Reddit CEO Calls Out Former Reddit Employee on Reddit

The CEO has responded to the criticism of how it was handled:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensorship/comments/2ifd3p/udehrmann_i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama_riama/cl25q4l" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RedditCensorship&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2ifd3p&#x2F;ud...</a><p>&quot;Hiya. It was a harsh response, I agree (there&#x27;s actually more, but we&#x27;re pulling our punches, if you can believe it), and in fact all day yesterday I didn&#x27;t want to post a reply, hoping his AMA wouldn&#x27;t get too much traction or he wouldn&#x27;t spout too many misconceptions and we could all just continue going our separate ways.<p>Problem is, this was starting to really irritate a number of employees who&#x27;d worked with him, and he&#x27;s the kind of guy who enjoys the attention he can get by saying &quot;I used to be a reddit admin&quot; even though he&#x27;ll just post spurious stuff he doesn&#x27;t know about, and left unchecked the positive attention encourages him to do it more.<p>In running reddit, there&#x27;s an interesting balance between the normal standards of professionalism (which we try very hard to uphold even when someone is being unreasonable) and the fact that we&#x27;re a huge internet forum where a higher degree of openness is expected. I&#x27;m actually really focused on building competent, professional management precisely because the spotlight is always on us - and also because I&#x27;ve been at other Silicon Valley companies where that hasn&#x27;t always been the case - but it also means that because of that spotlight, any tiny deviation can be hugely magnified.&quot;

Umm. It was pretty clearly not done for vindictive reasons.<p>The guy lied about why he was let go and put Reddit in the awkward position of either saying nothing and letting people believe they&#x27;re a shitty workplace that fires people for disagreeing with management, or telling the truth about why the guy was fired (not laid off.)<p>Frankly, he brought this on himself by forcing Reddit into choosing between two sucky options.

Good lord, I hope the $50M investors in reddit are beating down the doors to get a PR person at the company so the CEO stops making crazy moves like this. There&#x27;s no way a good developer would want to go work for Reddit when the CEO slaps people around in public (whether they deserve it or not). Sometimes you need to be the bigger man and move on instead of quarreling in public.

Ok, I don&#x27;t get it. So everyone here says that CEO&#x27;s statement was childish, and yet next time when another company issues a professional statement, people will be calling it content-less cover-your-ass PR fluff, and crying for more honesty and straight talk. Make up your mind.<p>As for me, personally, I think CEO&#x27;s response was exactly what it should be. Honest, clear, straight to the point. Reddit just earned my respect as a workplace.

Once again, reddit is a free-for-all until it looks like reddit might lose face, then we get an amateur level public response.<p>The employee might not have been a good employee, but this kind of public dressing down is absolutely unprofessional by the CEO.<p>Also: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama/cl1vmcs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IAmA&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2iea97&#x2F;i_am_a_former_...</a>

Sounds like a toxic environment. Whatever the employee may have done to deserve separation, it is profoundly weird and troubling (and also, implicitly threatening to all employees, whatever their rank or standing) to see a CEO discuss those reasons in public.

I feel like it&#x27;s relevant to point out that Yishan, Reddit&#x27;s CEO, has written some of the most thoughtful advice on engineering management. I have personally benefited a lot from his thoughts on this:<p><a href="http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;algeri-wong.com&#x2F;yishan&#x2F;engineering-management.html</a>

In these situations, the outcome is almost always bad for everyone involved, but these types of things happen from time to time. The git pull jokes, harassment accusations, and firings. Personally, I don&#x27;t know if we are helping by giving more attention to it. We look on, face palm, etc, but the effects on these people is real and lasting. Personally, I have flagged this, because if this were me, I would hate to have a spotlight on it. We have a brief sliver of what is going on, speculation going wild, and this is basically on the public record now. We&#x27;re all human, do dumb shit from time to time, and it&#x27;s on the world stage. Hindsight sight is 20&#x2F;20 and I&#x27;m sure they wish this never happened now. Yada, yada, yada.

