Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief • Hacker News Board

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#671

Post by remarkEon » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:27 AM UTC

Excavator wrote: post #571

vehementi wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, who is right, you or danielweber above?

In so far as I can remember he had good relations with many on the staff and even ended up with a special icon next to his username. The /r/SubredditDrama posts in regards to the incident are correct as I remember it: Part I - violentacrez: https://archive.is/7ygdr Part II - CreepShots: https://archive.is/8AVd8 Part 2 above ends with a link to VAs alleged last comments with an alt: http://i.imgur.com/E8fCA.png

Wow, guess I somehow missed this dramafest.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#672

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:31 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #603

notsony wrote: post #44

> Sam Altman, a member of Reddit’s board, said he personally appreciated Ms. Pao’s efforts during her two years working at the start-up. “Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said. This is clearly nonsense, otherwise there wouldn't have been a grassroots campaign to remove Ellen Pao from her role. If Sam Altman honestly believes that Ellen did a "phenomenal" job, he should reconside…

What? Do you expect Sam to slag her publicly? When was the last time any corporate board slagged a resigning CEO publicly? Sheesh.

There is a difference between slagging - whatever that is - and not gushing corporate BS. How about he be honest instead of just a shill? Sam seems to be good at "playing the game" and this type of thing falls right in line with it.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#673

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:36 AM UTC

nopenopeyep wrote: post #653

ThomPete wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the moderation is part of what keeps it a fairly enjoyable experience still IMO.

That's irrelevant to my comment. However, I don't think you have any evidence to support your assumption. As I expected: downvoted for pointing out the truth. HN is terrible.

How can I have evidence for an opinion other than expressing it?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#674

Post by waterhouse » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:38 AM UTC

comrh wrote: post #627

golergka wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the user base harassed her. Part of the user base raised valid concerns about her performance as CEO in a reasonable, well-argued manner. Part of the user base did both. Why do people here (in this HN thread) tend to pretend it's either one or the other? When you're speaking about a big amount of people, pretending like they all behave the same way is never a good representation of a situation.

> Part of the user base did both. Wait, what? You can raise "reasonable" concerns while harassing someone? Harassment makes raising "valid concerns" not well-argued or reasonable.

It's possible to post a perfectly calm, sensible, well-argued comment in one place, and post a spiteful, obscenity-filled rant in another place (or possibly the same place), so, yes. If you want to get fancy, you can use two computers and click "submit" on both simultaneously, so, yes, you can, even for pedantic definitions of "while".

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#675

Post by wvenable » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:42 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #604

city41 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It completely and totally dominated /r/all for days, even weeks. /r/all is an aggregate of the most popular posts for the entire site, so I disagree only a small subset were affected. Maybe in number of subreddits, but the subreddits that were affected are absolutely gigantic.

I'm not subscribed to any of the default subreddits; I imagine very many long-time users are the same way. I never read /r/all precisely because it's an aggregate of posts on subreddits I don't care about. In particular, I'm subscribed to no general-purpose or wide-purpose subreddits. A few city/geographic subreddits mentioned it in passing, but, like, /r/programming or /r/nycbike or /r/radicalchristianity are going…

I browse /r/all occasionally to get out of the bubble of the subs I'm subscribed to. And sometimes there is a popular post in an obscure subreddit that I've never heard of before and get that gets me to subscribe.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#676

Post by albinofrenchy » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:43 AM UTC

vehementi wrote: post #667

albinofrenchy wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your assertion is that all of her wins were kept secret, and the public record shouldn't be trusted, they are very few. Some hires and the chilling effects thing are maybe the biggest unambiguous positive developments. The subreddit banning and the salary negotiations thing were received with mixed opinion, but even if you agree with what was banned, the handling of it was questionable and seemed very rushed.…

Yes, most of her wins were surely kept internal because most company things are not made public as a matter of course. No plausible way the day to day internal changes / hirings / firings that you are not privy to have had a balancing effect on this? What was your methodology in assessing the damage that the blackout caused to reddit that you used to measure against the good she could have plausibly caused in order t…

So your entire point is that there is nothing a CEO can do, ever, that would let an outsider form an opinion on how effective they are.

