1y ago

Inside Reddit's path to an IPO, where employees see 'thrash' from constant pivots and say more managers may leave amid a flattening

www.businessinsider.com Inside Reddit's path to an IPO, where employees see 'thrash' from constant pivots and say more managers may leave amid a flattening

As Reddit moves toward an IPO, employees describe dysfunction internally. A year of growing pains might hinder the company's next step.

Inside Reddit's path to an IPO, where employees see 'thrash' from constant pivots and say more managers may leave amid a flattening

Without Paywall: https://archive.fo/L402K

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I wonder if there's any data available on how much content was generated from 3rd party apps. in my experience, reddit was accessed solely through an app (rip baconreader). am I wrong in thinking that the users are the product and advertisers the customer?
- While third party app users probably had a larger proportion of contributors, Reddit is big enough to still have plenty of content. Moderators are more interesting and it remains to be seen over time if an erosion of quality moderation happens which would make Reddit even shittier. Especially since Reddit seems to keep fumbling when it comes to providing good first party mod tools, see the whole r/Blind fiasco.
  am I wrong in thinking that the users are the product and the advertisers the customer?
  As long as profitability is the goal then you are correct.
- You’re not wrong and this article really drove this home for me.
  Especially how leadership really didn’t care about moderators having the tools they need to do the job they volunteered for.
  They don’t care about the quality of the site, just that people keep posting so they can package up all that sweet sweet data for advertisers.
  Think about all the little niche communities. I’m sure Reddit can link your username to your real identity internally. Imagine the profiles they can build and sell.
  They don’t even care if you stop posting, it’s all there.
- am I wrong in thinking that the users are the product and advertisers the customer?
  I think there was/is a monetization route through the use of user data (probably why they’re pushing their app so much) as well as using all the data for things like language AI modeling.
  But on that last one it seems like the biggest players such as openAI and Microsoft already scraped their site freely. Not sure if they’ve missed a big chunk of that opportunity by now
  I have developed the impression, and it’s mostly just my hunch not so much evidence based - spez and co are kind of kicking themselves for being oblivious to the AI training rush and failing to monetize on it. Probably didn’t even realize it was happening until we all did via crazy headlines showing up in news about what AI could do. That kind of thing may lead to kneejerk decisions on api access
  
  If Reddit leadership was oblivious, their heads were under a rock. Various GPT iterations have been training on different subreddits and posting to places like r/SubredditSimulator for years and have even been reported on in the media well before ChatGPT came out. Here is one report on it from 4 years ago:
  https://www.engadget.com/2019-06-05-subreddit-simulator-gpt-2-bots.html
  According to the article, r/SubredditSimulator is 7 years old. The cat is way out of the bag here.

I wonder when buying these 3rd party apps as acquisitions, if Reddit brought along their dev(s) in the process. It sounds like they didn't, which would be so shortsighted. Because what it seems is that once Reddit had these programs in their possession, they didn't know what to do with them, or how to integrate them into their own source code...at least with Spell this seems to be the case. I have no idea about Alien Blue, which I had used at one point prior to using Reddit's own mobile app. All they had to do with Alien Blue is rebrand...why didn't they?
How do you employ nearly 2,000 people. an army of unpaid moderators, and not come up with proper tools to navigate your own program, or find profitability off its user data? I think that Huffman has had no plan, leads a top-heavy organization, has been coasting along the company putting out day-to-day fires, and now he's scrambling to quickly find something profitable to show his investors.
There are a lot of things that don't make sense at the core of Reddit, because Google, Chat AI, and ad revenue are the places to make a profit...not API usage from 3rd party apps. I watched a really great video of the history of D&D last night on Nebula, and wow talk about lessons that Reddit could learn about 3rd party contributors.
(I'm going to link the video, but you need a subscription to Nebula and/or Curiosity Stream to view it). TL;DW summary: D&D works best as a business when it collaborates with 3rd party contributors and its fans.
Shocked Pikachu face there...
- That video was just posted to YouTube this morning. No paywall link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=paEGFYSBZTE

Yeah, kinda figured the outward chaos probably reflected inner chaos.
- It's a shitshow and everyone's done with it.
  This is reddit employees discussing the current state of the company.
  
