10 ms·

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.

by sama 12y ago

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, etc.--all questions I think a board should ask when thinking through a major commitment). This is certainly not what I was expecting to be dealing with so quickly after investing in reddit, but we'll make the best of it.

anon808 12y ago
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?
- karissa 12y ago
  with a highly competitive job market, especially where many of the people in a city with poor public transit do not have cars, 9.7 miles is annoying enough to cause people to choose somewhere else to work.
  - pchristensen 12y ago
    When I lived in the East Bay, it would be really hard to accept a move to Daly City (from downtown SF), because it's another 20 min each way. And East Bay BART riders wouldn't even have to change trains! For CalTrain riders, it's a doubling of the commute or more.
  - jarek 12y ago
    Maybe a part of the solution to the highly competitive job market could have been not annoying your current employees by forcing them to move to a city with poor public transit? Was that board's decision, or Wong's?
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  9.7 in San Francisco miles is a long commute.
  - jchendy 12y ago
    I've never lived/worked in SF, but I had pretty much the same thought. Living in NYC, 9.7 miles is an almost unfathomable distance.
    - bradleyjg 12y ago
      When Citibank built the tower in LIC, I'm sure there were people that weren't happy, but I doubt they lost many employees. That's about 7 miles driving distance from wall street.
  - jarek 12y ago
    Also strongly depends if "Daly City" was "Daly City three minutes walk from BART" or "Daly City in an office park by a freeway somewhere"
    - thrownaway2424 12y ago
      Which is practically all of Daly City.
- strlen 12y ago
  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 by Caltrain, but Caltrain is unreliable, doesn't run as frequently nor is SOMA the only place where people have offices (and walking to further reaches of SOMA, or the area of Market, or FiDi is an often dangerous - especially at night - 20-30 minute walk). Daly City is reachable from SF by BART, but that supposes you live near a BART station in SF and the Daly City office itself is close either the Daly City or Colma BART station. In general I'd say it's easier for an SF resident to get to certain parts of Daly City (those accessible by part or by San Mateo county buses running from SF are easy if you live near BART) than it is from someone in South Bay to get to SF. Driving is very easy if you live near 280/35/19th Avenue -- getting to Daly City from Mission especially is not particularly difficult). That brings the cultural issue: different people prefer to live in SF vs. South Bay or Peninsula (some live in one place whereas they'd prefer to live elsewhere, of course). To hugely (but completely meaninglessly) over-generalize you can imagine the Peninsula as the OSI stack: physical and network layers are further south, middle-ware is in the Peninsula (Oracle in Redwood City), and presentation (end-user applications like AirBnb) are in SF (again, this is only loosely so: there are web app startups in South Bay and there are systems and middle-ware companies in SF). Intuitively it makes sense: I can't imagine starting a Foursquare in San Jose (there isn't a critical mass of people -- not all of them geeks -- cloistered around any given landmark to gain sufficient traction). In many types of companies, you want both: which is why companies always seek to locate in either transit accessible parts of South Bay/Peninsula (Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Mateo downtown areas), run buses, locate in SoMa, or have multiple offices (this sounds like a "no-go" for Reddit, but Square, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my own employer -- Cloudera -- all do this). Yet, if a company has a very strong SF-oriented identity (at least for its Bay Area office), a compromise location (especially if the compromise isn't just an SF office near 4th and King) could definitely upsetting existing employees who might also feel that they are no longer as valid as potential new employee the company wants to hire from South Bay.
  - 12y ago
- Eric_WVGG 12y ago
  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 = $40k in pay worth in happiness http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-help-you-thrive-happily http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-he...). The public transportation is… lacking. I can’t speak for Yishan’s motivations, but if I were on the board, I would push for his replacement simply due to the talent attrition that would inevitably occur if he got his way.
