Sam Cole, writing at 404 Media about Matt Mullenweg’s ongoing, unforced founder mode flameout:
“We were unaware that Matt redirected sign-up emails until current Automattic employees contacted our support team,” a spokesperson for Blind told me, adding that they’d “never seen a CEO or executive try to limit their employees from signing up for Blind by redirecting emails.”
This is just gross. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would still want to work for him now that toxicity is the norm, but he still has fans inside the company:
“There is a vocal group of sycophants who are cheering on Matt’s actions via Anonymattic,” [an employee] said, “drawing favorable comparisons to how Elon Musk and Donald Trump operate. Their morale seems high, but I can’t relate.” Screenshots viewed by 404 Media show some staff having changed their Slack usernames to include “[STAYING]” to signal their support of Mullenweg and intention to remain at the company.
The thing is, whether you agree with him or not, it’s not the rhetorical position he has taken that’s the problem, it’s the way he’s expressing and defending that position that is the problem. And it’s such a problem that it’s hard to see anyone defending his recent behavior as having much of a reputation left after all of this.
As I’ve said before, I don’t envy his/the company’s lawyers the job of litigating around his ongoing meltdown. I’ll be keeping an eye on the filings at CourtListener.