Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg says the company is “very short-staffed” amid WordPress’s ongoing drama with WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. The WordPress co-founder took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday.
The saga began when Mullenweg called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” Mullenweg called out WP Engine, claiming that they don’t contribute sufficiently to the open source project and that WP Engine’s use of the “WP” brand has confused customers into believing it is part of WordPress.
The dispute has led to pushback from engineers, and even Automattic employees. On October 3, 159 Automattic employees who didn’t agree with Mullenweg’s direction of the company and WordPress overall took a severance package and left the company.
After 159 Automattic employees took the first deal, which included six months of severance, Mullenweg posted another alignment offer on Automattic Slack on October 17. This second deal offered nine months of severance, but employees only had four hours to respond.