Reddit CEO Says 'Idealism' Masked Poor Work Ethic in Company's Early Days (businessinsider.com)
- Reference: 0177352197
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/1647209/reddit-ceo-says-idealism-masked-poor-work-ethic-in-companys-early-days
- Source link: https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-employees-werent-working-hard-ceo-steve-huffman-said-2025-5
"We were really idealistic, and that's been good in many ways, but we were also idealistic about not being a business," Huffman [1]said on the "Prof G Pod" podcast . "Wrapped up in some of that idealism was also not working very hard," he added.
Huffman sees this as a Silicon Valley disease: "It's almost an entitlement of, 'I work at these companies, but I don't have to work very hard and I'm here for myself.'"
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-employees-werent-working-hard-ceo-steve-huffman-said-2025-5
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
"People were enjoying working here, improving the platform and only implementing things that made it better, instead of slaving away to drive up maximum profits for the shareholders at the expense of the user community. So I put an end to it and drove the platform into the ground."
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
don't forget that I cared not of the users and killed their 3rd party apps too so I could monetize everything.
But this isn't to be talked about, I am not the problem.
retention, churn (Score:1)
Say what you want about todays "engineers", but they do have one thing right, nothing gained by killing yourself with work. That's some old, blue collar work ethic where effort directly affects productivity. As much as agile and other forms of metricizing white colar work output try to force that blue collar ethic onto white collar work, those companies that continue to treat their employees like laborers will continue to suffer with high churn. Who wants to work for a slaver?
Re:retention, churn (Score:5, Insightful)
People love the stories where the CEO started in the mail room 30 years earlier. It doesn't really happen but it makes a great story.
Killing yourself for your company makes no sense in an era where the company offers no loyalty to employees. At this stage of capitalism, I think every workers needs to organize and protect themselves through collective action. And I don't think my view is all that extreme, it's a compromise in my opinion. We'll still have capitalism, and people can still own things.
But why should we accept that a contract between an individual and a multinational corporation is fair? And that one between a union and a corporation is unfair? We've been completely backwards for far too long. Negotiate from a position of strength, even if you have to do it collectively. Agreements made between parties that are on even footing are mutually beneficial. (a corporation is a kind of collective)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Talk about idealistic.
A union is just a second CEO that's raping one of your other collective holes. They have proven they are only out for themselves and there DNC CEO.
The only way to stop that mess is by being said CEO.
Not everything is a business or needs a CEO (Score:3)
You get to vote for your union governance, and members can run for office positions in most unions. It's democratic, unlike a corporation.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'd rather vote with my dollars.
Voting with your dollars is undemocratic. It creates a stratification of classes based on wealth, and the vast majority of citizens have little to no wealth. (income isn't wealth, a mortgage on your house isn't wealth). Realize that one person can afford $25 and [1]another can afford $25 million [newsweek.com]. Should one person carry as much weight as a million others? That stinks of feudalism to me.
Your idea of using our buying power to decide things is an assumption that we all play by the same rules in the free market. W
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-wisconsin-supreme-court-election-loss-2053668
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on which country you're in. In a country like the US with appalling labour laws they definitely need the unions. In most European countries with decent protection of workers rights, unions are mostly redundant and often just a PITA when they engage in pointless power-plays.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of union leaders should be given the first class Hoffa treatment.
Re: (Score:2)
> People love the stories where the CEO started in the mail room 30 years earlier. It doesn't really happen but it makes a great story .
It happens all the time. There's a [1]long history of companies either started by guys at the bottom, or run by guys that began their career at the entry level [businessinsider.com]. Wal Mart's CEO started off as a truck loader. GM's CEO started off on the assembly line. The guy running Planet Fitness started at the reception desk. Those are just the modern guys. In the past there are even more. Sidney Weinberg was a high school dropout that was hired as a janitor at Goldman Sachs. Twenty years later, he was running the company. He
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-started-entry-level-at-company-2019-7#doug-mcmillon-loaded-trucks-at-a-wal-mart-distribution-center-as-a-teenager-now-hes-the-ceo-of-the-retail-company-2
Re: (Score:2)
First, most of those didn't work their way up through the company to do that. They happened to work a job at the company as a teen or to make beer money for college, then through happenstance ended up hired as an executive after graduation, possibly after working at other places after graduation. You're not going to see the mail room guy gets promoted to lead mail room guy, to mail room manager, etc all the way up to CEO very often.