  - legohead 12y ago
    SF cool, fun, sexy? Have you ever been there? I found it dirty, scary, and smelly.
    - ghaff 12y ago
      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.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - Eric_WVGG 12y ago
      Honestly I loathe the place. Not for any of the reasons you just listed. (“scary”? SF??)
      - hugs 12y ago
        I was born in New York City, grew up in L.A., started a company in SF, and live in Chicago, but the only place I've ever been held up at gunpoint was in San Francisco at 4th and Mission.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Sounds like a nice bike commute. Especially with the weather there.
  - clavalle 12y ago
    There's nothing like biking 10 miles in the cold fog along a freeway...
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      You have a really interesting definition of cold. Apparently it is "you might have to wear a jacket".
      - freshhawk 12y ago
        The standard California definition.
        DannyBee 12y ago
        I saw someone wearing earmuffs in 55 degree weather in downtown mountain view.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    you haven't met the drivers out here. They're bad, there mostly aren't physically separate bike lanes, and you often don't even get a ticket for killing a bicyclist. It's not worth it. edit: Also -- sample size of 13 -- 70+% of the people I know who bike commute daily have been hospitalized. I also know someone who did 6 months in a nursing home after some bitch ran a red light, hit him, and cracked his pelvis; he won multiple surgeries and the inability to stand up for months.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      That's a good point. I'm too NL centric here, old ladies here would have no problem with a bike trip on that distance but not having bike lanes changes the picture quite a bit, especially if the drivers do not exercise care. My mom routinely does 100 km trips and she's in her seventies.
minimaxir 12y ago
October 1: Yishan wants all employees to move to San Francisco. Early November: "jk, we're moving to Daly City." Even though Daly City is a BART away, the fact that this decision happened in 1 month is absurd.
- kemitche 12y ago
  It was never a "jk, Daly City." From the initial announcement it was mentioned that they were considering options a little south of SF proper.
- calimac 12y ago
  Moving an office like this scenario and timeline can and in most cases, does cause tectonic shift in the company's dynamic. There's a ripple effect through far reaching aspects of the employees lives that effect there work. On another note- Office location can be the most personal aspect of business to an exec processing the decision. A territorial undercurrent is in play.
  - kenrikm 12y ago
    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.
    - macNchz 12y ago
      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 (which had been fantastic beforehand) to get back in the groove, but our best people started to leave one by one, then one of the founders of my current company reached out to me personally, and it was too hard to pass up.
MysticFear 12y ago
Were there other decisions by Yishan that you pushed back on? How many? Possible he felt that he did not have enough influence as CEO, not enough confidence from the board and couldn't run the company as he desired.
- bhouston 12y ago
  Yishan was likely fired or strongly recommended to resign. And we are all being polite about it for Yishan's sake and to maintain positive community around reddit. We will forget about this probably by tomorrow.
BinaryIdiot 12y ago
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.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  I was curious what you were talking about, so I found it: https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama/cl1ygat?context=3 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 he was fired when they fired him. If they didn't, well, whatever. But to go onto a public forum and speculate like that probably isn't the smartest decision. If Yishan hadn't stepped in with a correction, then it would harm their future prospects as a hot place to work. Employees go where they think isn't lame. I'd have second thoughts about trying to join Reddit if I'd read "Yeah, Reddit seems to fire people for no apparent reason and has problems with employees communicating concerns to management." On the other hand, I feel terrible for David, even if he got himself into this. Now people will unfairly prejudge him to be a slacker, bashed on Yishan's comment, no matter how hard he works in the future. The only way he can hope to change that is by working hard to get stuff done, combined with the extremely annoying process of making a portfolio demonstrating that he continuously gets stuff done.