  Every company’s blind looks like that.
  Though Reddit does appear to be a trash fire
  
  Can’t seem to access the photo you’ve linked. Now I’m even more curious.
- Warms my cold heart to think about spez freaking out about losing valuation and users
  
  I would love to see reddit succeed, but at the end of the day they have chosen to close of valuable user created information to the internet and declared they they alone possess the right to sell the stuff you freely contribute.
  They are shitbags and the company deserves to burn. Bring back forums.

A bunch of the complaints sound like the same complaints I've heard from many companies. But it also sounds like a shit place to work, with some arrogantly poor leadership decisions.
Pretty predictable stuff from spez. If I were one of Reddit's seemingly innumerable VP's, I'd be questioning if my total compensation package is worth much anymore.
- That fucker really personifies everything that's wrong with tech-bro culture.
- My guess is that most of them are probably preparing to cash out soon ... because the whole thing is hanging on faith and promises that no one is sure will be kept .... it's like dating that hot girlfriend/boyfriend and hoping that some day soon, you'll go to bed together and they just lead you on leaving you to wonder if anything will ever happen or not

On top of that, Reddit hasn't been able to fully integrate Spell's technology since its acquisition, two employees familiar with the matter said.
No time for Reddit to comment because they're working on mod tools....right....RIGHT?
- They’ll do it this time. Promise!!!

I love the "less but better" phrase. There's no better signal that it's time to GTFO.
- Actually, that sounds like exactly what I would be advising them to do in a situation like this. Reddit has been bloating itself with new features that nobody has been asking for because it keeps trying to turn itself into Facebook or Discord or whatever. If Reddit needs to become profitable I'd suggest cutting those and focusing entirely on what Reddit already does better than its competitors. Link aggregation and threaded discussion. Do just that, but do it better. That would allow them to shed some massive expenses both in technology and in staffing without impacting the income from its core business.
  They didn't do that and it's probably too late now. I don't know how Reddit would be able to shed its Imgur-like image and video hosting at this point, for example.
  
  Reddit has been bloating itself with new features that nobody has been asking for
  Exactly. Almost all their "exiting new features" have been subtracting value and turning the site into shit. That's why I left, not because I care about the API. I don't understand why they kept paying people to make reddit worse. They should roll back their source code to 10 years earlier.
  
  Yeah, Reddit, like so many other websites, seems to have gotten into its head the idea that it wants to recreate the 90s AOL experience, but not in the fun way.
- What does that even really mean? Reddit employees hardly do anything, so they need to get better at doing nothing now?
  
  Well the article states that the issue was more managerial than quality of employees, granted, it is very biased since their statements are from ex-Reddit employees but some of the quotes in the article state that they wanted to focus on fixing the important issues (moderation tools etc) but the managers demanded more product improvements that generate profit, and moderation tools are not it. After all, this is the same platform that let The_Donald for years, I don’t think moderation was ever a priority at all for Reddit

The article is behind a paywall. Can you share the text?
- Part 1
  Reddit could slim down management as moves toward an IPO
  Thomas Maxwell
  undefined
  
