[pocketsand]

For me, the fact he tried to compel the WPE CEO to work for him or else he would expose that she was in negotiations with him is the most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard in a hiring process. Quite literally an affront to freedom.

My most charitable guess at what is going on is severe mental illness.

[kemayo]

It did all seem to blow up around when he came back from a sabbatical, presumably taken because he really needed a break. Though I guess that he also had a bit of a PR disaster with Tumblr during that sabbatical, so...

[tptacek]

"Quite literally an affront to freedom"? Really? Say more.

[pocketsand]

Work for me or I will publicly shame you, try to damage your reputation, and make your employees potentially question your loyalty.

Threatening people if they don’t take a job with you is in the most literal way a challenge to your autonomy as a human being.

[tptacek]

I think a lot of this whole saga is easier to understand if you just remember that WordPress is a major open source project and a company, so you get to see a lot of the stuff every company --- almost none of whom run major open source projects --- does in the ordinary course of business.

Anyways, if you thought there was any freedom or purity to the tech job market, bad news for you.

[FireBeyond]

> Anyways, if you thought there was any freedom or purity to the tech job market, bad news for you.

Ahh, "everyone else does it" - no, have never been threatened that if I refuse a job offer, or otherwise decline, that my current employer will be told all about how disloyal I was to them.

[tptacek]

Hey, to be clear, I'm not sticking up for it, I'm just saying: commentary about this whole saga sometimes feels like people have lost some perspective, and are holding WordPress to a standard that pure commercial companies aren't held to. Hiring is ruthless! Executive hiring in particular!

[appendix-rock]

Americans relating everything back to “freedom” is so jarring for literally everyone else.