Amazing 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...
It is very surreal.
A new team at Reddit
191–200 of 379 posts
Re: A new team at Reddit
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Openness isn't the only reason. I'm also pretty close with Yishan (pre-reddit) and Ellen is my direct supervisor and sits across from me. Sure there might have been other small issues, but office location was a large point of contention internally. So this being the underlying part of Yishan's resignation makes sense.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#193I 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…
Silly question, but why Daly City?
Re: A new team at Reddit
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish reddit would remember my folds / unfolds per comment thread. Always stinks to read the comments, collapse some of the discussion for readability, click a link and then return to find the entire thread expanded again.
Simplest solution I've found to this is just use your browser tabs.
That doesn't really scale well, however - if you're reading dozens of threads over the course of a few days, well, good luck.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Openness isn't the only reason. I'm also pretty close with Yishan (pre-reddit) and Ellen is my direct supervisor and sits across from me. Sure there might have been other small issues, but office location was a large point of contention internally. So this being the underlying part of Yishan's resignation makes sense.
Nobody (sane) resigns solely over office location planning. They would, however, resign over the politics that drove their proposal being dismissed.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I wish reddit would remember my folds / unfolds per comment thread. Always stinks to read the comments, collapse some of the discussion for readability, click a link and then return to find the entire thread expanded again.
I agree, that would be nice - for now, I use RES[1] which provides this.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#197Re: A new team at Reddit
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> HN could stand to borrow some of these improvements Which ones, besides comment collapsing (which we definitely intend to do)?
Being able to link to a specific comment, with a context history. Right now, I can link to a comment, but you have to keep clicking "parent" to understand the full conversation.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> HN could stand to borrow some of these improvements Which ones, besides comment collapsing (which we definitely intend to do)?
Being able to link to a specific comment, with a context history. Right now, I can link to a comment, but you have to keep clicking "parent" to understand the full conversation.
Re: A new team at Reddit
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Someone's paying the sky-high residential rents; it sure seems like it's top-compensated tech workers.
See also: Google, Apple, Facebook, et al running comfy buses for SF residents to their distant HQs.
And now the Reddit board is another data point. They didn't trust their CEO's call, unless they got more proof about employee retention after choosing a non-SF location.