According to Pao, the official reason for her resignation (note: not fired) was due to misaligned goals between her and the board. “So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles,” stated Pao. As Huffman transitions into his new role, he will be leaving behind his position as CTO of Hipmunk, a growing travel site that he co-founded with Adam Goldstein in 2010. Pao will remain an advisor through the end of the year. Until now it was also unclear how reddit’s board was going to, if ever, identify a permanent CEO to fill Pao’s shoes. Earlier this week we reported on the growing user backlash that resulted in more than 213,000 people signing a petition for Pao to step down. When asked if this impacted Pao’s resignation, Altman simply replied with a no. He went on to also reflect on the treatment of Pao, “As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people even if there is Internet between you.” And to wrap things up Pao opened up to questions from users, leaving on a positive note by taking a jab at Ohanian.
As with many boards, the short answer is that they have a light touch and does not set the company strategy. This rumor further suggested that the departure of Victoria Taylor, reddit’s former director of communication, was the result of Pao asking to monetize reddit AMAs even more. Many suggested that reddit’s recent $50M raise led to increased pressure from the board to bring the company to a profitable status. However, Altman indirectly throws Pao under the bus for these recent decisions. “No; in fact we agreed as a board not to focus too much on monetization for now. Someday we’ll need reddit to be profitable, but we want to do it in a thoughtful way,” stated Altman.
On the Future of Reddit
Huffman’s first order of business will be to focus on some of the most asked for improvements to reddit over the past few months (really the past few years). “First priorities: Get to know the team here, Make a clear Content Policy, Ship some mod tool improvements,” stated Huffman. Altman expanded on this to say, “The team will create guidelines to both preserve the integrity of reddit and to maintain reddit as the place where the most open and honest conversations with the entire world can happen.” The team will also work on improved moderation controls (one of the primary focuses of the subreddit blackout last week), and a new mobile experience. Currently reddit has two apps, Alien Blue and reddit AMA, but the team did not expand on what these enhancements will include.
