The key employee was Victoria Taylor, Director of Communications who was fired without notice.

Discussion here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_ha...

One can only speculate on the grounds for such swift termination, but this and the handling of the recent subreddit evictions suggest that Reddit has difficulty with PR (certainly ironic in this case)...

Maybe Reddit is trying to pivot, perhaps into something more like Digg?