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Yishan went way, way too far in that case. Much further than was needed or appropriate. He always seemed prone to saying things that were of questionable judgment. I have no idea how he was at running the company, but I suspect Reddit will be better off having someone else speak for it at least.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
hiou 12y ago
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.
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  Any credible board will have a succession plan in place, ready to trigger if the CEO resigns/has to be fired/gets hit by a bus.
- kickme444 12y ago
  It has been a very busy 8 days.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- mbesto 12y ago
  Also, what people say and what they do are not always equal.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. What would such a short timeline imply, besides that it came out of nowhere?
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  It's not really a 'new' team, though, it's people who were already very close to Reddit.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  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...).
schoolixer 12y ago
Well paul graham did say "You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king."
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
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 your comment (and probably the geography of SF.) So if I understand it Reddit already was remote-friendly but both CEO and board wanted to have everyone in same office (which office being the point of contention). May I ask why you were going the "unusual" route of from remote to centralised - is Melissa Mayer right? Edit: William Whyte in collected articles (Exoding Metropolis). Noted downthread as in a Joel Spolsky article. I am always late to the party :-) Cf http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EsvEFIamv3oC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=38+companies+relocated+new+york+closer+to+ceo.home&source=bl&ots=MxUQO5ZViu&sig=fF7iCLskzWMF7V-X9XPnhhRK1r4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oS5lVIm5FoXWasn_guAK&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBw http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EsvEFIamv3oC&pg=PA38&lpg=...
- ansible 12y ago
  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.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zzleeper 12y ago
Silly question, but why Daly City?
- codezero 12y ago
  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're not fully utilizing, but companies do it, many sub-lease the space to offset the cost, but for smaller companies, this means they move offices pretty frequently. My company is in their third office in just the past year :P
  - encoderer 12y ago
    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.
    - codezero 12y ago
      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 :)
- x0x0 12y ago
  I'd bet Yishan lives in the peninsula or south bay and didn't like his hour-plus commute into sf. Public records say Palo Alto, so yes -- he wanted a much better commute. They'd lose a ton of sf employees though; it's a shit commute for them.
chentsen 12y ago
It's super interesting anyways. I wonder if it has anything to do with trust? Maybe Yishan felt like this was a decision that was up to the CEO, and got annoyed when the Board asked Yishan to do due diligence. Did Yishan see this as the last straw in a string of challenges by the board -- or maybe that it was indicative of how the Board would challenge his decisions going forward?
turnip1979 12y ago
I see a lot of negativity on this topic, but I for one am extremely excited about Alexis returning to Reddit in a more substantial way. I've been on Hacker New for a while (with different accounts) but have only recently started to use Reddit. Alexis is one of the most inspiring guys I've met ... lets just say I am a big fan. So, I'm really happy about this.
- hellbanTHIS 12y ago
