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.
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.
When Victoria was fired, the _perception_ was (possibly incorrect, as we know now) that it was Pao's decision.
Not unreasonably, since most personnel decisions below the CEO are made by the CEO.
So the original premise still stands.
Pao's most vocal detractors "perceived" all sorts of crazy things, from malicious edits (ranging from comments about Pao's husband to moderation of stories about the Trans Pacific Partnership) to a holy crusade against just the kinds of hate speech Pao didn't like, so no, I don't think I'm required to accept the argument that in this case, perception is nearly as important as reality.
No, I do not believe you have established with evidence or reason that the original premise of this subthread still stands.
1. A well-liked/respected employee is abruptly fired.
2. In most businesses, the CEO does all the firings (or is responsible).
3. I liked the fired employee, I thought she did a great job, therefore I am angry at the CEO.
Are you saying you need to be a crazy/malicious person to follow the above logic? Are all the 250K people who signed the petition crazy or malicious?
No, (2) is true of virtually no businesses of any meaningful size! Certainly in most companies of Reddit's size --- over 60 employees --- managers reporting to the CEO have hire/fire.
I wasn't the CEO of Matasano, and I fired people. And Matasano was not a big company.
Finally: people keep talking about Victoria Taylor as if she was somehow a key employee of Reddit. She probably was, but not by design. It was probably mismanagement of the AMAs that resulted in a single project manager becoming one of the most visible people in the most visible part of the site. At any rate: who was responsible for the operational organization of AMAs? Alexis Ohanian.
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.
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. :)
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.
> 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.
That doesn't dispute the fact that Ellen was CEO and Ohanian's boss. He might have been responsible for the reorg, but as CEO, Ellen was ultimately responsible. Unless you think the CEO had no power.
> No, you have this backwards. Ohanian was Pao's boss.
You based this on what specific information? The only insider information I read about this suggested that Pao was Ohanian's boss. Regardless, I still assert as CEO, Pao is the one responsible, and she had options to not put herself in that position.
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...