
Reddit Chief Engineer Quits After Less Than Two Months on the Job - 001sky
https://recode.net/2015/07/13/reddit-chief-engineer-bethanye-blount-quits-after-less-than-two-months-on-the-job/
======
vessenes
A recurring, and not-commented-on theme in each of these communications is
that the board wants more growth. Reddit closed a $50MM round in fall of 2014,
and has never had a strong monetization story.

If the investors came in expecting major growth (since this is not a business
with a great monetization story) it's not surprising that there's pressure and
turnover right now, almost a year later. And, it may well be that what's
needed is a CEO with enough credibility to tell the board "you won't get that
growth yet, we have some work to do."

Saying that to the board is obviously going to be hard to do for Ellen, or
anyone in Ellen's shoes if they brought her in to deliver growth, and she
promised to deliver that growth.

So, lots of drama, yadda yadda, but I would bet 100:1 that drama has, at it's
fundamental source, intense pressure from the board, and I would also bet you
that this kind of pressure is new for reddit as a company.

To me, that's likely at least some of the context for the rumors that Ohanian
intervened directly to get rid of Victoria, the former AMA lead at Reddit.
AMAs are one of Reddit's most visible branding / marketing measures. If you
need to deliver growth, and aren't seeing it, it is completely natural to be
looking at your premier product lines and trying to get them to do more. And,
I would be surprised if this kind of thinking weren't informing senior
management as they're struggling to deliver on these promises.

~~~
cgearhart
From the outside it looked more like Ellen was focused on improving the
monetization prospects rather than focusing on growth. In particular, placing
limits on abusive content and users would make the site more attractive to
advertisers.

Firing Victoria fit the same motive -- monetize the most popular product
(AMAs). Reddit leadership wanted to explore ways to monetize that feature, and
for some undisclosed reason Victoria didn't fit with that plan.

The return of Huffman signals a shift back to the Cult of Growth, in the hopes
that investors won't worry as much about monetization so long as the site is
growing. One thing the board won't settle for is _neither_ growth nor
profitability.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>In particular, placing limits on abusive content and users would make the
site more attractive to advertisers.

I see no problem with this. I purposely avoid recommending or even mentioning
reddit to the people in my life because of all the horrible content on the
site. I won't promote these subs, but there are many, many popular racist subs
and subs that promote violence against women and, hell, one that is dedicated
to showing photos of dead women who were attractive in life. There's a creeper
sub that shows candid photos of women on the street that pathetically skirts
the rules by pretending its about "fashion."

My god, reddit is a mess. I can't ever imagine recommending advertising there.
I can imagine videos games, e-cigs, energy drinks, etc advertising there as
these things already have a lousy reputation, but reddit is not on the path of
being this broad forum with lots of members with disposable income. Growth
isn't impressive when its just more of the same, largely unprofitable,
"manboy" demographic.

This is why USENET lasted so long and was so prolific amongst techies. It
never had to make a profit. You could trivially start new "communities", etc.
Reddit is pretty much USENET as web, but the problem is, someone has to pay
for all those servers and staff. No one is donating or proving access as part
of your shell account like they did back in the USENET days. I find it
questionable that such forums would ever be profitable. I suspect the next gen
reddit will be something that has more in common with torrent-like tech than
old school client-server web tech.

~~~
scrollaway
> I can imagine videos games, e-cigs, energy drinks, etc advertising there as
> these things already have a lousy reputation

Holy hell, you need to walk outside your bubble a bit.

------
minimaxir
To repost my comment from a previous submission:

There's been a lot of meta discussion how Yishan Wong, Alexis Ohanian, and
Ellen Pao have been talking trash to each other about Reddit and seemingly
ignoring every NDA in the book.

The comments made in the linked interview trashing a former employer seem to
perpetuate this culture. It's _weird_. (although if you're planning on
starting your own startup after a bad job, burning bridges isn't as drastic)

~~~
Vexs
The whole recent controversy has been strange in general. There's this
incredibly pervasive sense that the management in general is completely
disconnected from the community, only stepping down from on high to dish out
shadowbans.

I don't know what to think honestly, but it seems like the reddit
administration is walking close to the cliff currently. Maybe the newOld ceo
can turn that around.

~~~
IBM
HannibalLecter your comment is dead

------
malandrew

        "The company is growing, and we have the opportunity to 
        improve in many areas — including the number of women in leadership 
        positions. I am confident in our ability to recruit women at the executive 
        level, as we have made a point to do so at Hipmunk, where more than half of 
        the executives are women."
    