Next, for every one of those cases, condensed into one neat dreamer article
Re: (Score:2)
>> But why should we accept that a contract between an individual and a multinational corporation is fair? And that one between a union and a corporation is unfair?
Because we've seen the game play out with unions before. It isn't year zero, you know.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't work that way for the blue collar set either. Overworked people get less done and make mistakes that cost more than the extra time-served ever gains you. It doesn't matter whether the mistake is forgetting to check a corner case in your online shitposting website code or dropping an artillery shell.
[1]https://www.bbc.com/worklife/a... [bbc.com]
[1] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190912-what-wartime-munitionettes-can-teach-us-about-burnout
Oh no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being successful without being stressed out. . . what a disease. . .
But they are there for themselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
The companies do not follow the golden rule, so why should the employees? The job of the employer is to get as much "production" out of the employee as cheaply as possible. Why should the job of the employee not be the same? To get as much money from the employer while working as little as possible?
Remember folks: The employer does not care about you.
Re: (Score:1)
It's a nonsensical claim without stating what they were getting paid. Generally silicon valley engineers are paid a LOT for a high level of commitment.
Re:But they are there for themselves. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just a look into how businesses report things. This sort of unnuanced messaging might be comforting for shareholders because it seems like a simple problem to solve.
Productivity not at the pace you want? It's not the fault of our business model, project planning, etc. -- the worker bees are just lazy and we need to fix their entitled work ethic.
What a shit head (Score:3)
Everyone hates spez because he's made a bunch of shit, sellout calls. Now he says the thing he didnt build is better now that he is in charge and everyone who built it were lazy idealists. Get fucked you greedy little man. Enjoy your company's future failure.
Now Do Yourself (Score:3)
Huffman should now explain the C suite. Do they make much more compensation than the worker bees for doing even less work?
probably worked only 9 hour days (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, CEO's that make millions and have bonuses that are 10x their salary expect people to work 12 hour days, 6 day a week for 5 figure salaries that have no overtime. After all, they do that, so why shouldn't everyone else.
The fact that a CEO says his employees had no work ethic says more about the CEO than it does about the employees.
Work is a trade. I give you work in exchange for money. If you do not think I work hard enough that almost always means you do not pay me enough money.
Anyone that does not understand this trade is not a capitalist. They might be a communist, an oligarch, a fascist, or some other idealogue, but not a capitalist.
Re: (Score:1)
> Anyone that does not understand this trade is not a capitalist. They might be a communist, an oligarch, a fascist, or some other idealogue, but not a capitalist.
Anyone who does not have investment capital is not a capitalist. They might be a worker, a victim, a prisoner, or some other unfortunate, but not a capitalist.
ceo chimo (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do most silicon valley ceo's look like they drive a windowless van? This huffman character is a creeper.
> Huffman’s salary was raised to $550,000 with the bulk of his $193 million compensation package tied to stock.
> “They did this to simplify things for both the company and me and align my performance with the company’s performance,” Huffman explained.
This entitled moron wants you to believe he did 1290X the work of a salaried employee at 150k.
Re: (Score:2)
> This entitled moron wants you to believe he did 1290X the work of a salaried employee at 150k.
That's not how pay works except on an assembly line.
Re: ceo chimo (Score:2)
IIRC, Huffman was a moderator on the jailbait subreddit. So your assessment isn't wrong.
It depends.... (Score:2)
Like someone else posted here, the salary has a lot to do with things. I'd agree Reddit should maybe "go back to the old days", except it's a fair complaint if your staff was all well-compensated and yet not getting much done out of arrogance they were "irreplaceable" or entitled to the money because of where they worked.
