There's even more context about how this CEO managed the business in a reddit thread in response to those tweets as well, which includes some detailed and revealing comments from the developer:
> whether Pao actually had anything (or everything) to do with it?
Reddit only has around 70 employees, I would find it extremely unlikely a CEO at a company of that size wouldn't have been aware or involved in the decision (if only to rubber stamp it).
In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.
Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, he would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.
Once this was done, he and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder."
-Yishan Wong (former Reddit CEO)
"Cool story bro.
Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :)
Other than that, child's play for me.
Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO."
While I agree with services pricing their APIs in any way they like, it's worth pointing out that Reddit's current CEO Steve Huffman is the very same person responsible for editing Reddit user comments as recently as 2016, like he was just an admin on some no-name forum. [1] On the eve of an IPO, someone that irresponsible and childish should not be leading this company.
I was initally on Reddit's side in this particular matter (and I still think Selig's API pricing justifications are worthless), but I was shocked to learn Huffman is still the CEO, so his offhand comments about this situation and Reddit's general bad faith interactions with Selig in the past week are now very obvious to me.
The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so far but they've been downvoted to oblivion so they aren't visible in the main comments; you can see all his replies on his user profile page here:
I'm not sure what timeline you're exactly trying to prove or disprove. It makes sense to me that he'd make a post describing a call with Reddit, after he had a call with Reddit. He doesn't have to describe exactly everything he describes, but fact is: Reddit is claiming he is costing them 20 million dollars per year, he suggested a buy-out for half that. You have to actually prove he tried to threaten them, because the non-threat explanation makes perfect sense - because of course the developer of an app would make posts about the status of communications regarding these changes!
If I'm missing something you're alluding to in the beginning I'd appreciate an explicit explanation :)
TLDR: market conditions not conducive to their business at this time. (Ed: founding team probably wants to quickly pivot to something else, not take the time to for a sale)
I wouldn't be surprised that happened ultimately, but I really don't think that she was hired with that role/goal in mind. No one could be that evil. Could they?
If you look at the history of reddit over the years, they've always lurched from one crisis to another. An absence of adult supervision. Reactive solutions.
I would bet that reddit was under pressure to monetize somehow and ads (a la Facebook) on that "community" wouldn't cut it. I believe that they had an influx of funds around the same time, and the investors were looking to start getting some returns.
Their various stealth marketing schemes were suffering at the hands of the entrenched trolls. The unsavory subreddits were probably putting off established customers.
Maybe Pao just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
yishan's comment is interesting, thanks for linking to it. I didn't follow the whole Pao affair, but I do remember someone telling me that yishan might have been trolling reddit.
One thing jumps out at me from his comment. He calls Pao "the only technology executive anywhere who had the chops and experience to manage a startup of this size, AND who understood what reddit was all about."
Technology executive? Really? That's news to me. I thought she had spent her pre-reddit days in finance.
"Hiya.
It was a harsh response, I agree (there's actually more, but we're pulling our punches, if you can believe it), and in fact all day yesterday I didn't want to post a reply, hoping his AMA wouldn't get too much traction or he wouldn't spout too many misconceptions and we could all just continue going our separate ways.
Problem is, this was starting to really irritate a number of employees who'd worked with him, and he's the kind of guy who enjoys the attention he can get by saying "I used to be a reddit admin" even though he'll just post spurious stuff he doesn't know about, and left unchecked the positive attention encourages him to do it more.
In running reddit, there's an interesting balance between the normal standards of professionalism (which we try very hard to uphold even when someone is being unreasonable) and the fact that we're a huge internet forum where a higher degree of openness is expected. I'm actually really focused on building competent, professional management precisely because the spotlight is always on us - and also because I've been at other Silicon Valley companies where that hasn't always been the case - but it also means that because of that spotlight, any tiny deviation can be hugely magnified."
There's criticism, and there's not knowing what you're talking about. Unless one has run an online community like Reddit before, it's more than likely that that individual is playing armchair CEO.
>We don't typically jump into Reddit or other forums but this topic is too important to me. I'm the CEO of StackPath and we acquired IPVanish in February, 2017 (more than a year after the lawsuit from 2016). With no exception IPVanish does not, has not, and will not log or store logs of our users as a StackPath company. Most important, StackPath will defend the privacy of our users regardless of who demands otherwise. I can't speak to what happened on someone else's watch but Technology is my life and I've spent my career helping customers build on and use the Internet on their terms. StackPath takes that even further—security and privacy is our core mission. I also happen to be a lawyer and I will spend my last breath protecting individuals' rights to privacy, especially our customers.
A friend proposed another theory, inappropriate as it may seem. That it's a way to draw attention to Reddit needing to make money, and Steve, being the CEO, has to find a way to do it and take blame for it.
If so, he deserves to be applauded. There are things a founder/CEO has to do you can't say.
It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community.
I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is really beyond the pale.
From the IPO mindset, what questions does this raise about the risk to the business from the leadership’s lack of integrity? And not just the propensity to lie, but to get caught so blatantly. Why would even a ruthless money-over-everything Wall Street investor want to gamble on that?
And kudos to Christian for doing what he did. Bullies need to learn that the truth will come out eventually, and if the revelation they can’t gaslight with impunity is a shock to them - good.
Edit: not to mention Christian's full-time job has just been ended by this policy change. How especially and thoughtlessly cruel to now also make him out to be an extortionist liar, and for nothing really.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...
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