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A new team at Reddit

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Re: A new team at Reddit

#251

Post by yuhong »

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…

I do believe that California defamation law still needs to be fixed though.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#252

Post by stream_fusion »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #101
paulhauggis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No this is not something to respect someone for. This is unprofessional and a liability; if anything Yishan said wasn't documented and documented really well the OP has a libel case. It doesn't even matter how true it was. He also publicly spoke out about someone's work ethic and performance of which we're only getting one side of the story anyway. If his real name is associated with his reddit profile then future em…

CEO exercised right-of-reply to potentially tortious statements from the employee. Also public interest.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#253

Post by baudehlo »

asaramis wrote: post #228
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…

Ellen Pao. Harvard Law, Harvard MBA, time at Cravath (very, very fancy law firm) and partner at Kleiner (which I imagine most of us know) is now to be the head of Reddit? I am a firm believer that most media out there is not extracting enough value from their audience, or "under-monetizing", to use a ridiculous term. However, Reddit truly is different. I simply can't imagine someone with Ellen's professional upbringi…

I think if you check how active u/kn0thing is on the reddit thread about this, you might feel a bit better. Although u/ekjp is rather less active there, so it should be interesting to say the least.

https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2m7pf5/coming_home/

Of course time will tell. Reddit is full of great little communities (and some really messed up ones). Let's hope they can keep things good for the users and not do a digg.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#254

Post by dragonwriter »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #101
paulhauggis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No this is not something to respect someone for. This is unprofessional and a liability; if anything Yishan said wasn't documented and documented really well the OP has a libel case. It doesn't even matter how true it was. He also publicly spoke out about someone's work ethic and performance of which we're only getting one side of the story anyway. If his real name is associated with his reddit profile then future em…

> if anything Yishan said wasn't documented and documented really well the OP has a libel case. It doesn't even matter how true it was.

In the U.S. it does, since untruth is a required element of libel.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#255

Post by mcfunley »

prostoalex wrote: post #240
mcfunley wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a thoroughly classless move on his part. The reddit or HN community might eat that kind of thing up, but it's recruiting poison. Anyone contemplating taking a job at reddit would have to think twice about working for someone who would permanently and capriciously destroy the SEO of a former employee like that.

How would you handle somebody who, after being let go, would use a public forum to besmirch the previous employer? E.g., here he calls the company management "two-faced" https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r... Companies have to act and usually act quickly, handling a public issue privately, no matter how successfully, would leave a lingering impression of "Yahoo hires just about anyone with a…

Practically any other way. Responding as he did shows an incredible lack of judgement that shouldn't be tolerated in any employee, let alone the CEO.

The response lacks all proportionality. A former employee is saying mildly critical things about you in a public forum? Ok, I don't think anyone is really going to mistake that kind of rumormongering for gospel. Destroying that person's future employment prospects from on high is not only unnecessarily cruel, it also creates a story where there wasn't one before. We never would have heard about the thread if he hadn't done this. It certainly never would have made the mainstream news.

He could have said nothing. He could have sent the employee a private legal warning. Or he could have posted a nice non-response to indicate that they saw the thread, but as a company staffed by adults Reddit is above that kind of name-calling. He did the opposite and looked like a child.

In addition to being really poor form, his response very likely opens the company up to a lawsuit. If I were the besmirched fired employee, god forbid, I would immediately be contacting an employment attorney.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#256

Post by jacquesm »

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's called contingency planning. After getting an investment of $50M I'm pretty sure they did their homework on this and having the CEO resign simply triggered a series of pre-defined steps. You don't get that kind of investment without having at least the basics in place. (Or at least, you shouldn't...).

Re: A new team at Reddit

#257

Post by jacquesm »

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?

Sounds like a nice bike commute. Especially with the weather there.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#258

Post by jacquesm »

macNchz wrote: post #227
kenrikm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience you always loose employees when moving offices. It's a really weird feeling just after the move and takes a while to get back into the grove.

My last company was the first place I've worked that moved offices while I was there, and we definitely experienced a 'weird feeling' and we lost a bunch of people. Everything just felt off after the move, even though things went smoothly, and our new space was objectively much nicer (upgraded from thoroughly class C space to a nice class A building). I was trying to stick it out and wait for the culture and mood (wh…

The key element in moving offices is buy-in. It affects everybody. If you treat your employees like they're part of the furniture during the planning phase then you're going to have exactly the effect you describe. Not saying that was the case but I would not be surprised if it was.

Re: A new team at Reddit

#259

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: A new team at Reddit

#260

Post by skeletonjelly »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #194
skeletonjelly wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case I'm pretty sure RES saves the state of the collapsed threads.
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