And even if I was an employee; well there are always disgruntled employees, their opinion isn't reasonable either.

These are absurd arguments. By the same logic, the CEO of whole foods could hold a press conference and just go on a racist, hateful rant, and I couldn't possibly have a meaningful opinion on their effectiveness as a CEO.

In any event, the people I meant who did have the internal data weren't employees, I meant their board of directors.

And is it possible that a CEO is really awesome, but really really unlucky, and it just _looks_ like they are bad at their job outwardly? Sure, there is some non-zero chance of this; much like there is some non-zero chance of damn near anything.

Perfect information is an impossible ideal; arguing that a rational opinion is impossible regardless of any circumstance since we don't have access to all the information which exists would imply that no person can have a rational opinion about anything, ever.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#677

Post by monksy » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

morbius wrote: post #458

monksy wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but as far as I know they don't try to silence anyone. See: Project Panda, PREDDITORs, Their brigades ( https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSsucks/comments/14iwvx/its_that_t... ), the fact that they are "exempt from the non participation" requirement when linking to other subs.

That's a two year old link to a sub whose whole intent is to be as diametrically opposed to the SRS sub as possible. If you're trying to strike a point here, I think it'd be much more effective to link to something that's more impartial and up-to-date.

I completely agree with you. That was nothing but a lazy search. I'm not heavily invested in the sub. However to claim the sub's intent is to be "diametrically opposed to SRS' is incorrect. It has not war against SRS. It's a watch dog.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#678

Post by shawn-butler » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:50 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #505

nhf wrote: post #10

I think this was the right thing to do from a PR perspective. Having Steve back as the new CEO will definitely be good for the community. I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS: > As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. [1] The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for…

I don't know if she was a bad leader or not. My big concern is this populist approach to firing people. Enough people don't like a company officer? Cobble a "movement" and generate enough controversy to force them to step down. I think unless they egregiously violate company policy or violate the law or do something which would bring damage to a company it should be up to the company to direct the fate of an officer.…

You mean the same mob rule that HN seemed to support to make sure Brandon Eich lost his CEO position?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#679

Post by vehementi » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:01 AM UTC

albinofrenchy wrote: post #676

vehementi wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, most of her wins were surely kept internal because most company things are not made public as a matter of course. No plausible way the day to day internal changes / hirings / firings that you are not privy to have had a balancing effect on this? What was your methodology in assessing the damage that the blackout caused to reddit that you used to measure against the good she could have plausibly caused in order t…

So your entire point is that there is nothing a CEO can do, ever, that would let an outsider form an opinion on how effective they are. And even if I was an employee; well there are always disgruntled employees, their opinion isn't reasonable either. These are absurd arguments. By the same logic, the CEO of whole foods could hold a press conference and just go on a racist, hateful rant, and I couldn't possibly have a…

Pretty much, yes - as much as it feels super tingly great inside to feel like you've judged the career effectiveness of that person you don't know, you really don't have much info at all, and this doesn't fall into the extreme argument of "while you know 99% of the things, you technically don't know 100%, so it's unknowable - checkmate!"

And yes, literally it is true that the CEO of whole foods could go on a huge racist rant and you could not have a meaningful opinion on their effectiveness as CEO. Or rather, what you want to say is "in this extreme example, this CEO is clearly ineffective", but we know of morally shitty CEOs who drive huge company growth & profits and are therefore effective CEOs.

Anyway, can you show your work that you were referring to behind your analysis of the magnitude of the damage that the recent reddit blackout did?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#680

Post by venomsnake » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:23 AM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #274

CamperBob2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were modded down, but I don't know why. On what planet does it make sense to ban /r/fatpeoplehate while permitting /r/CoonTown? If you don't have a coherent content policy -- and no sane person could argue that Reddit does -- then you're better off with none at all.

What? Clearly both should be banned, but banning one is much better than banning neither.

Why they should be banned? You know that you can just stay away.