  Me too, and it'll be interesting to see if/how he deals with what's become of his baby, once a democracy but now a "failed state ruled by warlords". He doesn't strike me as someone who'll turn a blind eye to the mod problems like the outgoing guy did.
asaramis 12y ago
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 upbringing will be the one who figures out how to retain the spirit, activity, and engagement of Reddit, while satisfying that 10x, $500mm valuation. This ain't sexist, this is anti-elitist.Cutting and pasting monetization templates from other media properties, and building projected revenue models off of traffic numbers just can't work here. It's not Buzzfeed or Business Insider. I was suspect when Erik Martin left (had the pleasure of meeting him in NYC, he lived and breathed what makes Reddit wonderful), and this really seems to solidify what I guess should've been pretty obvious. I genuinely hope Ms. Pao holds things together, and the return of Alexis helps things out. The more I've learned, it seems Alexis was already gone by the time Reddit really took off and has been writing and speaking ever since. Curious how his operational prowess shows through the new chairmanship role. Rant done. We're praying for you Reddit.
- hiou 12y ago
  > Ellen Pao will be stepping up to be interim CEO > Alexis Ohanian, who cofounded reddit nine and a half years ago, is returning as full-time executive chairman (he will transition to a part-time partner role at Y Combinator) > There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about Ellen Pao leading reddit in the long term. Also from today's reddit blog post[0] by Alexis > Instead, I joined the board and have done everything I can to not be a helicopter parent, but rather support reddit and all the amazing people who make it work as best I can. But reddit is and will always be my baby
  - quaunaut 12y ago
    Alexis wants Pao as the permanent CEO, but the next few months are a testing ground for her. Edit: Source: http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-interim-for-long/ http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-int...
legohead 12y ago
Why are you telling the public of his reason for resigning? Isn't that something he should be allowed to do himself?
- joshAg 12y ago
  probably because his resigning involved a provision about not talking about the terms of his resignation.
cma 12y ago
Re: "he had the original product vision for the company" I thought Alexis et. al. originally started a company doing something else at the beginning of their application and acceptance to YCombinator, and Paul Graham had the idea for reddit and convinced them to do it instead of their original plan. When Aaron Swartz was fired (edit: used to read quit) and the other founders of reddit tried to remove his founder status I remember being convinced by their arguments and being disappointed in Swartz. When I later read the thing about it being Graham's idea it really changed my mind--the other founders' original idea was their own sort of Infogami (Swartz's original startup), and while they switched to developing reddit a little before Swartz, they ended up holding a much weaker exclusivity claim.
- redthrowaway 12y ago
  Steve & Alexis wanted to write an app that would allow you to order food from your feature phone. PG thought it was a bad idea, but liked them, so he suggested the "front page of the Internet" idea.[1] And Swartz was fired, not quit. He went to Germany then didn't show up for a couple weeks when he got back. [2] [1] http://gwtoday.gwu.edu/reddit-co-founder-speaks-power-open-internet http://gwtoday.gwu.edu/reddit-co-founder-speaks-power-open-i... [2] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html
  - cma 12y ago
    Thanks, edited the part about quit. I didn't mean their idea was an infogami in the sense that it was functionally similar to infogami, but rather just that it something that similarly never worked out.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > Steve & Alexis wanted to write an app that would allow you to order food from your feature phone. PG thought it was a bad idea, http://www.just-eat.com/ http://www.just-eat.com/
    - nostrademons 12y ago
mathattack 12y ago
This seems like a big governance challenge. This is a big challenge for boards and CEOs. CEOs like to have full authority, and be held accountable. Boards like to be able to ask questions. In the end, the board's only true recourse is to fire the CEO. Here it sounds like the CEO wanted a freer hand, and left when the event signaled a change in governance. (You can't take $50mm and not expect questions)

