IMHO, this is a major, major loss for reddit. Jedberg, I know you read HN -- you were a <i>hugely</i> important part of that community; any time there was about to be a user revolt, it seemed like a red-lettered Jedberg would pop up in the thread to calm everybody down.<p>I don't think you were technically a community manager (were you?) but you did a damn good job at it anyway.
He was employee number one and I think the last remaining link to the founding team (not sure). I've got a lot of respect for him, especially after meeting him in person when I toured the office earlier this year. His commute was over 2 hours each day, and he had to deal with all the scaling issues with amazon almost single-handedly, not to mention the Saturday nights that were devoted to keeping the site up.<p>I wish you the best, dude. Hopefully you'll join hipmunk! :-)
The biggest question I have is: why are so many people leaving Reddit?<p>Over the past few months, the site has grown continuously yet the people that have been the driving force of the site seem to be leaving just as the site is hitting its peak. What has changed?
There is something sounding very wrong about that: the work of a sysadmin that is of value for a big site should never reach the point to be so stressful that you have to wake up on alerts too many times.<p>It may happen 4 or 5 days every year maybe, if it is worse than that then there is something wrong. It is not impossible that jedberg is actually leaving because that kind of condition is not good in the long time. But here the problem is, a better employer would fix the root cause instead of letting good people go.<p>I'm saying that as I think this happens in many places actually, and is a huge mistake. A lot of work and traffic should never turn into a nightmare for a few guys.
From someone that spent years sysadmining very high traffic systems: Well done sir. Well done.<p>Been using Reddit since launch. Somewhat nervous that the new people running Reddit will get overrun by the corporate overlords now that they see the "hockey stick" traffic charts.<p>I can see some bean counter doing the math:<p><pre><code> Slap 4 teeth whitening ads on every page
= 4 ad impressions
* 1.2 billion page views
= 4.8 billion ad impressions
* $0.30 - $0.50 eCPM
= $17 - $28 million/year.</code></pre>
While I'm not nearly so famous as he is, and the job wasn't either, I know how he feels... I had the same routine as him. Check things all day from the time you wake until you go to sleep, and when you do sleep, fear that you'll be woken up by a problem.<p>And I know what a relief it was when it was gone. It really does feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.