  Reddit is preparing for an IPO amid controversy surrounding changes to its API. Reddit employees say the company has a bloated leadership structure with too many managers. Staffers were told earlier this year that they'd need to do "less but better."
  As Reddit prepares for an initial public offering that could come by the end of 2023, it's looking to flatten its management structure, and employees say the company has become bloated with executive- and director-level employees.
  Reddit filed for IPO in December 2021, when demand for new tech stocks was at a fever pitch. It said it surpassed $100 million in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2021. It has also made large investments in artificial intelligence, acquiring the machine-learning startup Spell in June 2022 to help customize ad placements.
  Since then, demand for tech stocks has dropped. Reddit laid off 90 employees in early June as it aims to reach profitability. Its revenue growth has slowed, The Information reported.
  To prepare for the intense scrutiny of the public markets, Reddit is whipping itself into shape; managers told employees in product earlier this year that the goal was to do "less but better." Part of the mandate could include slimming down middle management.
  Reddit is also examining areas of its business where it could squeeze costs. It recently announced a controversial decision to charge for access to its API, or application programming interface, which enables developers to build tools that connect to Reddit. It argued that it couldn't support third-party apps that use Reddit's content but don't provide any money in return.
  Insider spoke with five current and former Reddit employees, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press or had signed nondisclosure agreements to receive severance. They described some leadership moves and road-map changes that caused what one employee described as "thrash."
  The 18-year-old social-media company has long had a culture of "trying to do too many things and doing them really poorly and not finishing them at all," the same employee said. Internally, they said, the company would now focus on "having a simplified product plan and sticking to it."
  A Reddit representative declined to comment on this story and pointed to a blog post about the company's acquisition of Spell.
  A flattening at Reddit
  Reddit executives presented a distribution of managers to direct reports during its last quarterly leadership summit in May in New York City. The distribution showed that many managers oversee four to six people. Managers who attended the summit told employees that leadership suggested the company would in the second half of the year consolidate teams with managers overseeing fewer than six employees, two employees said.
  
  Part 2:
  Employees say this could mean more managers may leave through managed exits.
  Reddit is not the only tech company flattening its leadership structure. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that the company would reduce its number of product managers and directors to make it more efficient. Meta had given managers the option to be demoted, with the expectation that many would choose to leave. Shopify has also tried to flatten its organization.
  Lost trust in leadership
  Reddit employees said they lost trust in leadership after a series of missteps. For example, they said they were repeatedly told before the company conducted layoffs in June that layoffs wouldn't happen.
  Product road maps changed in May as the company focused on the API changes and on boosting content creation by users.
  The recent change to charge for access to Reddit's API also led to protests from moderators. While many employees supported the API changes, they said Reddit's moderators deserved credit for helping grow the site. A former employee who left in April argued that company leadership should have invested more in supporting moderators and that building tools for Reddit's moderator community "has never been a priority" for leadership.
  "Reddit has long had staff who have worked hard to provide a better mod experience, but the will to improve this has never come from the top, and Reddit has yet to fund them to the extent they need to," one employee said.
  Illustration of a Reddit logo on a mobile phone with a laptop behind it
  Reddit.
  Getty Images
  On top of that, Reddit hasn't been able to fully integrate Spell's technology since its acquisition, two employees familiar with the matter said. One employee described Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, as having pushed through the acquisition despite opposition from vice presidents and directors, as well as bringing its founders as vice presidents and directors "despite Reddit not needing more of either."
  Leadership shake-ups
  Reddit had some leadership changes earlier this year. Jack Hanlon, who was the vice president of feeds, AI, search, and data, parted ways with the company in March, he and the company confirmed. Hanlon led product and engineering for several areas of the company, including machine learning and data science.
  In May, Reddit's head of data science, Jose Lobez, was replaced by Tyler Otto, who'd joined Reddit from Hipmunk, a travel website Huffman founded.
  Three employees described Lobez's departure as a surprise, as he was well liked within the data-science organization. "He basically grew the data-science organization himself — a big cultural figure internally," one said. They described Lopez as "pretty open both with reports and about the org as a whole," adding that he "helped deal with interorganization disputes pretty well."
- I have out an archive link into the thread body for your convenience.

Thanks for sharing this

Product road maps changed in May as the company focused on the API changes and on boosting content creation by users.
Yeah... The api debacle totally boosted content creation...

Here's another archived version if needed.
- Thank you! The paywall bypass link OP provided didn't work for me with a "secure connection failed" error.

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