
Why Did Yishan Wong Resign as Reddit CEO? - wyclif
http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Yishan-Wong-resign-as-Reddit-CEO/answer/Yishan-Wong?srid=X&share=1
======
chime
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
"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
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.

------
malanj
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.

~~~
kordless
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
Someone else has been reading Ekhart Tolle lately.

~~~
vidarh
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
Or massive amounts of therapy after having a mid-life crisis. :)

~~~
zemvpferreira
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

------
axotty
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)

~~~
gojomo
It's 6-7 further BART stops to Daly City. The continuing leadership also seems
committed to geographically-centralizing the team for improved collaboration.
I don't think DHH is showing any insight into the situation or players; he's
just projecting his pet issues.

~~~
jarek
> The continuing leadership also seems committed to geographically-
> centralizing the team for improved collaboration.

Centralizing a dispersed team for improved collaboration would put them
somewhere in Nebraska, maybe Colorado. Just say that the investors want them
close by.

------
sillysaurus3
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
Is google trends really indicative of growth? Not that I'm contesting that
reddit has grown, it most definitely has.

~~~
sillysaurus3
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
Interesting comparison between reddit and facebook:
[https://i.imgur.com/NUkB96v.png](https://i.imgur.com/NUkB96v.png)

Notice facebooks decline.

~~~
adamnemecek
Anyone have an idea what's the FB bump in 2013?

~~~
aquadrop
Probably mobile traffic gradually was taking over and users on mobile searched
less for "facebook"?

~~~
adamnemecek
I mean the increase in 2013.

------
balldontlie
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.

------
bane
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.

------
ilaksh
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.

------
codingdave
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.

------
gordon_freeman
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.

------
DrJ
>> 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)

------
michaelrwolfe1
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.

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

------
gtirloni
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".

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

------
codinghorror
No mention of this, though?

[https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r...](https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama/cl1ygat?context=3)

I would not want to work for any company whose CEO takes the low road on
personnel issues. That was truly cringeworthy.

~~~
yuhong
But the California defamation laws still needs to be fixed. Read
[http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_ca...](http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_calls_out_former_reddit_employee_as_to/cl2ditf?context=3)
(particularly those words highlighted in bold) and weep.

~~~
ars
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
I am talking about the automatic damages and the requirement that it must be
fact not opinion for example.

------
thejosh
"[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?

~~~
sillysaurus3
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
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.

~~~
arfliw
You might want to let their investors (who include Y Combinator) know -
because they keep pouring money into Quora at ever higher valuations.

~~~
jacquesm
Pouring money into a company more or less requires ever higher valuations
otherwise it would be much harder to find future investors.

The question then becomes what kind of assumptions underly their businessplan
that they use to justify these higher valuations. These can make for very
interesting reading, usually they translate into a loose form of: for every
'x' dollars of investment we can generate 'y' dollars (usually a multiple of
'x' ;) ) of turnover keeping the ship afloat long enough to pull in the next
round of funding. As long as the funding keeps coming it will look really good
to the untrained eye. The real issue of course is what the expected lifetime
value is of the customers when taking into account the amount of overhead. If
the balance here is close to zero it can become quite hard to distinguish the
ultimate losers from the winners. 'At scale' then becomes the key, if you
can't make it fly at a small size the theory is that the company will do just
fine if you just scale it up drastically while keeping the overhead steady.
This is a hard problem.

Since Quora's investors presumably did financial due diligence before they
invested it is safe to assume that the story is a complex one and any
variation on the theme mentioned above will be hard to dig up. The degree of
desperation with which they try to monetize their traffic is a good indicator
about what's going on behind the scenes.

Barometer: slowly dropping.

------
nomnombunty
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
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.

