A tech CEO has offered staff $30,000 to quit their jobs after they ‘disagreed’ with them.
The drama unfolded at tech company Automattic where the boss offered a ‘generous buy-out package’ to encourage people who didn’t agree with him to leave.
CEO Matt Mullenweg found that a lot of his workers disagreed with his handling of a competitor and said that the cash incentive was an opportunity for ‘alignment’.
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Mullenweg offered staff $30,000 or six months salary, whichever was higher but they wouldn’t be able to return to the company and they had to quit by Thursday afternoon.
And many took him up on the offer, with 159 employees opting to quit their jobs.
In a blogpost, the CEO wrote: “I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!”
If you’re not up to speed with the drama - Automatic is the owner and operator of WordPress, with the software having been originally co-created by Mullenweg.
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However, it’s open source which means he has limited control and the dispute between him and firm WP Engine began when they broke into the open last month.
Both companies have swapped cease-and-desist letters and Mullenweg called WP Engine a ‘cancer’.
He then blocked WP Engine from some of the WordPress tools and the company has now sued Automattic and Mullenweg.
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In the lawsuit, WP Engine accuses them of breaking promises, trying to intimidate WP Engine and harming the entire WordPress community.
In a statement from Automattic’s lawyer, they said: “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.”
Now, to combat disagreements from his staff over his handling of the situation, Mullenweg has parted with a lot of money to get them to quit.
Speaking to SFGATE, Mullenweg said: “I've spent half of my life championing open source.
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“I'm passionate about ensuring the software that runs 43% of the web is healthy. When private equity-backed companies take advantage of open source software and its tens of thousands of contributors, I'm going to stand up and fight against them.”
Either way, it looks like his staff were well compensated to leave the company, with 8.4% of Automattic’s workforce choosing to take the money and go last week.