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Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg made another buyout offer this week, and threatened employees who speak to the press with termination.

In July, before the latest WP Engine blowup, an Automattic employee wrote in Slack that they received a direct message from Mullenweg sending them an identification code for Blind, an anonymous workplace discussion platform, which was required to complete registration on the site. 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. Last week, in response to someone criticizing his decision to add a checkbox to the WordPress.org login that forced users to denounce affiliation with WP Engine, Mullenweg posted in the WordPress contributor community Slack, “Wait until you see what we have in store for Thursday!

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