Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A new team at Reddit

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 379 posts

Re: A new team at Reddit

#241

Post by legohead »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #238
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?

San Francisco attracts startups and talent because it's a cool, fun, sexy place to live. Bright young talent demands those sorts of conditions. Daly City is a suburban hellhole. If “cities” like Daly were desirable places to live, Provo, Utah and Tacoma, WA would be IT meccas. The traffic in that region guarantees an ungodly commute by car for anyone who wanted to stay in SF and drive to Daly for work (1 hour commute…

SF cool, fun, sexy? Have you ever been there? I found it dirty, scary, and smelly.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#242

Post by codezero »

encoderer wrote: post #210
codezero wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much cheaper to work and live in Daly City than in San Francisco. It's probably a lot easier to expand there as well. If you buy office space in San Francisco, you either buy just enough for your current team with some wiggle room, or you buy as much as you think you need for the entire time you plan to remain there, which may be 2 or 3x the size of your current needs. It costs a lot of money to own property you…

Actually, there are regulations in SF about leasing space you don't actually need. I don't know all the details, but my employer just moved to a new Soma office and we were prohibited from having a huge meeting space, and instead had to partition it and use some as workspace.

Ah OK, I guess my direct experience with larger spaces comes from the south bay, but all the same, this explains why my current office keeps moving! So this still highlights what is probably a benefit of places outside of the city :)

Re: A new team at Reddit

#243

Post by waterlesscloud »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #238
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?

San Francisco attracts startups and talent because it's a cool, fun, sexy place to live. Bright young talent demands those sorts of conditions. Daly City is a suburban hellhole. If “cities” like Daly were desirable places to live, Provo, Utah and Tacoma, WA would be IT meccas. The traffic in that region guarantees an ungodly commute by car for anyone who wanted to stay in SF and drive to Daly for work (1 hour commute…

And yet plenty of "bright young talent" seems to do just fine in the rest of SV. "Demands" is overstating it a bit.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#244

Post by dublinben »

orbitur wrote: post #145
optimusclimb wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Each subreddit needs a good set of mods, especially when there are thousands of subscribers. Once a subreddit hits some magic number, it devolves into a stream of image links to "hey I made a cake/painting/object with [subject of subreddit] on it". Mods can very easily guide users toward discussion. r/atheism infamously banned images altogether, and aside from the "REVOLT I WANT MEMES IN MY R/ATHEISM" posts, people a…

The challenge is that what we think of as high quality content is not what Reddit Inc. has seen leading the growth. Images and fluffy content are easier to consume, and therefore more profitable for the site.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#245

Post by basch »

coke12 wrote: post #44
ryanmerket wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This had little to do with Yishan, and more to do with having a user base that abhors changes.

Yep, the "digg exodus" is almost mythical in reddit-history.

eurpoeans colonizing america is almost mythical in western-history.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#246

Post by stream_fusion »

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."

The context, is a spill-the-beans IAMA from a disgruntled ex-employee provocatively made on reddit itself.

The CEO has a right-of-reply and a duty to protect the reputation of the company against accusations, and he fairly exercised that right.

There was no slanging match, and the response consisted of a single post amongst hundreds in that thread.

I don't see a problem with having both positions made public after the ex-employee initiated the public confrontation. As always The truth is probably going to lie somewhere in the middle.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#247

Post by ghaff »

legohead wrote: post #241
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco attracts startups and talent because it's a cool, fun, sexy place to live. Bright young talent demands those sorts of conditions. Daly City is a suburban hellhole. If “cities” like Daly were desirable places to live, Provo, Utah and Tacoma, WA would be IT meccas. The traffic in that region guarantees an ungodly commute by car for anyone who wanted to stay in SF and drive to Daly for work (1 hour commute…

SF cool, fun, sexy? Have you ever been there? I found it dirty, scary, and smelly.

Well, it's a city a lot of people like but certainly those adjectives could be applied to just about any good-size city--and it's why a lot of people also don't really like cities period. I'd add that, if your experience with SF is going to a show at the Moscone or elsewhere nearby, that general area (Market, Tenderloin, etc.) is definitely less nice than much of the rest of the city. But it's also fair that SF, for a variety of reasons, also has more street people of various sorts than most cities do.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#248

Post by pbreit »

strlen wrote: post #218
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?

I think the conflict is more cultural than people realize: an office in Daly City is tremendously easier to reach and if you're coming from South Bay -- essentially you exit the freeway and park. On the other hand, getting to a point in SF from the freeway and parking usually takes at least 30 minutes (in addition to the 30+50 minute drive from the starting point in the South Bay or Peninsula). SOMA area is reachable…

I commuted on Caltrain for 5 years and found too reliable!

Re: A new team at Reddit

#249

Post by raldi »

RobPfeifer wrote: post #173
blatherard wrote: post #7

Here's the announcement on the reddit official blog: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/11/coming-home.html

I find it rather ridiculous and unprofessional that his personal site is the version of this that's up here.

Huh? Where do you see his personal site?

Re: A new team at Reddit

#250

Post by ansible »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #162
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 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…

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.

I am reminded of Motorola (oh, how the mighty have fallen) years ago, when they decided to open up manufacturing plants in Libertyville and Harvard IL.

What were the deciding criteria?

Communities with good amenities (parks, schools, etc.)? Nope, middle of farm-ville Illinois. Nothing wrong with that, I'm from a small town.

Good access to existing talent? Nope. Far away from Chicago and the other tech employers in the region.

Easy access to transportation (planes, trains, automobiles)? Nope. Way off the highways.

Close proximity to the CEO's house? Yup.

Post reply on HN