I don't know about anyone else, but comments like that make a company less
desirable as a place to work because factors like skill, talent, productivity
and effectiveness become de-emphasized in recruiting and promotion relative to
issues surrounding identity politics.

I don't see how permitting (or worse yet fostering) an environment where
office politics or identity politics can flourish is a good thing. I am seeing
identity politics issues creeping into decision making more and more often and
find it positively toxic.

When you "make a point" to recruit/promote one group over any other on the
basis of a demographic box they fit into, you are implicitly discriminating
against people who don't fit into that box. Furthermore, when "making a point"
goes so far that you've exceeded the 50% mark ("more than half are [insert
identifier for someone that belongs to a particular group]") then that
certainly qualifies as active discrimination.

I'm 100% in favor of equal opportunity, but ham-fisted hypocritical approaches
like this are as bad as what they are trying to fix. Politicking in any form
is toxic.

If someone created a petition to now remove Steve Huffman, I'd sign it.

I highly recommend this recent peer-reviewed academic study demonstrating
discrimination in Academia:

[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract)

~~~
disantlor
There are so many subtle factors working against non-white-men that it's
impossible to be totally aware of them all. Making a point of correcting (even
if it's somewhat of an over-correction) is not a perfect solution but
realistically its better than pretending there isn't an issue, or saying your
for equality as if that's all it takes.

You'd vote to remove Steve because he said _one_ are to _improve_ is in having
more women (i.e. more diversitiy of opinion and experience) in leadership
positions?

~~~
malandrew
It's not longer more. His "making a point" has already exceeded 50% by his own
admission. That's over-correction and he doesn't see a problem in that?

I'm in favor of people who try to achieve equality. When you adopt a policy
that results in over-correction and don't steer back to a position of
equality, then the side effects are indistinguishable from the disease it was
meant to cure.

~~~
disantlor
Are the effects really indistinguishable? Ok maybe you have a slightly smaller
chance of getting a job at Reddit. At least you can take comfort in the
knowledge that in almost any conceivable institution or situation you're doing
doing pretty well.

I'm assuming your a white man (like myself) but please correct me if I'm
wrong. Point is: we've had a good run. If a few extra women get hired at
Reddit, we're still doing pretty good in the balance.

~~~
malandrew
I'm mostly white and adopt a cisgender disposition, but identify as agender.

If you think this is a change in attitudes that is isolated to just reddit and
hipmunk then you haven't been paying attention.

There is someone with whom I work with or worked that often states/stated how
much she hates|dislikes white guys|males|bros|dudes. Yes, those exact words or
combination thereof. This happens/happened at least once a week if not more
often. It is/was not even subtle or discrete. Sometimes these statements would
be uttered aggressively in meetings with a bunch of people present. The
culture in SV is such that everyone pretty much tolerates/accepts these
statements. If the racial adjective where switched with any other to describe
a different race and/or the gendered plural noun were switched for one that
described women or anyone else on the gender spectrum, that person would
already be talking to HR if not out the door already. Furthermore, this person
is/was involved in hiring, which means it's likely gender is a consideration
in hire / no hire decisions made. If this isn't toxic, then I don't know what
qualifies as toxic.

Another example of the toxicity of this was when I saw Rena Kopelman (of the
Kopelman Foundation) giving a talk about how to increase diversity and
opportunity for under-privileged groups. I was totally on board with a lot of
the talk until she start railing against efforts to making it easier for
talented individuals with the right skills to emigrate to the US in search of
better opportunities in the US technology industry. I don't see how an anti-
immigration position does anything but further reinforce barriers that
discriminate against those that didn't have the privilege of being born in the
right country.

In terms of privileges, my gender and race have been very very minor
advantages. By far the number one privilege I enjoy is having had the
opportunity to become a native English speaker despite the fact that English
was not my first language. I moved to the states when I was four years old
speaking another language, but I moved here early enough that no one can tell
I'm not American. Speaking English and not having and accent is many times
more advantageous than my gender. After that the privilege of having moved to
and grown up in the US comes next (growing up in Western Europe would have
also been advantageous, but not nearly as much as growing up in the US for the
career I have). Next up comes growing up relatively affluent. Far behind those
three would be being mixed race, but mostly caucasian (I got enough Anglo-
Saxon genes to dominate the South American genes). Well behind my racial
makeup is my gender. I actually can't think of a situation where it was a
factor in why I have the jobs I had. In my current job, I was referred to the
recruiting department by a well known open source developer who works at the
company. I got to know him and earned the recommendation by contributing to
open source projects of his under a pseudonym.

