11–20 of 153 posts
3 female employees gone from the Reddit team in such a short time. This could create the probably false perception that Reddit seems like a hostile working environment for women. I wonder what they'll do to address this probably false perception.
If the investors came in expecting major growth (since this is not a business with a great monetization story) it's not surprising that there's pressure and turnover right now, almost a year later. And, it may well be that what's needed is a CEO with enough credibility to tell the board "you won't get that growth yet, we have some work to do."
Saying that to the board is obviously going to be hard to do for Ellen, or anyone in Ellen's shoes if they brought her in to deliver growth, and she promised to deliver that growth.
So, lots of drama, yadda yadda, but I would bet 100:1 that drama has, at it's fundamental source, intense pressure from the board, and I would also bet you that this kind of pressure is new for reddit as a company.
To me, that's likely at least some of the context for the rumors that Ohanian intervened directly to get rid of Victoria, the former AMA lead at Reddit. AMAs are one of Reddit's most visible branding / marketing measures. If you need to deliver growth, and aren't seeing it, it is completely natural to be looking at your premier product lines and trying to get them to do more. And, I would be surprised if this kind of thinking weren't informing senior management as they're struggling to deliver on these promises.
To repost my comment from a previous submission: There's been a lot of meta discussion how Yishan Wong, Alexis Ohanian, and Ellen Pao have been talking trash to each other about Reddit and seemingly ignoring every NDA in the book. The comments made in the linked interview trashing a former employer seem to perpetuate this culture. It's weird . (although if you're planning on starting your own startup after a bad job,…
The whole recent controversy has been strange in general. There's this incredibly pervasive sense that the management in general is completely disconnected from the community, only stepping down from on high to dish out shadowbans. I don't know what to think honestly, but it seems like the reddit administration is walking close to the cliff currently. Maybe the newOld ceo can turn that around.
Pao was a glass cliff employee meant to be there during this crisis period. Any formal investigation might uncover evidence that reddit higher ups encouraged Pao's villain status through sock puppets. If the world hates one person they ignore the corrosive policies.
Now they have usurped control over the mods and the structure of reddit itself, they can dismiss any posts that are negative fairly soon and make it look like the front page algorithm is just doing housekeeping... which is required if you want advertisers to feel good about money changing hands.
The next phase will be some more staff shuffling and some very very unpopular changes that the team will seem very over-excited about introducing (fauxgasms ensue) and we'll be left wondering what the hell is going on long enough for the changes to be irreversible.
This recent front page revolt of mods shutting down all their subreddits was tactical. The admins wanted everyone to get over-saturated with the revolt before the new changes became apparent. Over the next six months reddit will become more and more like facebook in terms of forcing us to see what they want us to see on the front page.
They've been gaming this system from the top since the beginning. One needs only look at r/hailcorporate to see story after story of astro-turfing and fadvertising.
Reddit is a company that sells entertainment in the form of conversation. That's their goal. They are succeeding because even if we're all complaining about them we're all having a conversation about them.
So like everyone who isn't square, I'm over now on voat.co having my own conversation about movies and programming with people who want to talk to me... not sell me something.
The way she describes it, it was a sensible choice. Various things are being promised that she, as Chief Engineer, does not think will happen. Given what happened with Ellen Pao it's not unreasonable for her to assume that responsibility for those failures could easily be put on her when the inevitable happens.
What's the point of being a Chief Engineer if you can't even get some software (the mod tools) written? That seems like an awfully low bar for someone in that position, and to throw in the towel after she barely started seems to speak more to her character than any problems with Reddit. I mean... you hire someone for a top technical position and they quit when the first bump comes along? That's ridiculous.
The way she describes it, it was a sensible choice. Various things are being promised that she, as Chief Engineer, does not think will happen. Given what happened with Ellen Pao it's not unreasonable for her to assume that responsibility for those failures could easily be put on her when the inevitable happens.
What's the point of being a Chief Engineer if you can't even get some software (the mod tools) written? That seems like an awfully low bar for someone in that position, and to throw in the towel after she barely started seems to speak more to her character than any problems with Reddit. I mean... you hire someone for a top technical position and they quit when the first bump comes along? That's ridiculous.
3 female employees gone from the Reddit team in such a short time. This could create the probably false perception that Reddit seems like a hostile working environment for women. I wonder what they'll do to address this probably false perception.
3 female employees gone from the Reddit team in such a short time. This could create the probably false perception that Reddit seems like a hostile working environment for women. I wonder what they'll do to address this probably false perception.
And, yeah, the harassment of Pao was very misogynistic -- and racist to boot (people were calling her a "ching chong cunt") -- but there's nothing to indicate that the other two had any problems due to their gender.
The way she describes it, it was a sensible choice. Various things are being promised that she, as Chief Engineer, does not think will happen. Given what happened with Ellen Pao it's not unreasonable for her to assume that responsibility for those failures could easily be put on her when the inevitable happens.
3 female employees gone from the Reddit team in such a short time. This could create the probably false perception that Reddit seems like a hostile working environment for women. I wonder what they'll do to address this probably false perception.
Besides, Ellen wasn't even fired. She resigned no?