This post has an interview with Pao and Alexis: http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-int...
A new team at Reddit
161–170 of 379 posts
Re: A new team at Reddit
#162I 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, et…
I am reminded of a HBR study showing headquarters of major firms all tended to move closer to the home of the CEO even if that impacted retention - will have to find the reference.
As a side note, how is reddit on "asynchronous working" (if that's what remote working is called these days). How would the board have felt about the move if Reddit was more ready for being location-agnostic?
Edit: it seems I misunderstood your comment (and probably the geography of SF.) So if I understand it Reddit already was remote-friendly but both CEO and board wanted to have everyone in same office (which office being the point of contention). May I ask why you were going the "unusual" route of from remote to centralised - is Melissa Mayer right?
Edit: William Whyte in collected articles (Exoding Metropolis). Noted downthread as in a Joel Spolsky article. I am always late to the party :-)
Cf http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EsvEFIamv3oC&pg=PA38&lpg=...
Re: A new team at Reddit
#163Re: A new team at Reddit
#164I 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, et…
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Re: A new team at Reddit
#1652 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…
reddit employee here. there were no signs to justify your speculative argument.
Just playing devil's advocate here, and please know I mean this with all due respect, but you are a Product Manager who has been there 4 months according to LinkedIn.
I do not claim to know the inner workings of Reddit, but can you really be 100% certain that you were privy to all of the meetings, etc. where such signs may have been observed?
Again--zero disrespect intended here, but it strikes me as uncommon that a recent PM hire would be involved in all of the board meetings, hallway conversations, etc. where some of this power struggle may have occurred.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#166I 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, et…
Daly City is 9.7 miles from the reddit office, for all practical purposes it sounds like Yishan wanted to just move offices in the same city; the Daly City part doesn't seem like it's important. Or am I missing something?
Re: A new team at Reddit
#167Nice words, growing it 5x is great. Resigning over office plans sounds like a last straw sort of thing. In the grand scheme of things office locations aren't that big a deal. But then again, Reddit has had some weird dis-coordinated public communications, maybe more cohesion really was necessary?
> In the grand scheme of things office locations aren't that big a deal.
Location is a make-or-break proposition for a lot of people. If you have employees with lives outside of the company, location will matter quite a bit.
From the top, it might be easy to rationalize a decision that adds 20 minutes to an employee's commute time, but (hopefully) your employees aren't stupid. Time is money, and what they see is that you've just added several hours to their work week -- hours they could be spending with friends and family, or spending on hobbies or relaxing. If the change is seen as arbitrary or for selfish purposes (eg. making the lives of one or a few executives easier at the expense of everyone else), that location change can seriously sap morale.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#168I 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, et…
Daly City is 9.7 miles from the reddit office, for all practical purposes it sounds like Yishan wanted to just move offices in the same city; the Daly City part doesn't seem like it's important. Or am I missing something?
with a highly competitive job market, especially where many of the people in a city with poor public transit do not have cars, 9.7 miles is annoying enough to cause people to choose somewhere else to work.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
He was being honest and I actually respect him more for putting a former employee that obviously was trying to get sympathy from the Reddit community, in his place.
I thought that was one of the most unprofessional and disrespectful things I've ever seen any CEO do. It was childish and rash and deeply unfair given the huge power asymmetry between a CEO and a former employee.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#170Amazing the the new SVP of Product is a guy who one day said "It would be cool if reddit had a secret santa." While not working there.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/20/secret-sant...