From what I gather Yishan went to Sama after closing the 50m round and asked for advice on company structure and whether or not to consolidate workers into one location. How/why that was even a consideration hasn't been mentioned to my knowledge.
...anyway, Sama suggested that they do phase out remote workers and consolidate everyone in San Francisco.
> to state what should be obvious, this was a decision by the company not the investors (also, the company made the decision before the round.)
i'm skeptical of remote work for early-stage startups. i'm not religious about it for larger companies; i think it works for some and doesn't work for others. if it works, great. if it doesn't, that's fine too.
the only thing i felt really strongly about (when yishan explained the challenges they were facing and asked for my advice as a friend and not an investor) was that reddit needed to be super generous to people that were unwilling or unable to move, and i think they have been.
To me this seems like it was clearly a requirement of the investors. (honestly has getting rid of remote workers ever worked out for the employee?) and you'd be naive to believe otherwise.
This time around the dispute seems to be over where the new HQ should be located. Reddit is currently in SF and Sama states Yishan wanted to move to Daly City...
So we are expected to believe that the CEO of reddit resigns after not getting approval to move the office < 50 miles away? I'm very skeptical. My guess is that Yishan was being ousted so that Alexis could eventually be CEO again. Pure conjecture but that's my gut feeling.
I read those comments as: board+Wong agreed on centralizing to Bay Area, disagreed on exact new HQ location/lease, board seems to have insisted on SF city proper, Wong wanted elsewhere. (Turns out per ~sama: Wong wanted Daly City.)
Conde Nast is not a majority shareholder in the site, so this point is moot. It was simply a professional disagreement on where in the bay area the office would be located.
Some speculated that the move was to please investors, especially after a fundraise. This announcement indicates that the investors...disagreed?