by sama 12y ago

anon808 12y ago

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?

karissa 12y ago
with a highly competitive job market, especially where many of the people in a city with poor public transit do not have cars, 9.7 miles is annoying enough to cause people to choose somewhere else to work.
- pchristensen 12y ago
  When I lived in the East Bay, it would be really hard to accept a move to Daly City (from downtown SF), because it's another 20 min each way. And East Bay BART riders wouldn't even have to change trains! For CalTrain riders, it's a doubling of the commute or more.
- jarek 12y ago
  Maybe a part of the solution to the highly competitive job market could have been not annoying your current employees by forcing them to move to a city with poor public transit? Was that board's decision, or Wong's?
SamReidHughes 12y ago
9.7 in San Francisco miles is a long commute.
- jchendy 12y ago
  I've never lived/worked in SF, but I had pretty much the same thought. Living in NYC, 9.7 miles is an almost unfathomable distance.
  - bradleyjg 12y ago
    When Citibank built the tower in LIC, I'm sure there were people that weren't happy, but I doubt they lost many employees. That's about 7 miles driving distance from wall street.
- jarek 12y ago
  Also strongly depends if "Daly City" was "Daly City three minutes walk from BART" or "Daly City in an office park by a freeway somewhere"
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Which is practically all of Daly City.
strlen 12y ago
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 by Caltrain, but Caltrain is unreliable, doesn't run as frequently nor is SOMA the only place where people have offices (and walking to further reaches of SOMA, or the area of Market, or FiDi is an often dangerous - especially at night - 20-30 minute walk). Daly City is reachable from SF by BART, but that supposes you live near a BART station in SF and the Daly City office itself is close either the Daly City or Colma BART station. In general I'd say it's easier for an SF resident to get to certain parts of Daly City (those accessible by part or by San Mateo county buses running from SF are easy if you live near BART) than it is from someone in South Bay to get to SF. Driving is very easy if you live near 280/35/19th Avenue -- getting to Daly City from Mission especially is not particularly difficult). That brings the cultural issue: different people prefer to live in SF vs. South Bay or Peninsula (some live in one place whereas they'd prefer to live elsewhere, of course). To hugely (but completely meaninglessly) over-generalize you can imagine the Peninsula as the OSI stack: physical and network layers are further south, middle-ware is in the Peninsula (Oracle in Redwood City), and presentation (end-user applications like AirBnb) are in SF (again, this is only loosely so: there are web app startups in South Bay and there are systems and middle-ware companies in SF). Intuitively it makes sense: I can't imagine starting a Foursquare in San Jose (there isn't a critical mass of people -- not all of them geeks -- cloistered around any given landmark to gain sufficient traction). In many types of companies, you want both: which is why companies always seek to locate in either transit accessible parts of South Bay/Peninsula (Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Mateo downtown areas), run buses, locate in SoMa, or have multiple offices (this sounds like a "no-go" for Reddit, but Square, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my own employer -- Cloudera -- all do this). Yet, if a company has a very strong SF-oriented identity (at least for its Bay Area office), a compromise location (especially if the compromise isn't just an SF office near 4th and King) could definitely upsetting existing employees who might also feel that they are no longer as valid as potential new employee the company wants to hire from South Bay.
- 12y ago
Eric_WVGG 12y ago
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 = $40k in pay worth in happiness http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-help-you-thrive-happily http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-he...). The public transportation is… lacking. I can’t speak for Yishan’s motivations, but if I were on the board, I would push for his replacement simply due to the talent attrition that would inevitably occur if he got his way.
- legohead 12y ago
  SF cool, fun, sexy? Have you ever been there? I found it dirty, scary, and smelly.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    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.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Eric_WVGG 12y ago
    Honestly I loathe the place. Not for any of the reasons you just listed. (“scary”? SF??)
    - hugs 12y ago
      I was born in New York City, grew up in L.A., started a company in SF, and live in Chicago, but the only place I've ever been held up at gunpoint was in San Francisco at 4th and Mission.
jacquesm 12y ago
Sounds like a nice bike commute. Especially with the weather there.
- clavalle 12y ago
  There's nothing like biking 10 miles in the cold fog along a freeway...
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    You have a really interesting definition of cold. Apparently it is "you might have to wear a jacket".
    - freshhawk 12y ago
      The standard California definition.
      - DannyBee 12y ago
        I saw someone wearing earmuffs in 55 degree weather in downtown mountain view.
- x0x0 12y ago
  you haven't met the drivers out here. They're bad, there mostly aren't physically separate bike lanes, and you often don't even get a ticket for killing a bicyclist. It's not worth it. edit: Also -- sample size of 13 -- 70+% of the people I know who bike commute daily have been hospitalized. I also know someone who did 6 months in a nursing home after some bitch ran a red light, hit him, and cracked his pelvis; he won multiple surgeries and the inability to stand up for months.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    That's a good point. I'm too NL centric here, old ladies here would have no problem with a bike trip on that distance but not having bike lanes changes the picture quite a bit, especially if the drivers do not exercise care. My mom routinely does 100 km trips and she's in her seventies.

minimaxir 12y ago

October 1: Yishan wants all employees to move to San Francisco. Early November: "jk, we're moving to Daly City." Even though Daly City is a BART away, the fact that this decision happened in 1 month is absurd.

kemitche 12y ago
It was never a "jk, Daly City." From the initial announcement it was mentioned that they were considering options a little south of SF proper.
calimac 12y ago
Moving an office like this scenario and timeline can and in most cases, does cause tectonic shift in the company's dynamic. There's a ripple effect through far reaching aspects of the employees lives that effect there work. On another note- Office location can be the most personal aspect of business to an exec processing the decision. A territorial undercurrent is in play.
- kenrikm 12y ago
  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.
  - macNchz 12y ago
    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 (which had been fantastic beforehand) to get back in the groove, but our best people started to leave one by one, then one of the founders of my current company reached out to me personally, and it was too hard to pass up.