The idea you're going to start a company and then deny it's really a company? That's just foolish idealism.
At the end of the day, you either have a business entity or a non-profit / charity
Re: (Score:2)
> it's a fair complaint if your staff was all well-compensated and yet not getting much done
They built one of the most popular sites on the interwebs, which the person who's telling us how lazy they were is ruining. Therefore it's not a fair complaint and he can get bent.
Workers = Resources (Score:1)
People don't work for a company, people are company resources, hence Human Resources.
One project I was on, the planner died (heart attack) leaving site. We were working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week. They had a new planner 10 days later.
On another project, a company called me asking if I'd like a job on a different project. Less than 2 hours later, national news announced the death of 2 engineers in an explosion. HR had called me to replace a guy who was literally still smouldering.
Not working hard e
Nobody cares (Score:2)
Reddit has had 3 major stages:
1: Hidden gem, imperfect, mostly unprofitable, driven by people who care
2: Liberal rabbit-hole, still unprofitable, but much better at censorship
3: Corporate, liberal rabbit-hole. Most interesting people left long ago.
Re: (Score:2)
That some subs are liberal leaning doesn't make the site so. They're pulling the same kind of shit like Facebook where conservatives bitch and moan while they get away with far more than liberals do. Their calls for direct, specific violence towards specific targets are ignored while liberals rack up suspensions and bans for the slightest oblique mention of violence maybe not being entirely unjustified.
Now I'm talking about administration actions and site bans, but when it comes to subs intensely hostile t
Good for you, Steve (Score:2)
Many of us have a life outside work though, even if you do not.
fuck reddit & their ideologically motivated b (Score:1)
reddit has absolutely no respect for the united nations universal declaration of human rights articles 18,19 and 30?
Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes f
Wait... why weren't they working hard? (Score:2)
Idealism doesn't make people work less hard. Lots of idealistic people kill themselves to get work done.
"He recalled telling employees: "Look, we have to work really, really hard. We're in a competitive space.""
Working really hard doesn't equate to making money. You can work yourself to death and still fail.
"The CEO said that he, too, didn't like being rushed as an engineer but that setting realistic deadlines was part of his maturation as a leader."
You know what else is a part of mature leadership? Inspiri
And it was better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should go back to that kind of work ethic. Reddit has been on a steady decline since those days...
Re:And it was better! (Score:4, Insightful)
It means that when there is crunch time for a release of a "product", in this case technical updates to an existing platform, you are expected to work after hours and be ready on a moment's notice to do some hardcore coding for extended periods, which can in fact be considered working hard.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not do all that work on a regular schedule, instead of forcing it all into a last-minute "crunch time"?
Re: (Score:3)
> Why not do all that work on a regular schedule, instead of forcing it all into a last-minute "crunch time"?
Depends how literally you're asking this question. In a sense it's because, within current organizational, cultural, and economic constraints, this is the most efficient way to do things, but that's a truism.
Some of the factors:
Estimating projects is hard / inexact and software teams are almost always doing something that's "new" or "new to them" which makes it somewhat harder.
Most people tend to procrastinate and are motivated by deadlines (some real, some artificial and a lot of project management in p
Re: (Score:2)
> It means that when there is crunch time for a release of a "product", in this case technical updates to an existing platform, you are expected to work after hours and be ready on a moment's notice to do some hardcore coding for extended periods, which can in fact be considered working hard.
Say this to any junior investment banker, and watch them laugh in your face. Neither is right, staff your fucking companies properly, but coders aren't working hard if crunch time isn't all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
In many cases, especially for game developers, crunch time *is* all the time; The industry is replete with stories of folks needing to work 60hr weeks or more for months on end.
And those coders would laugh right back at your junior investment bankers if you tell them they aren't working hard.
Re: (Score:2)
right until the point the bankers showed them the paycheck.
ok to work if you are getting paid.
Re: (Score:3)
On a similar note, maybe the problem getting productivity out of employees lies in the philosophy that an employee "killing themselves with hard work" is a productive employee.