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.
"No more Salt Lake City office, responsible for Reddit Gifts. No more New York office, responsible for selling ads."<p>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.<p>SLC offers certain outdoor rec opportunities the Bay can't match, and unless the requirement to move to SF comes with a <i>big</i> pay bump, they're effectively asking employees to uproot their lives and take a big pay cut.<p>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.
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.
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).
A lot of hyperbole and emotion in there, which I personally don't enjoy reading, it takes away from the writer's arguments unfortunately.<p>Also, seems like critics and talking mouths like this one are almost always more upset than the workers themselves.<p>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?
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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?
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.
No sympathy on reddit:<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2i5df4/til_that_reddit_is_forcing_all_employees_to_move/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2i5df4/til_th...</a>
Uh... how did this thread get buried so quickly? Submitted an hour ago, 68 points and it's already fallen off the first page?<p>Anyways, here's a detailed response about the issue from the CEO:<p><a href="http://www.quora.com/Is-Reddit-closing-their-NYC-and-Salt-Lake-City-offices?share=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Is-Reddit-closing-their-NYC-and-Salt-La...</a>