On Reddit, in my opinion, spin and the degree of transparency matter long after the fact. This is everyone who cares to know right now. What happens when there's a front-page TIL post or relevant blog post in a few months? Reddit and PR can be a time bomb.

What would you have had them do? Make a full blog post for every single employee they hire or layoff? Have the entirety of the site (which is already hypercritical of the admins) mull through and critique every single personnel decision?

They didn't try to hide the fact that he was laid off, and he's now obviously free to come talk here and on twitter about the circumstances surrounding his departure from the company, I really don't see how this is a transparency issue.

Yes, agreed. I don't think there is necessarily anything bad or wrong about what happened. Writing a blog post about "we're cancelling cryptocurrency and firing the enginer" would have made it into an even bigger deal than it is. The way it is happening, people who care about it hear about it, and people who don't care don't have to bother.

That's a good question and point. The thing is, you're right: It's not a transparency issue in the real world and it wouldn't be for any other company. But Reddit's not the real world. Reddit's much angrier and much more conspiratorial, especially when it comes to things that ostensibly are about the "community" and "giving back" on behalf of the admins.

Yes, but that's hardly reason to purposefully feed the flames of reddit conspiracy theorists by making a more high profile announcement. And if there is a /r/TIL post down the road that starts a witch-hunt it's not like they have a ton of fuel, the guy who was fired talks about it in a very calm and non-accusatory manner.

Sorry, but again, what would you have rather had them do? I don't see anything wrong with the admin's choices on this

Another piece of drama that happened last year was that reddit let a former employee go, who made an AMA about it, and then Yishan publicly criticised the former employee. The new leadership is probably very, very hesitant to say anything about anybody who was let go - they don't want to repeat that mistake.

IMO CA employee defamation law should really be changed: http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2igkke/reddit_ceo_ca...