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Why Did Yishan Wong Resign as Reddit CEO?

215 points by wyclif 12y ago

andywood 12y ago
I have quit jobs due to burnout and said it was something else, too.
deleted 12y ago
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malanj 12y ago
I can see people who haven't hit that level of burnout might think Yishan is being crazy or an idiot. The truth is that startups can be insanely difficult and stressful, especially if it's your first time. Once you've hit the wall the smallest thing can crack you up. I've seen people break down in a boardroom over seemingly trivial issues, but through the lens of years of insane stress it made sense.
- sidcool 12y ago
  On top of what you have stated, every person has a different level of tolerance to burn out. Heavy workaholics can go on for months before succumbing.
- kordless 12y ago
  Stress is a result of expectations. Expectations lie in the future, which pulls us away from being present. Life sucks if you aren't present, so it necessitates reminding yourself of intent and not of unmet expectations.
  - zemvpferreira 12y ago
    Someone else has been reading Ekhart Tolle lately.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      Or any of the large number of Eastern philosophies that Tolle has taken most of his stuff from, many of which manage to present it in far less pseudo-mystical packaging than Tolle.
      - kordless 12y ago
        Or massive amounts of therapy after having a mid-life crisis. :)
        zemvpferreira 12y ago
        Of course, that was a half-joking nudge. I'm in the same position myself: having a quarter-life crisis and trying to read my way through it
    - kordless 12y ago
      I've never read him, but I'll have to check him out!
- serve_yay 12y ago
  Sometimes people do ill-advised things for completely understandable reasons. Doesn't make the situation any less bad.
thejosh 12y ago
"[Reporters: if you want to share this URL, append "?share=1" to the end of the URL so that viewers can view this answer without the regwall]" Or maybe do that be default instead of forcing people to register?
- joeguilmette 12y ago
  When Quora first came on the scene I was a power user. That kind of shit spoiled things fast for me.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Personally, I'm less inclined to put up a fight about that than I once was. I argued pretty passionately that it was terrible and etc, but I've since spent some time on Quora. It has fascinating content. We should probably accept that their growth strategy is either brilliant and succeeding even without our Expert Input, or their growth strategy is dumb yet Quora is successful in spite of it. Either way, bringing it up every time Quora pops up is probably more harmful than helpful at this point.
  - majani 12y ago
    Quora is successful? Their userbase is still below 5 million and most of their traffic comes from a third world country(India), and they still have exactly zero ads 5 years on after raising 161 million in capital. Quora is an unmitigated failure at this point.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      Perhaps. All I'm saying is that they have good content. Give it a try, you may be surprised to find you like it. Even if they're on an implosion trajectory, Internet Archive will make sure most or all of it stays online. So it won't be a failure if you measure success as "generating positive contributions to the world" instead of dollars.
      - toomuchtodo 12y ago
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Reddit has grown so much under Yishan's stewardship: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=reddit http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=reddit According to the graph, Reddit has tripled in size since SOPA. People could say that Reddit would have grown with or without Yishan, and while that may be true, it ignores how completely easy it is to mess up growth, especially for a site like Reddit.
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  Is google trends really indicative of growth? Not that I'm contesting that reddit has grown, it most definitely has.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    I've always wondered. Alexa has become unusable, and Trends was the only free thing I could find. One datapoint that it works: When I used Google Trends to claim "Reddit seems to have doubled since 2013," no one contradicted that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8567833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8567833 It seems like all tools are indicating that Reddit is growing like a weed, though. Actually, Reddit is in a pretty unique position. Subreddits mean that pretty much every person on the planet is going to find something interesting, so everyone from 13 year olds to grandmas are participating. I wonder how long Reddit will continue to grow before people start comparing it to Facebook.
    - anonfunction 12y ago
      Interesting comparison between reddit and facebook: https://i.imgur.com/NUkB96v.png https://i.imgur.com/NUkB96v.png Notice facebooks decline.
      - adamnemecek 12y ago
        Anyone have an idea what's the FB bump in 2013?
chime 12y ago