MysticFear 12y ago

Were there other decisions by Yishan that you pushed back on? How many? Possible he felt that he did not have enough influence as CEO, not enough confidence from the board and couldn't run the company as he desired.

bhouston 12y ago
Yishan was likely fired or strongly recommended to resign. And we are all being polite about it for Yishan's sake and to maintain positive community around reddit. We will forget about this probably by tomorrow.

BinaryIdiot 12y ago

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.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
I was curious what you were talking about, so I found it: https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama/cl1ygat?context=3 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 he was fired when they fired him. If they didn't, well, whatever. But to go onto a public forum and speculate like that probably isn't the smartest decision. If Yishan hadn't stepped in with a correction, then it would harm their future prospects as a hot place to work. Employees go where they think isn't lame. I'd have second thoughts about trying to join Reddit if I'd read "Yeah, Reddit seems to fire people for no apparent reason and has problems with employees communicating concerns to management." On the other hand, I feel terrible for David, even if he got himself into this. Now people will unfairly prejudge him to be a slacker, bashed on Yishan's comment, no matter how hard he works in the future. The only way he can hope to change that is by working hard to get stuff done, combined with the extremely annoying process of making a portfolio demonstrating that he continuously gets stuff done.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Yishan went way, way too far in that case. Much further than was needed or appropriate. He always seemed prone to saying things that were of questionable judgment. I have no idea how he was at running the company, but I suspect Reddit will be better off having someone else speak for it at least.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago

hiou 12y ago

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.

jackgavigan 12y ago
Any credible board will have a succession plan in place, ready to trigger if the CEO resigns/has to be fired/gets hit by a bus.
kickme444 12y ago
It has been a very busy 8 days.
- deleted 12y ago
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mbesto 12y ago
Also, what people say and what they do are not always equal.
serve_yay 12y ago
That doesn't make any sense. What would such a short timeline imply, besides that it came out of nowhere?
waterlesscloud 12y ago
It's not really a 'new' team, though, it's people who were already very close to Reddit.
jacquesm 12y ago
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...).

schoolixer 12y ago

Well paul graham did say "You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king."

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lifeisstillgood 12y ago

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 your comment (and probably the geography of SF.) So if I understand it Reddit already was remote-friendly but both CEO and board wanted to have everyone in same office (which office being the point of contention). May I ask why you were going the "unusual" route of from remote to centralised - is Melissa Mayer right? Edit: William Whyte in collected articles (Exoding Metropolis). Noted downthread as in a Joel Spolsky article. I am always late to the party :-) Cf http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EsvEFIamv3oC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=38+companies+relocated+new+york+closer+to+ceo.home&source=bl&ots=MxUQO5ZViu&sig=fF7iCLskzWMF7V-X9XPnhhRK1r4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oS5lVIm5FoXWasn_guAK&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBw http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EsvEFIamv3oC&pg=PA38&lpg=...

ansible 12y ago
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.

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zzleeper 12y ago

Silly question, but why Daly City?

codezero 12y ago
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're not fully utilizing, but companies do it, many sub-lease the space to offset the cost, but for smaller companies, this means they move offices pretty frequently. My company is in their third office in just the past year :P
- encoderer 12y ago
  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.
  - codezero 12y ago
    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 :)
x0x0 12y ago
I'd bet Yishan lives in the peninsula or south bay and didn't like his hour-plus commute into sf. Public records say Palo Alto, so yes -- he wanted a much better commute. They'd lose a ton of sf employees though; it's a shit commute for them.

chentsen 12y ago

It's super interesting anyways. I wonder if it has anything to do with trust? Maybe Yishan felt like this was a decision that was up to the CEO, and got annoyed when the Board asked Yishan to do due diligence. Did Yishan see this as the last straw in a string of challenges by the board -- or maybe that it was indicative of how the Board would challenge his decisions going forward?

