Yishan Wong appointed CEO

In March 2012 Reddit named Yishan Wong its chief executive, the first dedicated CEO of the company after its September 2011 spin-off into a separate subsidiary of Condé Nast parent Advance Publications. Wong arrived with a heavyweight engineering pedigree: he had been a Director of Engineering at Facebook and earlier an engineering manager at PayPal, and he was brought in largely to help the fast-growing but under-resourced site cope with scaling, hiring, and infrastructure demands.

Wong's roughly two-and-a-half-year tenure spanned a period of explosive traffic growth and several defining controversies, including the Violentacrez/creepshots episode, the Boston Marathon misidentification, and the 2014 celebrity photo leaks. He became known for staking out a strong, largely hands-off free-speech position for the platform. He resigned in November 2014 after a dispute with the board over the cost and location of a planned office move, and was succeeded on an interim basis by Ellen Pao.