Call me naive but I completely believe sama and yishan. Everyone's trying to find the "real" reason because we're all so used to companies lying or trying to save face in every non-positive situation. Too many times the boy has cried wolf and nobody's willing to believe that this time it's the truth. CEOs stepping down for major screwups citing "spending time with family" has made us question if anyone ever voluntarily resigns from a high profile job. Voluntarily quitting is treated as an act of cowardice instead of strength. We espouse failing fast in projects but not in our own personal choices. People are questioning the real reason because they can't accept that a CEO of a hugely popular site has chosen to resign on good terms instead of being involuntarily ousted. Long ago I wrote something about quitting that many of my friends and family loved and hated ( http://chir.ag/200804242130 http://chir.ag/200804242130 ) but I still stick by it. I wish more people would resign, breakup, divorce, and leave when they are in a miserable, non-salvageable situation than stick around and make everyone including themselves miserable. Good luck to yishan and the new reddit crew!
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  "Call me naive but I completely believe sama and yishan." I believe them as well, the big question for me (still) isn't why yishan left but why reddit needs to be 100% in San Francisco -- not in the sense of SF vs Daly City, but the Bay Area (only) vs. having offices in SLC, New York, etc. I'm sure there are hand-wavy reasons for it like synergy-collaboration-focus-blahdeblah but nobody has yet convinced me that it wasn't just a poor decision (one that seems to clearly have had a large impact in this departure even if yishan and the board agreed on the Bay Area centralization).
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    My bet is on YC culture via their presence on the board. My signal as evidence is the requirement that teams relocate to San Francisco as part of being funded. If I'm right -- and I'm not sure I am -- I would hope that's something that gradually changes over time. Twitter's choice to stay in the city was a big bummer for me, but I understand why it happened. Once Caltrain electrifies and gets a bit more optimized, though, I really want to see more of this industry spread out to the peninsula so we can have a bit of a breather. East bay too. There's an ember of startup love taking root in Oakland and it'd be awesome if YC would blow on it. San Francisco is complicated and this industry isn't helping as much as it could, is my point.
nomnombunty 12y ago
I totally believe Yishan. Jokes aside, just look at his twitter profile picture! https://twitter.com/yishan https://twitter.com/yishan This man is definitely burnout.
- linuxydave 12y ago
  Yeah, I look at that picture and I see myself a few years back. It is far better to prevent burnout that try recover from it, as it's a pit that's really hard to climb out of.
codinghorror 12y ago
No mention of this, though? 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... I would not want to work for any company whose CEO takes the low road on personnel issues. That was truly cringeworthy.
- yuhong 12y ago
  But the California defamation laws still needs to be fixed. Read http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_calls_out_former_reddit_employee_as_to/cl2ditf?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_ca... (particularly those words highlighted in bold) and weep.
  - AYBABTME 12y ago
    I wouldn't say it's California; it's Common Law. It's a legal system that's pretty much everywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_systems_in_the_present_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_sy...
  - ars 12y ago
    I see nothing wrong with that law. If a company wants to say something negative about someone they better be able to prove it.
    - yuhong 12y ago
      I am talking about the automatic damages and the requirement that it must be fact not opinion for example.
  - dkbrk 12y ago
    Statements must be false to be defamatory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Truth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Truth). While Yishan's actions may be considered unprofessional, he is legally in the clear so long as he was not lying. I think you may be confusing defamation with disparagement; if a non-disparagement contract existed, then Yishan could be in legal trouble.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gordon_freeman 12y ago
A lot of startups would love to see the kind of growth (5x) Reddit achieved under Yishan's stewardship from around 30m to now 175m. That's some achievement imo! I hope Yishan takes some time off before starting a new professional adventure.
aytekin 12y ago
I love his career philosophy: http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/the-secret-to-career-success.html http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/the-secret-to-career-success.h...
balldontlie 12y ago
I imagine that one thing CEOs hold dear is the ability to set direction. While the issue at hand (where do we put our office?) might not seem significant, it was clearly the straw that broke the camel's back. Tough situation. I believe (and hope) he'll bounce back and start something awesome.
