[joecot]

I think back to Ellen Pao at reddit. Ellen was brought on as CEO, and was the face of a number of very unpopular decisions. All those decisions had one purpose -- jettison the things that made the site rough around the edges, and find ways to monetize, so they could make investors happy and work on going public.

The backlash was staggering, and much of what they tried was rolled back. Ellen Pao took the blame for it, but it wasn't actually her fault. The founders just scapegoated her in order to make changes they needed for investors -- and depending on how cynical you are, they picked an asian woman so that they could channel internet racism and sexism as part of the distraction. Years later, they did the same thing, making multiple unpopular monetization changes, but this time the CEO taking the backlash is Steve Huffman himself, not a scapegoat put in front of him.

CEOs don't make decisions on their own, not really. This pricing change was the direction the company wanted to go in, and they got put on their heels, but only temporarily. They're still going to try to find ways to aggressively monetize.

[mvdtnz]

That is some incredible revisionist history.

[ribosometronome]

Elaborate?

[mvdtnz]

What is there to say? The decisions that OP says were not hers, were hers. And the claim that they chose an Asian woman for the intended purpose of setting a racist mob against her is completely unfounded and frankly racist itself. Believe it or not, there are some Asian women out there that have qualities other than being the target of racism.

[dralley]

Most of the decisions Ellen Pao made, especially the banning of the FPH subreddit, was genuinely for the better. She bent over backwards, IMO, to avoid the hate - and should not have.

[dataengineer56]

FPH essentially put itself into a position where it had to be banned:

1. Imgur blocked its images from being shown on FPH, essentially crippling the subreddit

2. In response, the FPH mods put a collage of Imgur's overweight staff in the subreddit sidebar

3. Reddit will have had to ban the subreddit to maintain their relationship with Imgur (who they ended up buying).

[mvdtnz]

Sure, I'm not defending the unhinged behaviour of Redditors. But the claim that Pao is not responsible for these changes is just not true.

[johnnyanmac]

Ehh, given that reddit doubled down on pretty much every decision they made post Pao, I'm inclined with hindsight to think she was indeed scapegoated. Not necessarily for sexism reasons (try would happily do the same thing with Hitler as a CEO) but that's just a semi-common strategy with big business, especially towards an unpopular board member when the opportunity arises.

Really taught me not to celebrate these "CEO steps down" stories. Short of an entire board replacing itself it's just a new shade of black coming in to lead the change they want all along.

[exreddit]

The board at the time was I think Yishan, Alexis, and someone from Advanced. Maybe Sam Altman. Ellen Pao was the natural choice because she had the most business experience of all the staff, but it wasn't the right experience. She was always more of an investor, and she got her job there by investing money in reddit and asking for a job in return. She headed up BD and what turned into reddit labs for a while. She built up a reddit labs team, but they never found the next big thing for the company.

Part of the API drama goes back to her time doing BD, making partnerships with apps, and possibly buying apps.

I doubt there was a master plan to making her CEO, but I believe Alexis's line was "it's her job to lose." At the end of the day, she was bad at making friends, was an awkward fit for the company, and was more experienced in politics and climbing the ladder than running a company.

Good background on her: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletc...

[thrillgore]

Ellen Pao was a glass cliff hire.

[tekla]

> they picked an asian woman so that they could channel internet racism and sexism

Prove it.

[joecot]

It can't be proven, which was the entire point.