More turmoil at Matt Mullenweg’s Automattic: Interim CFO out! Company posts bizarre farewell on X

Another abrupt departure since Matt Mullenweg’s return to Automattic after last month’s thrilling boardroom coup drama: interim CFO Jeremy Klaperman, out after less than a month, Sarah Perez reports at TechCrunch.

The departures have piled up since Mullenweg’s return. He let CFO Mark Davies and legal chief Andy Missan go; board members Toni Schneider and Sue Decker resigned, while Mullenweg fired other board member Ann Dunwoody.

Automattic originally put out a boilerplate departure message. “Automattic will always be grateful for Jeremy Klaperman’s leadership.” TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez wrote an article citing an unnamed company source who said that Klaperman resented the outside-candidate search and resigned after a demotion following a disagreement with Mullenweg over a performance-review project.

Then Automattic took to X with a snarky vaguepost:

Text version

At Automattic, we consider it best practice to evaluate external candidates for critical roles alongside internal people stepping up. We are always talking to and recruiting the best talent. Sometimes people are offended or surprised by this and they resign, sometimes it has led to amazing mentoring or advising situations. We won’t comment on any specific person, but as a company we’re always trying to optimize and redefine ourselves to serve our customers better and promote the ideals we aspire to around Open Source, freedom, liberty, autonomy, and hackers.

Petty-posting about a departure followed by an appeal to esprit de corps, wild.