I really don&#x27;t like this. The problem is that Yishan never explicitly states that there was an exit interview, and the reason for the termination was clearly explained.<p>He could have a half assed HR person that gave some bullshit reason like &quot;you are not a good fit&quot;, and the ex-employee is legitimately confused about why he was terminated.<p>The other potential issue is that employees go into shock when they are told they are terminated, and are highly unlikely to remember the rest of the conversation correctly. People that get fired, generally aren&#x27;t good at digesting feedback in the first place.

&quot;yishan 27 points 15 minutes ago Hiya. It was a harsh response, I agree (there&#x27;s actually more, but we&#x27;re pulling our punches, if you can believe it), and in fact all day yesterday I didn&#x27;t want to post a reply, hoping his AMA wouldn&#x27;t get too much traction or he wouldn&#x27;t spout too many misconceptions and we could all just continue going our separate ways. Problem is, this was starting to really irritate a number of employees who&#x27;d worked with him, and he&#x27;s the kind of guy who enjoys the attention he can get by saying &quot;I used to be a reddit admin&quot; even though he&#x27;ll just post spurious stuff he doesn&#x27;t know about, and left unchecked the positive attention encourages him to do it more. In running reddit, there&#x27;s an interesting balance between the normal standards of professionalism (which we try very hard to uphold even when someone is being unreasonable) and the fact that we&#x27;re a huge internet forum where a higher degree of openness is expected. I&#x27;m actually really focused on building competent, professional management precisely because the spotlight is always on us - and also because I&#x27;ve been at other Silicon Valley companies where that hasn&#x27;t always been the case - but it also means that because of that spotlight, any tiny deviation can be hugely magnified.&quot;[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://np.reddit.com/r/RedditCensorship/comments/2ifd3p/udehrmann_i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama_riama/cl25q4l" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;np.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RedditCensorship&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2ifd3p&#x2F;ude...</a>

Seeing some of the back &amp; forth among HN&#x27;ers about &quot;laid off&quot; vs &quot;fired&quot; as a lie vs truth, I think it&#x27;s worth clearning up a particular point.<p>Yes, being &quot;laid off&quot; is different from &quot;fired&quot; but the ex-employee (dehrmann) actually <i>did</i> say he was fired. He just said it in a <i>very roundabout way</i>. He wasn&#x27;t using &quot;laid off&quot; in its most obvious definition.<p>dehrmann said: &quot;<i>I was laid off...no reason...some management doesn&#x27;t like feedback...</i>&quot; which is his euphemism for saying &quot;fired&quot;.<p>(sidebar: If one is a high profile employee such as an NFL coach or big shot CEO, he&#x2F;she can simply and directly tell journalists, friends, etc that &quot;I was fired&quot;[2]. For some psychological reason, every one else from middle management down to line workers have a defensive mechanism to avoid the word &quot;fired&quot; and use softer language.)<p>TheOsiris[1] was of the few readers that picked up on the poster&#x27;s roundabout language. Many others did not parse it correctly. Unfortunately, the Reddit CEO also didn&#x27;t interpret it correctly and so he thought he had to correct dehrmann by saying &quot;<i>you were FIRED for the following reasons</i>...&quot; So, a misunderstanding by yishan for not recognizing his ex-employee&#x27;s strung out phrasing of &quot;yes I was fired&quot; unfortunately lead to the (unnecessary) boldface of &quot;fired&quot; in his response.<p>Anyways, we can set aside the &quot;laid off vs fired&quot; and recognize that the real disagreement is whether the ex-employee and the the company parted ways because of management retaliation about charity strategy, or because a lack of work productivity.<p>[1]<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417769" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8417769</a><p>[2]<a href="http://www.siliconbeat.com/2008/06/10/fiorina-to-nyt-i-layed-foundation-of-hps-current-success/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.siliconbeat.com&#x2F;2008&#x2F;06&#x2F;10&#x2F;fiorina-to-nyt-i-layed...</a>

Is this legal? Where I live, I&#x27;m pretty sure this kind of public disclosure isn&#x27;t allowed due to privacy laws.

