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A new team at Reddit

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: A new team at Reddit

#131

Post by alttab »

hiou wrote: post #71

2 months after a $50 million round of financing and the lead investor of said round steps in as temporary CEO. You would have to be very, very naive to believe that this was solely a dispute on the cost and location of a new office. It seems fairly obvious that with the new round of investment Wong saw his control of reddit significantly reduced and his decision making second guessed and overturned finally culminatin…

I can't imagine anyone walking away from the position of CEO of Reddit over something like that.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#132

Post by rdl »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #111
rdl wrote: post #92

I really liked the "move to Daly City" idea. Millbrae also seems like it would make sense.

What's the benefit of moving to Daly City vs SF proper? I'm not from the bay area, so I'm not familiar with why this would be a problem.

* Rents less extortionate. ($2? vs. $4-5?)

* Big floor plates available.

* Better accessibility (280 and BART) vs. a lot of SF.

* Less dysfunctional city government.

* No city-specific taxes.

I don't know the specifics of the deal. Reddit's current office space is rather...compact.

So, I'll accept that "Reddit must move" is a must. Where they move, and how it's done, seems like a fun challenge for whoever comes in as CEO and for the COO. Very glad this isn't my problem -- immigration is the #1 problem, housing and housing costs #2 problem, office space maybe tied as #3 with general cost inflation, transit, and traffic.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#133

Post by forgottenpass »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #45
reduce wrote: post #34

Wow, didn't expect this. The original founding team of Reddit were awesome. 1) Personally responded to feedback emails. 2) Actually cared about sensible moderation, instead of the terrible moderation practices that have taken over in recent years. Examples of reddit's recent problems: certain subreddit moderators perpetrating massive multi-million dollar scams by banning people who warned about scamming businesses. M…

regarding 2), sounds interesting. Got any more information on that? Surely, if you are objective and just present facts, this can be discussed here? What multi-million dollar scams are going on on reddit?

He could be talking about Quickmeme?

Here is a terrible overview from a quick google search: http://www.themarysue.com/reddit-bans-quickmeme/

Re: A new team at Reddit

#134

Post by gojomo »

cpeterso wrote: post #82
kickme444 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Generally such a resignation is about being-overruled (board no-confidence), rather than just the particulars of one decision.

With ~sama's revelation that Wong preferred a Daly City HQ, the battle-lines could have been:

Pro-Daly-City: "more space, cheaper, less-cool, longer-runway, more employees who've self-selected for willingness to do Reddit muckwork vs. glamorous SoMa networking, outsider perspective"

Pro-SF: "continuity with current employees, top talent prefers SF, worth the extra cost/cost-of-living, more transit links, closer to other media/advertising"

Re: A new team at Reddit

#135

Post by justinv »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #90
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.

> 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?

This is very confusing to me. I'd say that maybe that's typical for other situations, but resigning effective immediately because the offices wouldn't be moved sounds very, very odd.

I would be really disappointed if a CEO left day-of rather than at least allow a transition period where a lead investor didn't have to step in. (Unless it was the board that wanted him gone asap?)

Re: A new team at Reddit

#136

Post by calbear81 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #111
rdl wrote: post #92

I really liked the "move to Daly City" idea. Millbrae also seems like it would make sense.

What's the benefit of moving to Daly City vs SF proper? I'm not from the bay area, so I'm not familiar with why this would be a problem.

Because the whole point of being in SF is that you can attract talent that wants to live in the heart of the city. To put this in perspective, it's like a company moving out of SoHo and going to New Jersey. It's technically not that far away but once you're out there, you're not within walking distance to everything the city has to offer (food, culture, etc.).

Re: A new team at Reddit

#137

Post by chipotle_coyote »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #111
rdl wrote: post #92

I really liked the "move to Daly City" idea. Millbrae also seems like it would make sense.

What's the benefit of moving to Daly City vs SF proper? I'm not from the bay area, so I'm not familiar with why this would be a problem.

While I'm speculating, I'd imagine the advantage is simply that you can get more space for less money. Daly City is (in a very relative sense) inexpensive, especially given its proximity to SF.

The downside is that Daly City doesn't really have anything to offer but cheaper rents; I suspect it'd be a terrible place to be stuck in for lunchtime and after-work options, nor from what I've seen would it be a terribly pleasant place to live. (That's subjective, of course.) Being in SoMa is a job perk in and of itself, given how many interesting things are within walking distance. If you're going to move out of SF there are considerably more interesting places to target that would still be within relatively quick BART or Caltrain commuting distance.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#138

Post by bibinou »

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.

they just launched http://www.reddit.com/live

UX changes are the reason Digg died.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#139

Post by fletchowns »

naiyt wrote: post #13
Sealy wrote: post #8

Why did he write: "It’s interesting to note that during my very brief tenure, reddit added more users than Hacker News has in total." Was that a dig at Hacker News?

No, I think it was just to emphasize how much Reddit is growing. HN is targeted at a specific audience and is more like a subreddit for a particular topic. It wouldn't make sense to compare them directly.

Not to mention half of the user accounts at reddit are just stupid novelty accounts...

I'm exaggerating of course, but there are still a ton of novelty/alt accounts that people create on reddit.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#140

Post by maxerickson »

ryanSrich wrote: post #124
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Relevant context: Wong wanted everyone who worked at Reddit to move to San Francisco in an attempt to increase cohesion. http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-f... Some speculated that the move was to please investors, especially after a fundraise. This announcement indicates that the investors...disagreed?

From the previous thread here[1]... From what I gather Yishan went to Sama after closing the 50m round and asked for advice on company structure and whether or not to consolidate workers into one location. How/why that was even a consideration hasn't been mentioned to my knowledge. ...anyway, Sama suggested that they do phase out remote workers and consolidate everyone in San Francisco. > to state what should be obvi…

Please delete some of your dashes, they are breaking layout.
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