
Reddit’s crappy ultimatum to remote workers and offices - livestyle
http://shortlogic.tumblr.com/post/99014759324/reddits-crappy-ultimatum
======
krallja
This is a layoff in disguise. The high-quality employees have better options,
and will leave. The clueless ones can be dealt a termination letter after they
move, when they're not keeping up with their newer, Bay Area-er, trendier
competitors^H^H^H coworkers.

~~~
tdicola
Or maybe a way of clawing back shares of the company now that new money is
coming in? Not sure what kind of deal early Redditors got, but getting them to
quit in frustration with a move and give up whatever options/ownership/etc.
could be a possibility.

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wwweston
"No more Salt Lake City office, responsible for Reddit Gifts. No more New York
office, responsible for selling ads."

There's a lot of places asking people to move from would be difficult, but
from my familiarity with both, those might be two of the harder sells.

SLC offers certain outdoor rec opportunities the Bay can't match, and unless
the requirement to move to SF comes with a _big_ pay bump, they're effectively
asking employees to uproot their lives and take a big pay cut.

Cost of living in New York is probably roughly on par, but I'm trying to
imagine someone who likes the breadth/depth of cultural/rec opportunities in
NYC being happy with SF and guessing it's not going to play well.

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DIVx0
I don't know why they just can't focus new hires on being in SF and letting
original staff remain where they are while dangling a juicy carrot for them to
move. Forcing them to move or leave is really crappy. This is a good way to
piss off everyone who has committed time at the same time as soiling their
reputation.

------
tdicola
My conspiracy theory, it's all a move to make Reddit attractive as a major
Yahoo acquisition. Yahoo is getting an injection of billions from Alibaba and
has been on a tear with acquisitions. Moving everyone to SV makes for an
easier acquisition (especially from a company that doesn't want remote workers
anymore).

~~~
minimaxir
Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr has been seen has a flop.
[http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/yahoo-tumblr-acquisition-
flop/](http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/yahoo-tumblr-acquisition-flop/)

Mayer may have already played her hip-internet-company-with-no-revenues-
acquisition card.

------
coralreef
A lot of hyperbole and emotion in there, which I personally don't enjoy
reading, it takes away from the writer's arguments unfortunately.

Also, seems like critics and talking mouths like this one are almost always
more upset than the workers themselves.

If you want the power to work at home, start your own business or work
exclusively on contract with specific remote provisions. Its unfortunate when
something gets taken away from you, but who can you really blame unless its
written and legally binding?

~~~
Daishiman
It's fairly outrageous because in most of the civilized world, a forced change
in working conditions like this is equivalent to being fired and thus requires
a certain amount of compensation.

From everything that's being shown here, the people being fired will likely be
getting nothing. Considering that these people most likely have denied
themselves much more lucrative positions for a chance at being in a cool
company where there's growth opportunity, it is practically a betrayal of the
principles being choosing this sort of place to work.

If this were to happen to me you'd be damn sure I'd be lawyering up.

~~~
okbake
Yishan mentions in his tweets that there is a 3 months severance package for
the people who can't make the move.

[https://twitter.com/yishan/status/517364923320385536](https://twitter.com/yishan/status/517364923320385536)

------
anon808
assuming the details are true, I cant find any good reason for doing something
so heavy handed and corporate. It's the number of people involved (approx half
the employees) that makes this an asshole move.

~~~
drawkbox
This is a clear sign reddit is so big that media/big money is taking it, too
much focus to not and a source of news/media for the rest of the media world.

Beginning of the end for Reddit.

Remote workers being removed simply mean it has gone from an
engineering/innovative company to a metrics/bean counted/make sure you are in
your chair typing in an IDE all day type of place (they might not even allow
reddit workers to be on reddit with that type of ultimatum).

Even if that is not the intention that is the end result.

It is so strange though that business has really concentrated technology so
much in the Bay Area, it goes against what networked systems mean. Is it smart
that everything has to be in SF? Is that the only way to get the best people?

------
harmegido
I just don't understand why people seem to be so worked up about this. It must
just hit really close to home on sites like this.

Look, I love remote working and I almost always find myself on the side of
workers in any management v workers debate. But I find it very difficult to
get worked up about the plight of folks who are likely making 60k+/yr. And
much more if they are in a tech-focused role.

Reddit loses money. Does everyone just expect them to continue on with no
changes forever? And where's the HN outrage when a factory closes down?

~~~
owenjones
I don't understand whenever there is a HN article about some injustice being
done to Tech Workers somewhere there inevitably be this post

> "I can't find sympathy for people making $x/yr."

Why not? Where do you draw the line of people deserving sympathy vs. those
deserving none? If they made $59,999/yr would you "get worked up about their
plight"? Can you point out an article on HN (ostensibly a site related to the
Tech Industry, hence the posts about Tech Workers) about a factory closing
down where there was explicitly no sympathy?

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_greim_
The difficulty of remote collaboration is fundamentally a bandwidth problem.
People are cramming into the bay area not because they love the congestion and
high prices, but because the bandwidth between brains in close proximity is
quite high. When you scatter them across the nation, the bandwidth is limited
by ISPs who own the last-mile network. Once video conferencing becomes
frictionless, maybe remote collab will pick up momentum, but the US has some
political obstacles to overcome before that can happen.

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knowaveragejoe
No sympathy on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2i5df4/til_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2i5df4/til_that_reddit_is_forcing_all_employees_to_move/)

------
dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=reddit#!/story/sort_by_date/0/redd...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=reddit#!/story/sort_by_date/0/reddit%20relocate)

------
Zweihander
And in the distance, a faint chuckle could be heard.

Jason Fried was amused.

------
knowaveragejoe
Uh... how did this thread get buried so quickly? Submitted an hour ago, 68
points and it's already fallen off the first page?

Anyways, here's a detailed response about the issue from the CEO:

[http://www.quora.com/Is-Reddit-closing-their-NYC-and-Salt-
La...](http://www.quora.com/Is-Reddit-closing-their-NYC-and-Salt-Lake-City-
offices?share=1)

~~~
dang
I post comments like
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8404139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8404139)
to indicate that a story has already been discussed on HN. The rule for
reposts is that we demote them as dupes if the item has had significant
attention in about a year. Sometimes there are borderline calls, but this
isn't one: 152 points and 156 comments is significant attention and 1 day ago
is less than a year.

~~~
akmiller
Doesn't "item" denote the actual article that's posted, not the subject of
that article. This is a strange definition of duplicate if you can't post
different stories about the same topic. Don't we encourage multiple points of
view and if we find someones interpretation of the topic interesting doesn't
it deserve to live or die on its own?

~~~
dang
If an article adds significant new information, then sure. But riding on the
coat-tails of the latest outrage doesn't count.

Don't forget that when any hot story hits the tech press, every outlet puts
out one or more articles about it. That makes for dozens of posts. Throw in
blogs and there are dozens more. If we didn't prune duplicates, copies, and
me-toos, that's all the front page would consist of.

~~~
drawkbox
Also this policy forces a market reaction for faster stories. Rather than
better, thought out, well written articles that come out later that may
present the same information better. I hope those are taken into account.

~~~
dang
That's a great point. Better thought-out and written articles are always going
to be welcome here. Those are not coat-tail stories, and the algorithms need
not to identify them as such.