axotty 12y ago
This is DHH's take on Yishan's resignation via Twitter. He seems to be heavily implying that this was not a voluntary resignation. DHH: Reddit CEO's forced uprooting of employees outside SF got full board support, but moving one BART stop? YOU'RE FIRED DHH: @andrewstepner No CEO is ever fired. Everyone always "voluntarily" resigns, whether that's actually the case or not. DHH: "Yeah, just force those families to uproot their whole life. Give them a week. Ok, two.", then, "want US to travel 20 mins longer? NO, NO". https://twitter.com/dhh https://twitter.com/dhh
- dmix 12y ago
  Can someone explain the office location issue? I haven't been following the drama. I'm assuming there was a large disagreement over moving offices outside of SF to Daly City? I can see why that might be a divisive issue, but totally agree with DHH regarding the remote workers part.
  - bcantrill 12y ago
    To someone from outside the Bay Area, it must seem strange that office location could play such a large issue, but the specifics here are important. First, they were (apparently) requiring remote workers to move to the Bay Area.[1] This is weird in and of itself, and not necessarily with much precedent: it's one thing to decide that you don't want to have a distributed work force and/or grow locally, but it's quite another to decide that you want an extant remote work force to magically become local -- especially when local is the most expensive housing market in the country, and one that is essentially impossible to enter as an established adult. Then, on top of that, they're moving the office to... Daly City?! Daly City is essentially the worst of all worlds: it's not really readily accessible to anyone -- and it's an undesirable eye sore on top of it. There are places that make no sense to relocate to that still make more sense than Daly City (e.g., Pleasanton, San Rafael, Alameda, Walnut Creek, Burlingame) -- Daly City is almost where you would locate a company if you simply hated the employees. So at that point, you do begin to wonder about the mental stability of the CEO: the choice of Daly City is so completely bizarre that it almost certainly reflects other things amiss in the way decisions are made. [1] https://twitter.com/yishan/status/517365027515285504 https://twitter.com/yishan/status/517365027515285504
gtirloni 12y ago
When I see questions like this I ask myself what real impact it'll have on my life as an user of $x. Usually the answer is none or "I don't care".
bane 12y ago
I'm a little critical of Yishan on here, but I think this sounds fair and reasonable. I won't discount the stress of the job at all, it probably explains some of the things I've been critical of. Being stressed out is the worst, being stressed out for months on end is like living in a personal hell. You're constantly fighting your animal fight or flight instincts, and you behave in ways that will seem (in retrospect) bizarre). I hope he can find some calm and peace. My experience is that it takes a terribly long time to come down off of a continuous stress high. Good luck to Yishan in the future and to the new Reddit executive team.
codingdave 12y ago
I truly do not see why people are so worked up over this. It is a big site, yes. But it isn't publicly held, so its internal politics don't really have an impact on anyone who is not an employee or an investor. Its internal business operations, profitability, and ROI to its previous owners or current investors really have no impact on my life as a general user of the site. Its continued success or failure really doesn't either, if we are being honest. Maybe they will bring a grand vision to fruition in the future that will make it more important, but right now, it is just a site I go to when taking a coding break. So I have no reason not to simply take the public statements at face value. Certainly, there is a PR spin on things. But so what? What does it gain anybody to dig deeper and push for more details? Let it go, Let yishan move on, and let reddit's new team get to work.
ilaksh 12y ago
The investors forced Yishan to do the relocation thing which was a backhanded layoff in order to keep more.money for the investors. And then he recommended not trying to make everyone go to San Francisco because at this point it is clusterfuck and a bad value. From what I can tell, Yishan is a good guy, the investors are scum who make poor decisions, and Yishan couldn't fit in with that culture.
michaelrwolfe1 12y ago
I've spoken to Yishan a few times over the last year about the stress of running Reddit - I can confirm the story as told by Sam and Yishan is true. Sometimes there is more to the story than what you see on the surface, but sometimes there isn't. In this case, there isn't.
DrJ 12y ago
>> i.e. how stressful is too stressful, until multiple outside people and coaches I was working with remarked to me that I looked incredibly worn down for months on end and it wasn't supposed to be this hard. @sama did just tweet about saying you look tired[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/532684505081864192 https://twitter.com/sama/status/532684505081864192

