Ellen Pao a part of A ‘long Con’ At Reddit?

When ex-Reddit CEO Ellen Pao introduced her decision to resign final Friday, it came after per week of heady debate over her future at the social news site. Many within the Reddit community reacted angrily to the company’s dismissal of talent director Victoria Taylor the week prior, leading to a short lived shutdown of a whole bunch of subreddits and lots of customers calling for Pao to step down.

On Sunday, Gawker found a post through former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong that may level to a more disquieting—and very probably fabulist—reason behind Pao’s trajectory on the firm. In a response to a Reddit thread titled “What’s the perfect “lengthy con” you ever pulled?”, Wong spun a wild tale that virtually appears potential:

here is one.

In 2006, reddit was bought to Conde Nast. It used to be soon obvious to many that the sale had been untimely, the site was once unmanaged and under-resourced underneath the outdated-media massive who simply failed to take into account it and will by no means understand its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-outdated media conglomerate.

at the side of Sam Altman, they recruited a younger up-and-coming expertise supervisor with social media credentials. Alexis, who used to be on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except for this one. The supervisor was once to insist as a situation of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to quit vital possession of the corporate, first to workers by means of justifying the necessity for fairness as a way to rent prime talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to lend a hand run the corporate. After persevering with to grow the company, he would then further dilute Conde Nast’s possession via elevating cash from a syndicate of Silicon Valley traders led with the aid of Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would sit on the board.

as soon as this used to be accomplished, he and his crew would manufacture a series of in any other case-inconceivable management crises, forcing the brand new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his place on the board to suggest for the re-introduction of the previous founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, consequently returning the corporate to their regulate and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.

simply KIDDING. there isn’t a method that could occur.

Wong suggests—just as a funny story, after all—that Pao’s resignation and the occasions that led up to it were all part of a conspiracy to deliver again the corporate’s unique leadership and wrestle its autonomy back from Conde Nast. As Gawker‘s Sam Biddle writes, this was once seemingly no longer how issues performed out—but it surely’s frighteningly just about the truth.

Reddit board member Sam Altman, also the president of Y Combinator, penned a tongue-in-cheek response to Wong’s story:

Cool story bro.

aside from I might never have expected the section the place you resigned immediate 🙂

rather then that, child’s play for me.

Thanks for the lend a hand. I imply, thanks to your provider as CEO.

And newly instated CEO Steve Huffman chimed in along with his personal quip: “we all had our roles to play.”

Pao was no longer amused, it appears to start with look, though the /s on the end of her comment may indicate otherwise (/s generally denotes “sarcasm” on Reddit): “How is this funny? /s”

our favourite remark, though, got here from person SmileyMe53, who wrote: “that is like OJ writing a e book known as if I did it.”