If you are a US citizen (or Australian citizen because of the E-3 visa) and
speak English natively, you are already far more privileged than most of the
white males in the world in terms of getting a job in Silicon Valley.

Like I said in my other comment, my position here isn't about me or any
privileges I personally benefit from, but about the environment that is being
fostered that my children will inherit once I decide to have a family. If I
were about 50-55 years old today, that could be my daughter that gets a
position in academia due to her gender or it could be my son that is turned
down for position in Academia due to his gender. My position isn't about "us
having a good run" and trying to maintain that for my gender. I agree with the
goals, but oppose the means being used to achieve it.

If you want to see other first hand examples of this toxicity in action, just
go look up some op-ed pieces from The Advocate discussing the discourse around
"white male privilege" from the perspective of a gay or bisexual white male.
It's entirely possible to be a white male and know what it is like to be
discriminated against. If you happen to experience discrimination for other
reasons besides your race and gender, you become aware of how the current
attitudes of trying to solve discrimination with discrimination is toxic and
counter productive as it breeds resentment and opposition from those who would
otherwise be allies.

[http://www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2011/01/20/im-
wh...](http://www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2011/01/20/im-white-
cisgender-gay-man)

[http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/12/08/op-ed-
privileg...](http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/12/08/op-ed-privilege-
and-advocacy)

[http://www.advocate.com/commentary/tyler-
curry/2014/04/25/op...](http://www.advocate.com/commentary/tyler-
curry/2014/04/25/op-ed-grappling-what-people-see-my-privilege)

I'm an ally of equality, but I am not an ally of those that adopt tactics to
achieve equality like those being promoted by Steve Huffman.

------
tzakrajs
I highly doubt that Reddit leadership is/will be responsible for their massive
rise or fall in popularity. The people have coalesced around this platform in
such numbers that as long as the most basic needs are met for the community to
thrive, they will continue to thrive. The few who leave because of this
executive turmoil or changes in moderation have already been supplanted by new
users who enjoy the system as it is today.

~~~
mwill
People thought the same about Digg.

That said, I do agree that it will take more than just community / company
politics to have a big impact, but if Reddit is pushing for growth and make
enough missteps in the actual functionality of the site, that combined with
the already unhappy userbase could spell trouble in my eyes.

------
abalone
So features were promised that she can't deliver on schedule. Was engineering
not consulted before publicly committing to features? If so I'd probably quit
too.

Just before her departure Pao set up a process to figure out with the mods
what features to build.[1] Did something go terribly wrong with that process?
Was engineering approval not required?

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/)

------
untog
The way she describes it, it was a sensible choice. Various things are being
promised that she, as Chief Engineer, does not think will happen. Given what
happened with Ellen Pao it's not unreasonable for her to assume that
responsibility for those failures could easily be put on her when the
inevitable happens.

~~~
Cacti
What's the point of being a Chief Engineer if you can't even get some software
(the mod tools) written? That seems like an awfully low bar for someone in
that position, and to throw in the towel after she barely started seems to
speak more to her character than any problems with Reddit.

I mean... you hire someone for a top technical position and they quit when the
first bump comes along? That's ridiculous.

~~~
vessenes
I would guess it's more like "I will be building out the product we needed all
along, but now with intense board scrutiny, half the budget I wanted, a
quarter the timeline we need, and a new CEO (who I may not like). I'm rich
enough that I don't have to put up with this shit. See you guys."

~~~
Killswitch
> and a new CEO (who I may not like)

Spez isn't just a "New CEO" he's the original programmer, CEO and co-founder
of Reddit. He understands the community more than anyone could fathom someone
could. Of all choices I think he's the best choice.

He's focusing on bringing better mod tools, so being the technical lead, I'd
be excited for these bumps coming up, not running away with my tail between my
legs.

~~~
untog
Honestly, if I were Chief Engineer the idea of the original programmer
becoming CEO would be a potential nightmare.

------
seunosewa
3 female employees gone from the Reddit team in such a short time. This could
create the probably false perception that Reddit seems like a hostile working
environment for women. I wonder what they'll do to address this probably false
perception.

