Yishan Wong resigns; Ellen Pao becomes interim CEO

On November 13, 2014, Yishan Wong abruptly resigned as Reddit's CEO after roughly two and a half years in the role. The trigger, by his own account and contemporaneous reporting, was a dispute with the board over a planned office relocation: Wong wanted to move headquarters out of San Francisco to Daly City, while the board pushed back on the cost and demanded data on how many employees would relocate. Describing the disagreement as comparatively minor, Wong concluded the friction signaled it was time to step aside.

Ellen Pao, who had joined Reddit in 2013 and served as Wong's head of business and partnerships, was named interim CEO. A former venture capitalist then in the midst of a high-profile gender-discrimination lawsuit against her old firm Kleiner Perkins, Pao took over a company grappling with rapid growth and unresolved moderation controversies. Her tenure would prove turbulent and short, marked by new anti-harassment policies, the banning of several subreddits, the firing of Victoria Taylor, the AMAgeddon moderator revolt, and her own resignation in July 2015.