'Worn out' Reddit CEO Yishan Wong steps down - looking forward to becoming just a regular user
Yishan Wong, chief executive of news forum Reddit, has stepped down after two and a half years in the position, stating the role “wore him out”.
Yishan Wong steps down from position as Reddit CEO
Wong claimed the positon was taking its toll on him. Additionally he clashed with the board on where the group’s office should be located.
On Quora, Wong issued a statement: “The job as CEO of Reddit is incredibly stressful and draining, I'm basically completely worn out and it was having significantly detrimental effects on my personal life.
“If anything, I probably pushed myself way too far - as a first-time CEO, all I knew was that such jobs are supposed to be stressful, so I never really had a good baseline.”
The former CEO also disagreed with the board on the relocation of the firm. He wanted to move to lower-rent Daley City and the board was keen on San Francisco.
On that issue, he said: “It's probably something we could have worked out. I feel the board is a very supportive and friendly one, but we had a strategic disagreement.
“I felt that locating an office in San Francisco proper is an incredibly difficult thing. On the other hand, many of our current employees live there so the proposal to find an office location just outside the city [at Daly City] was very unpopular."
Wong will be replaced by Ellan Pao who served as the interim business and partnerships strategist at the firm.
Meanwhile Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian will make a return to the firm as executive chairman.
Ohanian thanked Wong for his service in a blog post: “We are grateful for his contributions over the last few years, including growing Reddit from 35 million (users) to 174 million, and we have a team in place to ensure that Reddit’s best years are still ahead of it.
“Now at a little over nine years old, with thousands of communities, Reddit is at an amazing inflection point and I'm thrilled to return to help it achieve all that it can. We've got a lot of work to do: mobile, user experience, and community tools are on the top of our list, but as always, we can't do it without you.”
Last month, the firm acquired unofficial iOS Reddit reader Alien Blue, bringing on board designer Jase Morrissey.