Yishan Wong resigned over a silly conflict with the board

Nov 14, 2014 14:31 GMT  ·  By

Yishan Wong, Reddit CEO, has resigned from the company after what seems to have been a disagreement with the board about the location of the company’s new office location.

In a post on Quora, Wong explained that after two and a half years leading Reddit he worn himself out, pushing himself too far as a first-time CEO. He explained that the topic of the company’s location could have probably been worked out, but there was a strategic disagreement.

“I felt that locating an office in San Francisco proper is an incredibly difficult thing given the strains the city is facing and the high rents it imposes on employees who wish to live close to the office.  On the other hand, many of our current employees live there so the proposal to find an office location just outside the city (Daly City is immediately to the southwest outside of SF) was very unpopular, and there are plenty of startups who locate in SF and are very successful,” Yishan Wong wrote.

Wong explains that he probably wouldn’t have resigned over such an issue had he not been drained from being a first-time CEO of such a company.

Alexis Ohanian is returning to Reddit

Board member Alexis Ohanian is going to take a larger role in the company as a chairman and will now be in charge of marketing, communications, strategy and community. He is also one of Reddit’s co-founders and he’s returning after having stepped away from the company back in 2010 to work with non-profits, such as kiva.org in Armenia, and write a book.

He explained that he’d been asked to return back in 2011, when Reddit became independent, but turned the offer down because he felt his projects were where he wanted to be. He did join the board of directors, however, and he’s supported the company ever since.

Ellen Pao will be taking over as interim CEO. According to Reddit’s announcement, she has already shown “tremendous capability and poise over the last two years,” as she occupied the second most important job in the company. She ran operations for the entire company, was responsible for building the mobile team, the acquisition of Alien Blue and launched the AMA app.

It should be interesting to see whether there will be any major changes to the platform in the coming months, but since Wang didn’t leave because Reddit wasn’t doing well financially or as a platform, chances are things will largely stay the same.

Reddit (5 Images)

Alexis Ohanian returns to Reddit
Yishan Wong is outEllen Pao is the interim CEO
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