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A new team at Reddit

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: A new team at Reddit

#181

Post by ryanmerket »

shostack wrote: post #165
ryanmerket wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The culture at reddit is one of openness. We're also a super small team (about 30 in SF), so any kind of issues/arguments are easily recognized. Through the relocation announcement, the ex-employee issue on reddit, handling of the #celebgate, all employees and the board were supportive of Yishan for the most part. If there was any animosity, it certainly wasn't enough to call for his resignation.

What Sam is saying is truth. Yishan wanted the new HQ closer to the peninsula because he believed it was the best thing for the company (cost savings, south bay commuters, etc), and probably less so, for his family. The board disagreed, and there were a number of employees who disagreed. Yishan may have felt that he wasn't given enough trust and reins he needed to execute the company the way he thought it should be if he was CEO. This was the sole reason for Yishan's resignation, as I know it.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#182

Post by serve_yay »

hiou wrote: post #120
sama wrote: post #85

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, et…

I don't want it to sound like you are being dishonest about this, and it's possible there were things going on in Yishan's head that you were not aware of, but "a new team at reddit" in 8 days makes it a bit hard to believe this came completely out of nowhere.

That doesn't make any sense. What would such a short timeline imply, besides that it came out of nowhere?

Re: A new team at Reddit

#183

Post by scelerat »

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.

Daly City is south and west of San Francisco. It's served by BART (the regional rail system that spans the SF bay area and runs between SFO, Oakland (and its airport), Richmond, Pittsburg (north east bay), Dublin/Pleasanton, and Fremont) and Interstate highway 280, which runs N-S between San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

DC is a 25 minute BART ride for me from Oakland. I could totally envision commuting there for work. Great taquerias, easy freeway access, cheap(er) rent, fewer crowds (than downtown SF/SOMA).

At the same time, any business move is disruptive and should be considered carefully.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#184

Post by waterlesscloud »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #152
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification as, at least for me, it did not sound true but the additional details help. That's pretty interesting. Yishan seems like a pretty reactive person especially considering the drama of him ousting a former employee on their performance publicly.

I was curious what you were talking about, so I found it: https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r... It's not nearly as clear-cut as you made it seem. He was going around telling people Reddit fired him for no reason even though he was doing good work, which wasn't the case. Then he speculated he was fired because he raised concerns about revenue. The only question is whether Reddit told him why…

Yishan went way, way too far in that case. Much further than was needed or appropriate.

He always seemed prone to saying things that were of questionable judgment. I have no idea how he was at running the company, but I suspect Reddit will be better off having someone else speak for it at least.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#185

Post by SamReidHughes »

anon808 wrote: post #166
sama wrote: post #85

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, 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?

9.7 in San Francisco miles is a long commute.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#186

Post by ryanSrich »

gojomo wrote: post #134
cpeterso wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: "…

Do you have anything to support your claim that top talent prefers SF? Just curious.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#187

Post by rdl »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #137
toomuchtodo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ple…

I work really near the current Reddit office. The SOMA location means:

1) Lots of good but expensive ($10-30/day, easily) lunch options. Reddit provides lunch, and most of the employees seem to eat there, so no much of a perk.

2) Shitty walk to BART -- it's 20min to BART and then the BART wait, BART trip, and whatever on the other end. BART is nice if you're within a couple minutes of a station, which basically means DT oakland, berkeley, or FiDi/market st for offices. Or Daly City!

3) Caltrain, but Caltrain confuses me; I'd always rather drive. You can do Caltrain to Millbrae and then BART, though, for Daly City.

4) 280 proximity (but, Daly City does it better).

5) Bay Bridge sort of proximity (but, 30-45 minutes to wait to get on it in the evenings 5-7pm). This is objectively a big win for Reddit's current location vs. Daly City -- people in Oakland/Berkeley who drive to work. (I do this, and aside from costing me $1k/mo pretax all-in in a paid off car, it gives me a 15min each way commute at 10a and 7p 95% of the time).

6) Utterly extortionate housing rents -- $3500++ for a studio, $4500 1BR. If you were lucky and got here years ago, it can be half that, which is still expensive in absolute terms, but based on Bay Area tech salaries sort of reasonable. Otherwise, insane. Daly City is 50-75% of that, or less, and Pacifica/other San Mateo County/Western SF areas are options. It's faster to go from Ocean Beach to Daly City by car than Ocean Beach to SoMA via Muni.

7) Obnoxiousness whenever AT&T park has an event. Parking goes from $12/day to $90/day, and crowds of roving drunken assholes take to the streets. Usually in the evenings, but baseball has day games :(

Re: A new team at Reddit

#188

Post by teacup50 »

ryanmerket wrote: post #181
shostack wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The culture at reddit is one of openness. We're also a super small team (about 30 in SF), so any kind of issues/arguments are easily recognized. Through the relocation announcement, the ex-employee issue on reddit, handling of the #celebgate, all employees and the board were supportive of Yishan for the most part. If there was any animosity, it certainly wasn't enough to call for his resignation. What Sam is saying i…

This is a hopelessly naive position to hold, and it's also a one likely to be dangerous to your career — believing in openness so blindly is how you're going to be blind-sided.

An "open" culture is open unless the folks who actually are in charge have a good reason for it not to be. As someone who has been behind the closed doors, I guarantee that you have no idea what occurred behind them.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#189

Post by zzleeper »

gojomo wrote: post #117
zzleeper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all corporate HQ relocations move closer to the CEO's home. Is there any evidence of that? Seems quite interesting..

It was already folklore back when I was first part of a company discussing new office locations, in the 90s. (My father may have even mentioned it when I was child.) Since then, I've observed it often – though in fairness that may be confirmation bias. The ~cschmidt sibling reply highlights a Joel-on-Software post about the phenomenon from 2003, attributed to a 20th-century urbanist/organizational-analyst, William Wh…

Thanks for the replies guys!

Re: A new team at Reddit

#190

Post by jchendy »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #185
anon808 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

9.7 in San Francisco miles is a long commute.

I've never lived/worked in SF, but I had pretty much the same thought. Living in NYC, 9.7 miles is an almost unfathomable distance.
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