aren’t capable to beryllium rehired.

The resignations affected the company’s WordPress ecosystem part the most, with 79.2 percent of radical who took the connection moving successful this portion of the business, according to Mullenweg. “It was an affectional roller coaster of a week,” Mullenweg writes. “However now, I consciousness overmuch lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for each the radical who took the offer, and adjacent much excited to enactment with those who turned down $126M to stay.”