A new team at Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: A new team at Reddit

#81

Post by nlh » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

Although my 8 days as the CEO of reddit have been sort of fun, I am happy they are coming to a close and I am sure the new team will do a far better job and take reddit to great heights.

Heh.."sort of". But seriously - good moves @sama. This part of your post seems to be getting less attention but it should be highlighted. It's tough as hell to jump into the middle of a fire when a top executive resigns, and it's commendable that you rolled up your sleeves and did it. At some point, if ever possible, a post about the past week would be hugely interesting.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#82

Post by cpeterso » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

kickme444 wrote: post #47

onewaystreet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wong didn't want to move the company to SF. The board did. That's no small thing to disagree on.

This is 100% not true. Yishan wanted the team to move to the same location and the board supported him. This was a question of office location, not centralizing.

What about the office location was so contentious that the CEO would quit?

Re: A new team at Reddit

#83

Post by mcfunley » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #28

eco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can believe it. Yishan always seemed very dramatic and reactionary. I could see him resigning in anger after not getting his way.

Relevant context: https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r... From the NYT: "That incident, according to people close to the company, made some of Reddit’s current employees uncomfortable."

That was a thoroughly classless move on his part. The reddit or HN community might eat that kind of thing up, but it's recruiting poison. Anyone contemplating taking a job at reddit would have to think twice about working for someone who would permanently and capriciously destroy the SEO of a former employee like that.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#84

Post by rdl » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #60

Ellen Pao is former VC and has a bizarre sordid past: http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/03/buddy-fletcher-ell... This is a serious red flag for the future of the site. If anyone wants to catch the great Reddit exodus of 2016, start building your competitor right now.

Ellen Pao is a former VC, true. She also was involved in a nasty situation with her former VC firm.

She's also one of the best consumer-product operations people I've ever met, and generally brilliant, honest, and helpful. While I know a lot of YC founders, partners, etc., Ellen is the person I'd go to for advice about whether a product/company direction is a good idea or not.

Bringing a founder back is great, but Ellen is amazing in her own right.

I think that makes up for her being a former VC :)

Re: A new team at Reddit

#85

Post by sama » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

I realize that this sounds non-credible (and it's certainly one of the craziest professional things I've ever been a part of), but it's actually what happened.

Yishan wanted to move the office from SF to Daly City. The board pushed back but said we'd agree to it with certain data (we wanted Yishan to figure out how many employees would stay with the company through the move, get a comparison to other market rents, etc.--all questions I think a board should ask when thinking through a major commitment).

This is certainly not what I was expecting to be dealing with so quickly after investing in reddit, but we'll make the best of it.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#86

Post by lbotos » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #43

brianpgordon wrote: post #26

Does this mean that Reddit will start evolving again? It's been stagnating for years with few user-facing changes. The UI is a complete mess. From the outside at least, it looks like they've stopped investing in it and are just milking it until it dies.

Also, let me point out that advertising on reddit is a royal pain in the ass. They have all kinds of broken processes and weird quirks that have not been fixed since we started trying to advertise there in 2011. We recently went back to try some new campaigns there and none of it was fixed. I'm sure if you're doing big media buys (ie., you're microsoft) they will just do it all for you, but from the standpoint of the…

I'm not sure what scale you are operating at but for me the guy trying to test an MVP the self serve ads were great. I picked:

An ad spend ($5)

My Target subreddit

When it runs

And then a few days later my ad was live.

For $5 it was ridiculously simple and easy.

Can you elaborate on what you were looking for?

Re: A new team at Reddit

#87

Post by zzleeper » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #61

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm missing the context here, but Reddit is in San Francisco. They're in the same SoMa office building Wired is in.

Maybe Wong wanted to move HQ to the Valley proper, rather than SF itself? Almost all corporate HQ relocations move closer to the CEO's home. But also, there's a (plausibly-fair) knock on SF-city-based companies as being more superficial, frothier, and more prone to distraction and high-burn rates than those in the more-authentically-nerdy Valley. Maybe someone can leak where Wong wanted the new HQ to be.

> Almost all corporate HQ relocations move closer to the CEO's home.

Is there any evidence of that? Seems quite interesting..

Re: A new team at Reddit

#88

Post by optimusclimb » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #70

I logged out of reddit about a month ago. I changed my password to something incomprehensible. To me, reddit has become a link aggregator over being a social place. I still visit about a half dozen subreddits daily, but only insomuch as to get my news. I think that will be its demise. Reddit's volunteer moderation and vote gaming makes it a poor non-biased link aggregator unless you want an echo chamber. Some people…

The trend that finally sent me out was when good subreddits focused on specific topics started turning into show and tell for adults - and usually just amounted to, "Hey I bought that expensive thing that all of the group says is THE one to get, here is a picture of it in my house, it probably looks similar to the one you have". I suppose in a way, the recent investment might match that consumerist focus.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#89

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

brianpgordon wrote: post #26

Does this mean that Reddit will start evolving again? It's been stagnating for years with few user-facing changes. The UI is a complete mess. From the outside at least, it looks like they've stopped investing in it and are just milking it until it dies.

> The UI is a complete mess.

Isn't that kind of subjective?

And as long as we're being subjective: It's got my favorite comment UI of any given news site - built in comment collapsing, ability to link to specific comments with parent context, flexibility in URLs, etc.

HN could stand to borrow some of these improvements.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#90

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Nov 13, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

eco wrote: post #22

zorpner wrote: post #12

Heh. I love the conceit that anyone would believe Wong resigned only over "location and amount of money to spend on a lease". Previously from @sama: "Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it play out. " ( http://blog.samaltman.com/reddit )

I can believe it. Yishan always seemed very dramatic and reactionary. I could see him resigning in anger after not getting his way.

> Although my 8 days as the CEO of reddit have been sort of fun

Sounds like he didn't give any notice at all, and they had to scramble for a new CEO? Is resigning (or being fired?) with no notice typical for CEO positions?