215 points by wyclif 12y ago

andywood 12y ago

I have quit jobs due to burnout and said it was something else, too.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

malanj 12y ago

I can see people who haven't hit that level of burnout might think Yishan is being crazy or an idiot. The truth is that startups can be insanely difficult and stressful, especially if it's your first time. Once you've hit the wall the smallest thing can crack you up. I've seen people break down in a boardroom over seemingly trivial issues, but through the lens of years of insane stress it made sense.

sidcool 12y ago
On top of what you have stated, every person has a different level of tolerance to burn out. Heavy workaholics can go on for months before succumbing.
kordless 12y ago
Stress is a result of expectations. Expectations lie in the future, which pulls us away from being present. Life sucks if you aren't present, so it necessitates reminding yourself of intent and not of unmet expectations.
- zemvpferreira 12y ago
  Someone else has been reading Ekhart Tolle lately.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Or any of the large number of Eastern philosophies that Tolle has taken most of his stuff from, many of which manage to present it in far less pseudo-mystical packaging than Tolle.
    - kordless 12y ago
      Or massive amounts of therapy after having a mid-life crisis. :)
      - zemvpferreira 12y ago
        Of course, that was a half-joking nudge. I'm in the same position myself: having a quarter-life crisis and trying to read my way through it
  - kordless 12y ago
    I've never read him, but I'll have to check him out!
serve_yay 12y ago
Sometimes people do ill-advised things for completely understandable reasons. Doesn't make the situation any less bad.

thejosh 12y ago

"[Reporters: if you want to share this URL, append "?share=1" to the end of the URL so that viewers can view this answer without the regwall]" Or maybe do that be default instead of forcing people to register?

joeguilmette 12y ago
When Quora first came on the scene I was a power user. That kind of shit spoiled things fast for me.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Personally, I'm less inclined to put up a fight about that than I once was. I argued pretty passionately that it was terrible and etc, but I've since spent some time on Quora. It has fascinating content. We should probably accept that their growth strategy is either brilliant and succeeding even without our Expert Input, or their growth strategy is dumb yet Quora is successful in spite of it. Either way, bringing it up every time Quora pops up is probably more harmful than helpful at this point.
- majani 12y ago
  Quora is successful? Their userbase is still below 5 million and most of their traffic comes from a third world country(India), and they still have exactly zero ads 5 years on after raising 161 million in capital. Quora is an unmitigated failure at this point.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Perhaps. All I'm saying is that they have good content. Give it a try, you may be surprised to find you like it. Even if they're on an implosion trajectory, Internet Archive will make sure most or all of it stays online. So it won't be a failure if you measure success as "generating positive contributions to the world" instead of dollars.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Reddit has grown so much under Yishan's stewardship: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=reddit http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=reddit According to the graph, Reddit has tripled in size since SOPA. People could say that Reddit would have grown with or without Yishan, and while that may be true, it ignores how completely easy it is to mess up growth, especially for a site like Reddit.

adamnemecek 12y ago
Is google trends really indicative of growth? Not that I'm contesting that reddit has grown, it most definitely has.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  I've always wondered. Alexa has become unusable, and Trends was the only free thing I could find. One datapoint that it works: When I used Google Trends to claim "Reddit seems to have doubled since 2013," no one contradicted that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8567833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8567833 It seems like all tools are indicating that Reddit is growing like a weed, though. Actually, Reddit is in a pretty unique position. Subreddits mean that pretty much every person on the planet is going to find something interesting, so everyone from 13 year olds to grandmas are participating. I wonder how long Reddit will continue to grow before people start comparing it to Facebook.
  - anonfunction 12y ago
    Interesting comparison between reddit and facebook: https://i.imgur.com/NUkB96v.png https://i.imgur.com/NUkB96v.png Notice facebooks decline.
    - adamnemecek 12y ago
      Anyone have an idea what's the FB bump in 2013?