~~~
amyjess
Pao is the only one of the three who left for any reason that _might_ be
gender-related, though.

And, yeah, the harassment of Pao was very misogynistic -- and racist to boot
(people were calling her a "ching chong cunt") -- but there's nothing to
indicate that the other two had any problems due to their gender.

~~~
tptacek
I like the idea that the CEO can resign in a hailstorm of racist and
misogynist vitriol but that subsequent departures won't have anything to do
with gender.

~~~
yokohama11
It's kind of important to realize that those same users were angry at her for
getting rid of a different woman. That was the trigger, being upset about a
_well-liked_ woman being fired with no warning.

That kind of destroys your premise, IMO.

The vitriol is terrible, but that's more a function of people being angry on
the anonymous internet and saying whatever inflammatory things they can come
up with to express that.

~~~
tptacek
This would be clever had Pao been the person who fired Taylor. Wait, no it
wouldn't. But either way, _Pao 's boss_ fired Taylor.

~~~
eco
The only person claiming Alexis was responsible for firing Victoria was Yishan
who hasn't worked there for 8 months and he based that on the fact that Alexis
is Ellen's boss so he's ultimately responsible. Former employee kickme44
pointed out that Alexis actually reported to Ellen, despite his role, and
Yishan then back peddles on his claims somewhat.

The fact of the matter is that we just don't know how or why Victoria was
fired and we will likely never know. Everything so far is just speculation.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0thing_says_he_was_responsible_for_the_change/ct1fsoi?context=3)

~~~
tptacek
No. Long before Yishan's post, Ohanian posted on Reddit saying he both owned
the reorg of AMAs _and_ flubbed the transition with Victoria Taylor. It's not
speculation. Consider also that by Ohanian's own direct words, the chairman of
Reddit had an operational role over one of the most visible parts of the site.
Pao was in a situation that would have been difficult to manage even if things
had been going smoothly.

~~~
eco
Have a link handy? I can't find it. My memory was he's said a lot of things
like "we messed up" and "we could have handled it better". Nothing that says
he personally is responsible.

~~~
tptacek
I'm looking at the text I was talking about right now. You can find it, or
take my word that I'm not making it up, but if you're going to debate this
particular issue with me, I'm going to ask you to do your own homework. :)

~~~
eco
You made the claim. I provided a link with my own claim because it's the
polite thing to do and furthers the conversation.

~~~
tptacek
It's just a pattern (not with you, but with message board arguments):

1\. Person X stridently argues a position contradicted directly by the record,
which they haven't taken the time to read.

2\. Person Y rebuts X.

3\. X demands a source from Y.

4\. Y sources their rebuttal.

5\. X recapitulates argument based on dubious, nitpicky reading of source,
pretending they'd known the source was flawed all along.

The problem isn't that providing sources makes it harder to win arguments with
lazy people, it's that it tends to introduce a _second argument_ , over the
interpretation of the source, as a smokescreen for instability of the first
argument. It gets tedious.

I'm not saying that's what you did, just that I've been conditioned by message
board nerdery to expect that to happen.

In this case, you can if you'd like just take my word for it that Ohanian took
responsibility both for the reorg of AMAs and for the handling of the Taylor
transition, not in a tea-leaf-reading way, but directly and overtly, prior to
Yishan Wong's post, and in a public Reddit comment.

~~~
eco
One of the joys of the web is being able to easily cite and read sources (it
was the whole point of hypertext). Sure, we could all just discuss and debate
by shooting from the hip with our opinions and recollections like we are at a
wine-fueled dinner party but that's not why I come to Hacker News.

I wasn't trying to win or even have an argument with you. I was just trying to
better my own understanding of the situation. I hadn't seen Alexis write that
and couldn't find it despite spending way more time than I should be reading
about reddit drama.

I don't know who you are or why I should take your word for it. I don't know
why you'd expect me to take your word for it. That's something you do for
people you know in person and trust, not strangers on the internet. That'd be
a terrifying prospect if that's how we all did things online.

I, too, have noticed a pattern:

1\. Person A writes something about a topic.

2\. Person B writes about how bad something is which is related but orthogonal
to the actual topic.

3\. Persons C...Y have a heated debate of the orthogonal topic.

4\. Person Z writes thoughtful comments about the topic but nobody reads it
because the meta debate has drown out the actual topic.

A good name for it might be The Hacker News Comments Pattern. I'm not saying
that's what you were doing.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not following. What's the orthogonal (B) point?

