Reddit's Head of Community quits

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ahhhh yes more reddit drama. My guess is this has more to do with the fact that her husband left reddit (was fired?) several weeks ago than her gender. But highlighting her gender is much more dramatic and headline grabbing.

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so what you’re saying is that ACTUALLY ITS ABOUT ETHICS IN REDDIT JOURNALISM.

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As much as Reddit needs to change its community management strategy I do really hate this narrative. The four women who left the company left for very different reasons. Victoria Taylor was fired. Ellen Pao and Bethanye Blount resigned after the (entirely appropriate) backlash after Taylor was fired. And now this person seems to be resigning because her husband also resigned and they want to start a new business. A perfectly common occurrence in the tech industry. Four women left the company for disparate reasons.
Figuring out how to preserve the openness that makes many parts of Reddit some of the most interesting places on the internet while stopping the parts that are some of the worst is a very difficult problem. The company appears to be doing this while also try to become more profitable. The site and the corporation are in a transition right now and employee turnover is expected. Boiling it down to ‘reddit hates women’ is false and ignores a much more interesting story about managing speech and communities on the internet.

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Who needs accuracy when you can choose to go clickbait.

Seriously BoingBoing?

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I think you’re looking at it wrong. This isn’t digging into the past of reddit to find every instance of a woman leaving reddit, but rather a quick succession of women leaving reddit during a time of high publicity on the issue.

Furthermore the question is not “how are these unrelated”, but rather what is at the core of this pattern? Even if each person has a different reason for leaving there is still the remaining question of why women are getting fired from reddit and/or unable to see a future with the company and leaving.

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Are you… disappointed in BoingBoing?

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How is the headline “Reddit’s Head of Community quits” either inaccurate or clickbait?

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Instead of being snarky at Reddit for this, why not direct it at the larger Internet in general for encouraging this behavior?

Or is this just Internet NIMBYism (it’s OK in the dark corners, but not on the dark corners of popular pages)?

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The headline isn’t, I’ll grant you, but the entire of the ‘above the fold’ is deliberately misleading. “Fourth person leaves reddit in a month” doesn’t get the same page views as “fourth woman leaves reddit in a month”, even though gender is irrelevant. That’s clickbaity, yes.

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If all four of those people are women, it’s an important part of the article. If all four of those people were disabled, it’s an important part of the article. If all four of those people were deaf, it’s an important part of the article.

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Increasingly so, yes. Aren’t you? The increasing numbers of misleading ledes and store items promoted to the front page as of they were unbiased reviews? Yes, that disappoints me. It’s not cool things anymore…

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Why is it automatically important? If they all got pushed for being female, then it’s important. If they left to go set up their own company, how the hell is their gender important?

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@jlw - we’ve got one for you.

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##Fish rot from the head.
– Ancient Proverb

via Glassdoor.

Cons

Working for a dictator
Making sweeping changes without any notice
ZERO job security
Being constantly worried about unforeseen “random” lay offs.
Management
There is a lot of politics

Management is opaque & secretive. They will suddenly change directions every so often. Also, they are fond of stealthy layoffs. One day, your teammate will just disappear with little to no explanation and your project in limbo. Instability appears to be because of squabbles within upper management.

Upper management ideas could change and when they do it comes very quick and sudden. As a result it’s not uncommon to find out that your team mate just got let go from the company. Even though, reddit is 10 years old company it lacks clear picture of future plans.

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In b4 “when did Boing Boing stop being about wonderfu”

Damn.

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Don’t worry, you still got your mojo (just don’t type with your other hand)

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maybe there’s a core issue maybe there isn’t. Do we raise questions about why men leave? When several men leave in quick succession is it evidence of misandry? The different reasons for leaving show that the core issues may not be about gender but about other issues within reddit. Or maybe it’s just change.

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I think (but don’t know) the reason for concern is tied to recent transparency reports that show the percentage of women in tech roles declining.

And in an industry that generally likes to cast itself as a meritocracy, the positioning of these two stories may be evidence of a dark truth us techies don’t want to talk about.

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