chime 12y ago

Call me naive but I completely believe sama and yishan. Everyone's trying to find the "real" reason because we're all so used to companies lying or trying to save face in every non-positive situation. Too many times the boy has cried wolf and nobody's willing to believe that this time it's the truth. CEOs stepping down for major screwups citing "spending time with family" has made us question if anyone ever voluntarily resigns from a high profile job. Voluntarily quitting is treated as an act of cowardice instead of strength. We espouse failing fast in projects but not in our own personal choices. People are questioning the real reason because they can't accept that a CEO of a hugely popular site has chosen to resign on good terms instead of being involuntarily ousted. Long ago I wrote something about quitting that many of my friends and family loved and hated ( http://chir.ag/200804242130 http://chir.ag/200804242130 ) but I still stick by it. I wish more people would resign, breakup, divorce, and leave when they are in a miserable, non-salvageable situation than stick around and make everyone including themselves miserable. Good luck to yishan and the new reddit crew!

georgemcbay 12y ago
"Call me naive but I completely believe sama and yishan." I believe them as well, the big question for me (still) isn't why yishan left but why reddit needs to be 100% in San Francisco -- not in the sense of SF vs Daly City, but the Bay Area (only) vs. having offices in SLC, New York, etc. I'm sure there are hand-wavy reasons for it like synergy-collaboration-focus-blahdeblah but nobody has yet convinced me that it wasn't just a poor decision (one that seems to clearly have had a large impact in this departure even if yishan and the board agreed on the Bay Area centralization).
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  My bet is on YC culture via their presence on the board. My signal as evidence is the requirement that teams relocate to San Francisco as part of being funded. If I'm right -- and I'm not sure I am -- I would hope that's something that gradually changes over time. Twitter's choice to stay in the city was a big bummer for me, but I understand why it happened. Once Caltrain electrifies and gets a bit more optimized, though, I really want to see more of this industry spread out to the peninsula so we can have a bit of a breather. East bay too. There's an ember of startup love taking root in Oakland and it'd be awesome if YC would blow on it. San Francisco is complicated and this industry isn't helping as much as it could, is my point.

nomnombunty 12y ago

I totally believe Yishan. Jokes aside, just look at his twitter profile picture! https://twitter.com/yishan https://twitter.com/yishan This man is definitely burnout.

linuxydave 12y ago
Yeah, I look at that picture and I see myself a few years back. It is far better to prevent burnout that try recover from it, as it's a pit that's really hard to climb out of.

codinghorror 12y ago

No mention of this, though? 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... I would not want to work for any company whose CEO takes the low road on personnel issues. That was truly cringeworthy.

yuhong 12y ago
But the California defamation laws still needs to be fixed. Read http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_calls_out_former_reddit_employee_as_to/cl2ditf?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_ca... (particularly those words highlighted in bold) and weep.
- AYBABTME 12y ago
  I wouldn't say it's California; it's Common Law. It's a legal system that's pretty much everywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_systems_in_the_present_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_sy...
- ars 12y ago
  I see nothing wrong with that law. If a company wants to say something negative about someone they better be able to prove it.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    I am talking about the automatic damages and the requirement that it must be fact not opinion for example.
- dkbrk 12y ago
  Statements must be false to be defamatory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Truth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Truth). While Yishan's actions may be considered unprofessional, he is legally in the clear so long as he was not lying. I think you may be confusing defamation with disparagement; if a non-disparagement contract existed, then Yishan could be in legal trouble.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

gordon_freeman 12y ago

A lot of startups would love to see the kind of growth (5x) Reddit achieved under Yishan's stewardship from around 30m to now 175m. That's some achievement imo! I hope Yishan takes some time off before starting a new professional adventure.

aytekin 12y ago

I love his career philosophy: http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/the-secret-to-career-success.html http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/the-secret-to-career-success.h...

balldontlie 12y ago

I imagine that one thing CEOs hold dear is the ability to set direction. While the issue at hand (where do we put our office?) might not seem significant, it was clearly the straw that broke the camel's back. Tough situation. I believe (and hope) he'll bounce back and start something awesome.

