Saying spez is such a victim here seems quite wrong.

If spez is going against the will of the board/shareholders he’ll be fired any day now…

First off, nobody made him raise $1.25bn. He traded his autonomy for money.

Secondly, people aren't necessarily mad about him charging for the API. In my experience, most users want Reddit to succeed financially. He could have easily figured out a way to roll this out in a better way.

People are mad he's been caught lying multiple times and has at this point decided to declare war on the thousands of people (the mods) who do free work for him, in order to pit users against the mods.

You just called the board clueless so maybe they're just not strong willed as far as how to handle this sort of thing. Its hard to say who's pushing for what just from the actions alone.

>We have no idea what he really feels about everything going on

"My bank balance is going to look so good once we finally IPO", probably.

But he sold is original shares in 2006. All of them, and for cheap. Any shares he has now are part of his CEO compensation package which is minuscule compared to the investors

Even though he’s a cofounder, his current position is like the one of a non founder ceo in a post-exit company

So only tens or hundreds of millions of dollars? Got it

He won't end up a billionaire, but I'd be shocked if he won't come out this with a multiple of his current net worth. This is, if he's there for a successful IPO, which is growing more doubtful by the day.

He's been CEO for eight years... that's plenty of time.

It's not like he was brought on 18 months ago just to get the IPO done.

That is a very generous interpretation of his actions.

He’s (at this point) a non large shareholder CEO. His income is highly dependent on the board not firing him every single day. It’s not a great situation to be in

Poor miserable spez taking in multiple millions every year in salary. He'll die without that income! Such a terrible situation to be, to simply be a millionaire.

Do you realize how tone deaf that sounds?

Isn’t he already a millionaire? I doubt he’s living paycheck to paycheck.

> It’s not a great situation to be in

I'll give it a shot!

No way. spez is the one hamfisting this whole thing.

Yes Sam Altman paid Condé Nast millions for shares of Reddit. And he totally is against all this. But the all mighty spez is ignoring him and doing everything he wants

Sure

It doesn't seem likely that spez is being specifically ordered to lie and slander in the way spez is currently lying and slandering

I'm not sure who you mean, but if it's sama, he's no longer the CEO of YC nor is he on the board anymore. (I don't believe Garry Tan, the current YC CEO, is on the board of Reddit.)

This seems like it's implicitly painting a false dichotomy between an implied autonomous Spez that is causing damage and a subservient Spez that is just a name attached to board action. How about this, if Spez is being asked to do stupid things by the board, he's failing extraordinarily to even cushion them with PR, which is the actual least he can do.

>We have no idea what he really feels about everything going on

Idk he's made his views quite clear at this point. Although he may edit them and everyone else's comments again.