8 years ago
31
Dismissed Reddit Figure Victoria Taylor Breaks Silence
In a post on the site, r/IAmA's Taylor thanked supporters. Her dismissal this month prompted an insurrection in which moderators shut down many of the site's most popular sections.
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You know, I think she has a class that is one of a kind. Someone who has in business for a bit though would love to know what lead to the dismissal, I am not talking about rumors or any of that kind. Straight facts, why did she get let go?
I don't think she has said, and reddit can't, why she was let go. But I don't think you are alone in wondering.
I thought it was strange that so many Redditors demanded that Reddit explain her firing. As much as I would like to know, that isn't the sort of thing companies typically share with the public.
It's not that I want them to explain her firing, I just tend to look at it as business as usual and being a guy who has fired people, I have never ever fired someone with out reasonable cause. Can I agree with how the Admins handled it? Not really, but still corporations are pretty much all the same...
As someone who has had to fire people in the past (you can't drink copious amounts of beer in a pharmacy) , I know it sucks and I would have rather kept it a personal issue. However, as you probably know, it becomes an issue of everyone else working below you. In Reddit's case it was the mods and the user base, and I am pretty surprised no one has talked about it.
Rumor has it that she wasn't in favor of the way things are going to go in the future of reddit. She had a different philosophy than the CEO.
She was not the only leaving/being fired lately, reddit has lost lots of admins in relatively short time and the number of incidents between the community and the admins have increased. The admins are not the only ones responsible for this, as the community also has an increasing number of self-entitled assholes, but this was not an isolated incident. There are lots of red flags that things are not well and I wouldn't exclude the possibility of Kevin Rose's spirit having reproduced and the clones being haunting Reddit's HQ.
EDIT: At least Elen Pao seems aware that she and the rest of admins have done a large series of screw ups and maybe they fix their issues. This will still not fix the community any time soon because there is a rift between content producers and the admins that will be hard to heal, while in the larger community trolls thrive a reproduce like rabbits and neither the admins nor the mods seem able to fix this.
I'm not going to rail on Pao since I dont know too much of what goes on behind Reddits closed doors. I dont expect to hear from her or Victoria about what led to her dismissal (that would be bad on Reddits part, and Victoria likely signed a contract to get her severance package, meaning she cant say anything about Reddit).
One would hope they are able to open up and have a more frank discussion with their mods an community, but being the size they are and the fact that they answer to a board now, I just dont see that happening.
I also wonder. It would be interesting if she were hied here.
Could they afford her?
The most credible leaked information we have so far is that she was against the reddit monetization strategy which mostly involves turning IAmA into video interviews (which with ads can be very lucrative).
However, what is straight fact is that Alexis Ohanian was still yesterday debating the merits of video IAmA in the ideasfortheadmins sub (the idea suggested by OP was to never do video IAmA a thing). Reddit already hired 2 guys to shoot the videos.
The IAmA mods decided to cut all admin participation from their sub which makes the video thing hit a wall.
So in the end, they gained absolutely nothing from it.
This makes sense given the recent announcements as well (ie: a "reddit special" mythbusters).
I heard the same thing. It makes a lot of sense to me. Reddit hired a venture capitalist to run the ship, not a hacker. She's there to monetize reddit, and if someone refused then they'll get fired.
She probably cannot afford to go public with the reason. I'm sure she's effectively gagged by her employment agreement. Hopefully it will leak soon.
Wouldn't it be something if she came to work for Snapzu.
I think it would be something, indeed :)
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"You can take the girl out of Reddit, but you can't take the Reddit out of the girl."
That's a good way of putting it. It's obvious that she has an insanely good track record in being a community liaison. Whoever gets Victoria to work for them next is very, very lucky to have her.
Very classy way to do it. I'm sure this had to be vetted by both sides in order to avoid breaking the NDA, but still its good that both sides have kept quiet as for the reason she was let go. That's none of our business. The thing we have a right to be concerned about it how the site is being run overall, which has been in a declining state for years.
This comment:
Doesn't feel much like breaking the silence, there wasn't any substance to the message, I was hoping to hear a little about why she and the company separated.
She may not be able to say due to an NDA or something of that nature. This might be all of the silence-breaking she's allowed to do.
As a community liaison type person, it would be very detrimental to say anything other than what she did. "I loved my job, I loved the people, I will miss you all". That level of restraint and professionalism, especially given such a high-profile departure, will server her very well for future employers, or clients if she goes solo.
I doubt that that will ever be made public. It's not really important anyhow; the protests were never really about Victoria's firing, they were merely triggered by it. They were about the total disconnect from and indifference to their userbase & especially the mod teams that are the reason that their company is "worth" hundreds of millions of dollars.
All it really told us is that she's still alive.
Good to see some word from her finally. I know we'd all like to know more of why this all happened but it's nice to hear her calmness and acceptance of the situation, however it was. I don't think we have a right to know why she was let go, and I'm sure there was a good reason, but from what I saw she was always an extraordinary figure in the reddit community. Sad to see her go.
This comment made me laugh. Nailed it.