Capping a stormy and controversial stint as interim chief executive officer of Reddit which culminated in a mass user protest in recent weeks, Ellen Pao has resigned from the company. The apology post laid out several promises about how reddit’s management wanted to move forward, but user unrest continued; a petition on Change.org for Pao’s removal stands at about 213,000 signatures as of this writing (with about 200,000 of those signatures coming in the last week).
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Regarding Huffman, the statement posted on Reddit said: “We’re very happy to have Steve back”.
Advance Publications, parent company of The Oregonian and OregonLive, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.
In a public statement released this afternoon, reddit board head Sam Altman praised Pao.
Embattled reddit CEO Ellen Pao has stepped down from her position at the privately held company, effectively immediately.
“In my eight months as reddit’s CEO, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on reddit”, Pao said in a separate posting on the site.
Pao also called the decision mutual.
“It became clear that the board and I had a different view on the ability of Reddit to grow this year”, Ms. Pao said in an interview. “We couldn’t come to an agreement on that and I decided to step down”.
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Pao achieved notoriety through a sex discrimination lawsuit filed against her ex- employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