No comments here on HN yet along the lines of all PR is good PR?<p>Lets face it, this is Reddit. He didn&#x27;t get fired from the local railroad yard. They&#x27;re getting excellent traffic off this story. Even the guy who got fired is at least getting &quot;internet famous&quot; for a day.<p>The whole story boils down to &quot;reddit AMA&#x27;s, something interesting to look at and talk about&quot;. Not seeing a problem here.<p>A real conspiracy theory would be playing this game to get some traffic was part of his severance package (In exchange for a faux argument in a AMA with our CEO, you&#x27;ll get an extra 6 months salary as a severance bonus plus an extra month if the HN story gets over 100 comments, etc)

I read a lot of comments on HN about his response being unprofessional and harsh, and on the latter of those counts, I do agree, it definitely had a negative tone. What I want to know, though, is _why_ so many consider it unprofessional. To me, and I&#x27;m making the assumption that Yishan isn&#x27;t lying, any pleasantries owed this man ended the moment he decided to not only publicly broadcast his employment, but also falsify details regarding his termination.<p>Regardless of what I think, what actually makes this whole exchange unprofessional to others? Why should these details be protected, and why should companies and individual remain silent on these issues? I&#x27;m lumping this into the &quot;political correctness&quot; category until someone tells me it&#x27;s about something more than someone having their feelings hurt (that they may have been asking for, even). Putting on my future-employment-perspective goggles, I can kinda-sorta see why this wouldn&#x27;t be good, but I&#x27;d also be the type of person to argue that the current state of PR is particularly dismal when employers can&#x27;t give any kind of factual details about a former employee&#x27;s work record beyond whether or not they were fired. Why not just report details of employment and follow-up with the employee on any questionable&#x2F;negative remarks? My guess is that a bad apple ruins the bunch when companies didn&#x27;t&#x2F;don&#x27;t investigate those details with the employee and just pass them up altogether, creating an unfair situation for the prospective employee.

I do not know much about laws. After working some years at an organization, asked to leave without stating any reason can be painful, traumatic to the employee. Employee can be alone with dependents and all of a sudden his&#x2F;her world can be crashed.<p>Basic human courtesy can be to let the employee clearly know why he&#x2F;she is asked to leave. At least, after knowing the reasons, he&#x2F;she may change his behavior in future employment. If reasons are not known, employee can never know in reality what mistake is made&#x2F;highlighted&#x2F;led to this drastic decision and some times that act may be accidental or any politics by some other person ...etc. Since the employee says &quot; by not stating a reason. It&#x27;s also really hard to work through in your mind.&quot; i.e. he&#x2F;she is still clueless on what exactly happened.<p>1. Is it not fair&#x2F;humane to give employee a chance to hear charges and to tell his&#x2F;her side of story so that independent body can decide fairly?<p>2. Reasons given by CEO such as incompetence,inappropriate comments,not taking feedback by managers may or may not be true in reality since proofs are not provided. Software development is a team work. So some times, mistakes of others can create burden on other and management may not aware of real culprit. Feedback is tricky aspect. I noticed management sometimes can be highly opinionated without real understanding of complexity of work&#x2F;problems&#x2F;issues, solutions tried ...etc. Managers just for their bonuses&#x2F;promotions or to appear good in front of their bosses, act as intelligent or knowledgeable, though in reality they can be novices in many aspects. So if feedback is irrelevant or if feedback lacks common sense or lacks domain knowledge ...etc, then how employee can accept it?<p>We do not know many specifics about the incident and we do not have proofs So we clearly cannot point out who is wrong but employee should have been given a hearing by independent group on the charges so that he can defend and if that independent group do not agree, then they can ask him&#x2F;her to leave.<p>Even in courts, where death sentence can be given, charges will be told and accused can provide his story&#x2F;point of view on what happened and then court passes judgment. Then why similar facility cannot be provided to employee rather than throwing out like used tissue paper? It does not sound humane at all.

I&#x27;d love to know what the inappropriate interview qusstio s were (if that bit is true).