(I _seriously_ wasn't saying you were trying to bait me into giving you more
ammunition for a stupid argument, but I'm pretty sure you really are implying
that I introduced a bogus topic.)

------
geebee
This is a very interesting departure.

I understand that in the media, especially with the litigation around Pao and
the scarcity of women in leadership and technical positions in high tech, that
this would take over much of the discussion. Bethanye also mentioned a "glass
cliff", so it's reasonable that this would be a big part of the discussion.

I am very interested in Bethanye's business-related decisions to leave as
well, though. I'm nowhere near her level in any corporate hierarchy, but I am
very frustrated with how difficult it often is for engineers, even senior or
director (or "chief engineer") level tech workers to operate with the level of
autonomy and decision authority that is often explicitly promised.

Maybe when the dust settles, if people are still interested, a journalist will
have the opportunity to talk with Ms Blount about this. As a dweller on the
lower levels of the hierarchy, although with "senior" in my title and all
kinds of autonomy spelled out, I can see now that aggressively asserting this
kind of autonomy is essential to a strong career, and you need to be prepared
to 1) fight it up the chain, and 2) walk away, if other wings of the business
try to cram you in a box and tell you that your job is purely to execute a
technical vision that may collapse, and the upper level decision makers don't
have your back.

Unfortunately, low on the ladder often means fewer options, which makes it
harder to fight this fight. Higher usually means better severance, stronger
networks, a better chance of a good placement in the next gig.

Anyway, as an engineer, this is the conversation I'd really like to have…
though again, I understand that the issue of women in technical and managerial
positions is also very important (and isn't necessarily unrelated, either).

------
tosseraccount
_Blount also said she believed Pao’s exit was an indirect consequence of
gender discrimination_

Sounds like she backed the wrong horse.

------
Keyframe
Apparently reddit has 71 employees. I would really like to know why reddit
needs that many employees. It looks to me like an operation of maybe 20 people
at most. That includes devops, engineering, social stuff and ads.

~~~
eco
Alexa ranks reddit at 24. The other user content focused stuff high on the
list are:

2\. Facebook (10,082 employees)

3\. YouTube (a lot of employees)

6\. Wikipedia (~250 employees)

8\. Twitter (3,900 employees)

13\. LinkedIn (7,600 employees)

15\. Sina Weibo (unknown employees)

24\. reddit (71 employees)

30\. Tumblr (306 employees)

32\. Imgur (<50 employees)

Given this, I think it's rather impressive that they only have 71 employees
(imgur is impressive too).

~~~
Keyframe
_Given this, I think it 's rather impressive that they only have 71 employees
(imgur is impressive too)._

In that context, I agree it's impressive. I still don't understand why would
one need so many people considering there's next to none (except AMA, and
that's gone) interaction with users on site. Code definitely doesn't need that
many people (I know this firsthand, because it took me ~two months (less) to
make a complete clone from scratch with all of the functionality of reddit for
internal use and I'm not much of a coder anymore). Devops might be hairy, I
admit that - but even with shifts and redundancy... I've seen sites with much
more monetization in ads run on 10 sales people or less. So genuine question
is still here, what do these people actually do?

I understand facebook is all over the place and is a lot more than meets the
eye on their site, so I can understand their headcount. I can see that with
youtube as well, especially if they curate some of the content. Reddit is,
well, reddit - next to no interaction with userbase, third party ios app they
bought (or something), no android app, codebase already built and not all that
hard to build anyways, they did build reddit gold (how much of an effort is
that anyways)... and we're left with devops. I'm sure most of those 71 people
aren't even technical to begin with and they struggle with ads. I genuinely do
not understand need for that many people on board considering the impression
of what they do.

------
jgrowl
From what I've seen, being a CEO, CTO, etc is almost inherently a glass cliff.
You either keep things running smoothly or you will get let go.

Besides, Ellen wasn't even fired. She resigned no?

~~~
muglug
Ellen Pao resigned under intense pressure from the site's users. There was a
petition with 250,000 signatures calling for her resignation, and a board
which (according to media reports) was essentially letting her take the blame
for unpopular decisions she had not made.

Her position was therefore untenable, even ignoring the vile racism and
misogyny directed her way by the worst of the reddit community.

~~~
spikels
The change.org petition got to 213,446 supporters when it was stopped shortly
after her departure. Not need to exaggerate the facts to express an opinion.