turnip1979 12y ago

I see a lot of negativity on this topic, but I for one am extremely excited about Alexis returning to Reddit in a more substantial way. I've been on Hacker New for a while (with different accounts) but have only recently started to use Reddit. Alexis is one of the most inspiring guys I've met ... lets just say I am a big fan. So, I'm really happy about this.

hellbanTHIS 12y ago
Me too, and it'll be interesting to see if/how he deals with what's become of his baby, once a democracy but now a "failed state ruled by warlords". He doesn't strike me as someone who'll turn a blind eye to the mod problems like the outgoing guy did.

asaramis 12y ago

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 upbringing will be the one who figures out how to retain the spirit, activity, and engagement of Reddit, while satisfying that 10x, $500mm valuation. This ain't sexist, this is anti-elitist.Cutting and pasting monetization templates from other media properties, and building projected revenue models off of traffic numbers just can't work here. It's not Buzzfeed or Business Insider. I was suspect when Erik Martin left (had the pleasure of meeting him in NYC, he lived and breathed what makes Reddit wonderful), and this really seems to solidify what I guess should've been pretty obvious. I genuinely hope Ms. Pao holds things together, and the return of Alexis helps things out. The more I've learned, it seems Alexis was already gone by the time Reddit really took off and has been writing and speaking ever since. Curious how his operational prowess shows through the new chairmanship role. Rant done. We're praying for you Reddit.

hiou 12y ago
> Ellen Pao will be stepping up to be interim CEO > Alexis Ohanian, who cofounded reddit nine and a half years ago, is returning as full-time executive chairman (he will transition to a part-time partner role at Y Combinator) > There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about Ellen Pao leading reddit in the long term. Also from today's reddit blog post[0] by Alexis > Instead, I joined the board and have done everything I can to not be a helicopter parent, but rather support reddit and all the amazing people who make it work as best I can. But reddit is and will always be my baby
- quaunaut 12y ago
  Alexis wants Pao as the permanent CEO, but the next few months are a testing ground for her. Edit: Source: http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-interim-for-long/ http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-int...

legohead 12y ago

Why are you telling the public of his reason for resigning? Isn't that something he should be allowed to do himself?

joshAg 12y ago
probably because his resigning involved a provision about not talking about the terms of his resignation.

cma 12y ago

Re: "he had the original product vision for the company" I thought Alexis et. al. originally started a company doing something else at the beginning of their application and acceptance to YCombinator, and Paul Graham had the idea for reddit and convinced them to do it instead of their original plan. When Aaron Swartz was fired (edit: used to read quit) and the other founders of reddit tried to remove his founder status I remember being convinced by their arguments and being disappointed in Swartz. When I later read the thing about it being Graham's idea it really changed my mind--the other founders' original idea was their own sort of Infogami (Swartz's original startup), and while they switched to developing reddit a little before Swartz, they ended up holding a much weaker exclusivity claim.

redthrowaway 12y ago
Steve & Alexis wanted to write an app that would allow you to order food from your feature phone. PG thought it was a bad idea, but liked them, so he suggested the "front page of the Internet" idea.[1] And Swartz was fired, not quit. He went to Germany then didn't show up for a couple weeks when he got back. [2] [1] http://gwtoday.gwu.edu/reddit-co-founder-speaks-power-open-internet http://gwtoday.gwu.edu/reddit-co-founder-speaks-power-open-i... [2] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html
- cma 12y ago
  Thanks, edited the part about quit. I didn't mean their idea was an infogami in the sense that it was functionally similar to infogami, but rather just that it something that similarly never worked out.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > Steve & Alexis wanted to write an app that would allow you to order food from your feature phone. PG thought it was a bad idea, http://www.just-eat.com/ http://www.just-eat.com/
  - nostrademons 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago

This seems like a big governance challenge. This is a big challenge for boards and CEOs. CEOs like to have full authority, and be held accountable. Boards like to be able to ask questions. In the end, the board's only true recourse is to fire the CEO. Here it sounds like the CEO wanted a freer hand, and left when the event signaled a change in governance. (You can't take $50mm and not expect questions)