There were unusual goings-on this month at Automattic, a company known for its free and open-source app for building WordPress sites. The company issued a notice last Thursday confirming that CEO Matt Mullenweg was on leave.Mullenweg, who also co-founded WordPress in 2003 before establishing Automattic in 2005, was temporarily replaced by company CFO Mark Davies before being reinstated less than a day and a half later.By last Saturday, a new alert emerged stating that Mullenweg was back in his position and that “Matt was away for only 33 hours and 20 minutes.”Automattic has not publicly explained what changed between the initial decision and Mullenweg’s return — and it has also declined to explain the circumstances behind the leave and return. By way of context, WordPress sits under the Automattic brand alongside the company’s other products, including the microblogging site Tumblr, the e-commerce WordPress plug-in service WooCommerce, and the instant messaging client Beeper. A 33-hour vanishing act, but Automatticians are supporting him Automattic director of communications Megan Fox is on the record saying, “Matt Mullenweg is the chairman and CEO of Automattic, with full support of the board. “And if you search online, you can see many top executives and Automatticians supporting him as well.”A further report reproduced Slack messages written by Mullenweg where he said, “Happy to announce the board is back in agreement, and I’m in control of Automattic. A lot happened in the past 48 hours that we need to sort out, and I hope much of it was a misunderstanding, because I have huge respect and regard for those involved.”Was this a failed boardroom coup?Industry watchers may naturally suspect the knives were out and that this was a failed boardroom coup. CEO & CTO at HasData, Roman Milyushkevich, tells The New Stack that a company can survive a CEO departure, but it struggles when employees cannot tell which governance process is real.“But, in terms of whether the real guns were out at Automattic, it certainly looks like a failed attempt to change control, but I would not call it a coup as an established fact,” Milyushkevich says. “The possibilities playing out here are all very different,” Milyushkevich adds. “There could have been a second board agreement brought into place inside that 33 hours; there could have been internal (or possibly even external) negotiations; directors could have reconsidered the practical consequences of removing the founder; or there could have been an internal resolution that has not been disclosed.”He advises that the “most important thing Automattic can establish now” is not who won the dispute, but whether the board and CEO have a clearly understood process for handling the next serious disagreement.“The most important thing Automattic can establish now is not who won the dispute, but whether the board and CEO have a clearly understood process for handling the next serious disagreement.”Behavioral scientist and visiting professor at São Paulo’s FIA Business School, Ricardo D’Olivar, tells The New Stack that what matters here is whether stakeholders have “enough information to distinguish a considered correction from an unresolved struggle” over authority. “A reversal of this kind can reflect responsible reconsideration,” D’Olivar says. “Reinstatement answers who is in charge today. It does not, by itself, explain how a future disagreement would be resolved. This is where the potential consequences for employees, executive recruitment and investors arise. If uncertainty persists, employees may become more cautious about committing to decisions whose backing appears unstable.”Suggesting that, responsible corporate mechanics or not, this kind of development undoubtedly throws the cat among the pigeons, D’Olivar says that developers or executives considering a career at Automattic may now question whether they would be held responsible for decisions they were authorized to make, but could no longer count on the organization to support when challenged. “Investors may seek clearer evidence that oversight and succession arrangements can operate under pressure. These are possible responses, not verified effects at Automattic. The information shared internally may also be more complete than the public account,” adds D’Olivar.This is not the first boomerang CEO bounceMullenweg might be the fastest CEO yo-yo switcharound in history, but he’s certainly not the first. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman famously left the company’s board after a communication dispute. An employee uprising (nearly all the company’s 700+ staff threatened to resign) and added pressure from Microsoft led to Altman returning to his position five days later.Perhaps even more famously, Steve Jobs was ousted in 1985, only to return 12 years later to realign a then-struggling Apple and take it into its golden years. Twitter (now X) founder Jack Dorsey was moved out in 2008 before a boomerang return in 2015. Michael Dell stepped down as CEO to become chairman of the board in 2004, but by the start of 2007 he was back.At their origins, the shenanigans at Automattic may be redolent of the technology industry’s other boomerang CEO realignments, or this may be a boardroom tussle that we’ll never know the full reason for until Mullenweg writes his memoirs. Either way, the WordPress industry just got its first movie-script idea.The post Automattic says CEO Mullenweg was gone and back inside 33 hours. What happened between? appeared first on The New Stack.