This is an unfortunate display of bad judgement by all parties concerned.<p>The disgruntled employee, even if he had not signed an NDA, did something fairly stupid and verboten -- namely, he bad-mouthed a former employer and ex-colleagues. The (tech) world is small and such public displays of indiscretions always come back to bite you.<p>Yishan Wong had a lot more to lose IMHO by engaging in this manner with the ex-employee in a public forum. He risks the reputation of his company and his own personal brand. Based on Yishan&#x27;s writings that I&#x27;ve read, I found him to be a thoughtful manager who seemed ready to make the jump to executive cadre. I&#x27;d have expected a more mature reaction and ideally not a public one. No matter, we all have lapses of judgement -- hope that Yishan is getting appropriate counsel from more experienced executives and is able to defuse the situation without more damage -- reputational or otherwise.

Sure the guy did some stupid things but who knows what his life is like and we&#x27;re all human and do stupid things. The CEO&#x27;s reaction was simply insensitive. Here&#x27;s what the CEO should have done: have their lawyers draft a polite letter showing that they&#x27;re serious about having him shut up. When he doesn&#x27;t, ask your lawyers to take the next step.<p>His comments were temporarily mildly irritating to the company at best and would be forgotten within a few weeks (same goes for his reply). There&#x27;s too many memes going around for anyone to remember stupid AMA posts.<p>My takeaway? If hiring this guy, then I&#x27;d judge him on his own merits. Otherwise, I&#x27;ll avoid applying to Reddit for some time. I just hate those hard-ass get your shit done kinds of environments.

No CEO worth his salt ever turns negatively disparaging remarks about an ex-employee into a soapbox. He just opened Reddit up to legal ramifications.<p>And with all the remarks here about how its &quot;politically correct&quot; to put on the HR spin about never going this low, i&#x27;m just shocked and amazed. I can see why its hard for these companies to find staff for HR.

yishan just gave some more background about his comment in the discussion in r&#x2F;RedditCensorship.<p><a href="https://np.reddit.com/r/RedditCensorship/comments/2ifd3p/udehrmann_i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama_riama/cl25q4l?context=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;np.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RedditCensorship&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2ifd3p&#x2F;ude...</a>

Found this on California defamation law:<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_calls_out_former_reddit_employee_as_to/cl26fha" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;bestof&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2igkke&#x2F;reddit_ceo_ca...</a><p>Wonder why it was designed that way.

I don&#x27;t care who did what but the CEO of a company should not be making public statements like this, especially in a forum the likes of reddit.<p>Does this company have a Corporate Communications officer? This event makes me question the logic of reddit&#x27;s investors.

&quot;When an employee is dismissed from employment at a company, the policy of almost every company (including reddit) is not to comment, either publicly or internally. This is because companies have no desire to ruin someone&#x27;s future employment prospects by broadcasting to the world that they were fired.&quot;<p>IMO there need to be a better solution than this. I also don&#x27;t like anti discrimination laws and I have a proposal for getting rid of them: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7727917" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7727917</a>

Great response. Very risky for a CEO to do it nevertheless.

Forcing employees to sign a non-disparagement agreement? -- Screw that. (Edit: force, compel, persuade, strongly hint: semantics.)<p>Saying that a former employee violating a non-disparagement agreement means that it&#x27;s now a good idea for the company to take use an eye-for-an-eye policy in return? -- What.<p>No (American) non-executive employees should ever be forced to sign anything. I never have for any job. Employers are in too powerful of a position by default.

yishan needs to be terminated. Even his follow-up posts in other threads is demonstrating his smug self-righteous attitude that is unbecoming of a CEO in his position.

This guy needs to be fired.

Aw man. This is totally gonna get taken down by YC management&#x2F;altman...

Wow, that was incredibly unprofessional on Yishan Wong&#x27;s part. I can only imagine how rotten and horrible Reddit&#x27;s work culture must be. No one could possibly pay me enough to work there.

OMG, reddit hires incompetent people who are not getting much work done. I thought only demigods work there.