[Infowarrior] - Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

[Richard Forno]

Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

Mike Isaac

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/technology/ellen-pao-reddit-chief-executive-resignation.html

Ellen Pao, the interim chief executive of Reddit, resigned from the online message board on Friday after a week of ceaseless criticism from scores of angry users over the handling of an employee departure.

Ms. Pao will be replaced by Steve Huffman, who, along with Alexis Ohanian, started Reddit from a two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of Boston a decade ago. Ms. Pao said she would remain as an adviser to Reddit’s board for the remainder of the year.

Her exit, which the company described as a mutual agreement between her and Reddit’s board, follows a week of unrest in the Reddit community, which is made up of more than 160 million regular users who use the site to talk about anything from current events to viral cat photos.

Ms. Pao characterized her departure as a result of a disagreement with Reddit’s board on the future of the company.

“It became clear that the board and I had a different view on the ability of Reddit to grow this year,” Ms. Pao said in an interview. “Because of that, it made sense to bring someone in that shared the same view.”

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.

Reddit, now based in San Francisco, is composed of topic-based forums, known as subreddits, where discussions take place on subjects like news and technology. The company has 70 to 80 employees and relies largely upon its thousands of dedicated power users to govern the site.

That tight-knit community erupted into upheaval when the news broke that Victoria Taylor, a prominent and well-liked Reddit employee, had been abruptly dismissed from the company with no public explanation. Many Reddit users blamed Ms. Pao directly in the hours after Ms. Taylor’s firing, flooding Reddit’s forums with vitriolic messages — often racist and misogynistic — calling for Ms. Pao’s ouster.

Reddit users circulated an online petition calling for her removal that garnered more than 200,000 signatures.

Ms. Pao apologized to the site’s members for the episode earlier this week. Reddit’s management made errors, “not just on July 2, but also over the past several years,” Ms. Pao said in a post on one of the site’s forums on Monday. “The mods” — moderators — “and the community have lost trust in me and in us, the administrators of Reddit.”

Ms. Pao has long been a figure of controversy in Silicon Valley. In March, she lost a gender discrimination lawsuit against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where she had previously worked. The trial, which involved big-name Silicon Valley investors such as John Doerr, mesmerized Silicon Valley with its salacious details while also amplifying concerns about a lack of diversity in the technology industry.

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It's better to burn out than fade away.