axotty 12y ago

This is DHH's take on Yishan's resignation via Twitter. He seems to be heavily implying that this was not a voluntary resignation. DHH: Reddit CEO's forced uprooting of employees outside SF got full board support, but moving one BART stop? YOU'RE FIRED DHH: @andrewstepner No CEO is ever fired. Everyone always "voluntarily" resigns, whether that's actually the case or not. DHH: "Yeah, just force those families to uproot their whole life. Give them a week. Ok, two.", then, "want US to travel 20 mins longer? NO, NO". https://twitter.com/dhh https://twitter.com/dhh

dmix 12y ago
Can someone explain the office location issue? I haven't been following the drama. I'm assuming there was a large disagreement over moving offices outside of SF to Daly City? I can see why that might be a divisive issue, but totally agree with DHH regarding the remote workers part.
- bcantrill 12y ago
  To someone from outside the Bay Area, it must seem strange that office location could play such a large issue, but the specifics here are important. First, they were (apparently) requiring remote workers to move to the Bay Area.[1] This is weird in and of itself, and not necessarily with much precedent: it's one thing to decide that you don't want to have a distributed work force and/or grow locally, but it's quite another to decide that you want an extant remote work force to magically become local -- especially when local is the most expensive housing market in the country, and one that is essentially impossible to enter as an established adult. Then, on top of that, they're moving the office to... Daly City?! Daly City is essentially the worst of all worlds: it's not really readily accessible to anyone -- and it's an undesirable eye sore on top of it. There are places that make no sense to relocate to that still make more sense than Daly City (e.g., Pleasanton, San Rafael, Alameda, Walnut Creek, Burlingame) -- Daly City is almost where you would locate a company if you simply hated the employees. So at that point, you do begin to wonder about the mental stability of the CEO: the choice of Daly City is so completely bizarre that it almost certainly reflects other things amiss in the way decisions are made. [1] https://twitter.com/yishan/status/517365027515285504 https://twitter.com/yishan/status/517365027515285504

gtirloni 12y ago

When I see questions like this I ask myself what real impact it'll have on my life as an user of $x. Usually the answer is none or "I don't care".

bane 12y ago

I'm a little critical of Yishan on here, but I think this sounds fair and reasonable. I won't discount the stress of the job at all, it probably explains some of the things I've been critical of. Being stressed out is the worst, being stressed out for months on end is like living in a personal hell. You're constantly fighting your animal fight or flight instincts, and you behave in ways that will seem (in retrospect) bizarre). I hope he can find some calm and peace. My experience is that it takes a terribly long time to come down off of a continuous stress high. Good luck to Yishan in the future and to the new Reddit executive team.

codingdave 12y ago

I truly do not see why people are so worked up over this. It is a big site, yes. But it isn't publicly held, so its internal politics don't really have an impact on anyone who is not an employee or an investor. Its internal business operations, profitability, and ROI to its previous owners or current investors really have no impact on my life as a general user of the site. Its continued success or failure really doesn't either, if we are being honest. Maybe they will bring a grand vision to fruition in the future that will make it more important, but right now, it is just a site I go to when taking a coding break. So I have no reason not to simply take the public statements at face value. Certainly, there is a PR spin on things. But so what? What does it gain anybody to dig deeper and push for more details? Let it go, Let yishan move on, and let reddit's new team get to work.

ilaksh 12y ago

The investors forced Yishan to do the relocation thing which was a backhanded layoff in order to keep more.money for the investors. And then he recommended not trying to make everyone go to San Francisco because at this point it is clusterfuck and a bad value. From what I can tell, Yishan is a good guy, the investors are scum who make poor decisions, and Yishan couldn't fit in with that culture.

michaelrwolfe1 12y ago

I've spoken to Yishan a few times over the last year about the stress of running Reddit - I can confirm the story as told by Sam and Yishan is true. Sometimes there is more to the story than what you see on the surface, but sometimes there isn't. In this case, there isn't.

DrJ 12y ago

>> i.e. how stressful is too stressful, until multiple outside people and coaches I was working with remarked to me that I looked incredibly worn down for months on end and it wasn't supposed to be this hard. @sama did just tweet about saying you look tired[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/532684505081864192 https://twitter.com/sama/status/532684505081864192