Yishan Wong

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In this Chinese name, the family name is Wong and Yi is a generation name.
Yishan Wong
EducationCarnegie Mellon University
OccupationCo-founder of Sunfire Offices
Known forFormer CEO of Reddit
Spouse(s)Kimberly Algeri-Wong
Websitehttp://algeri-wong.com/yishan
Yishan Wong
Chinese黃易山
Hanyu PinyinHuáng Yìshān

Yishan Wong (Chinese: 黃易山; pinyin: Huáng Yìshān) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who was CEO of Reddit from March 2012 until his resignation in November 2014.[1][2][3][4] With Niniane Wang he is also co-founder of the Mountain View coworking space Sunfire Offices,[5] and an advisor at Quora. Since April 2011, Wong has been a contributing editor at Forbes magazine.[6]

Career[]

PayPal and Facebook[]

Wong worked as a senior engineering manager at PayPal from 2001 to 2005. He is a member of PayPal's early group of employees known collectively as the PayPal Mafia. In 2005, he joined Facebook as a director of engineering on projects including crowd translation. Before leaving Facebook in 2010, he took a liking to Reddit and began posting there.

Reddit CEO[]

After three months of talks with Reddit in late 2011, Wong was offered the position of CEO, an offer which he claims friends met with "uproarious laughter".[7]

In 2012, when asked about various controversial Reddit communities, Wong said that the site should provide a platform to objectionable content, saying "We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it."[8] In 2013, he hired Ellen Pao to the board of Reddit as the Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships and would later recommend her as CEO.[9]

In 2014, Wong took the unusual step of deriding a previous employee who complained about the circumstances surrounding his termination in an AMA.[10] One month later, Reddit board member and YC president Sam Altman announced that Wong was leaving after being unable to garner support for a proposal to move the Reddit office from San Francisco to Daly City.[11] Reportedly, Wong "stopped showing up at the office" when the board ignored his demand.[12] Wong, who thought newer employees would prefer to work in a less expensive area, stated that before the disagreement he had considered leaving due to an abundance of stress.[13]

Terraformation[]

In 2017, Wong founded Terraformation to combat climate change through reforestation.[14]

Personal life[]

Wong is a graduate of Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minnesota, and of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is married to Kimberly Algeri-Wong who holds a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting.[15]

Wong supported Barack Obama and spoke favorably about Obama's familiarity with the Internet.[16] In 2015, Wong suggested that he might leave the technology industry.

References[]

  1. ^ "A new team at reddit". Sam Altman blog. 2014-11-13.
  2. ^ "Reddit CEO Wong resigns, co-founder Ohanian to return". Reuters. 2014-11-13.
  3. ^ Wong, Yishan (2012-03-08). "New reddit CEO reporting for duty". Reddit. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
  4. ^ "Longtime Facebook Engineer Yishan Wong Departs". TechCrunch. 2010-03-24.
  5. ^ "Ex-Googler and Ex-Facebooker Start Invite-Only Workspace Sunfire Offices". TechCrunch. 2010-08-28.
  6. ^ "Yishan Wong - SNIPPETS FROM SILICON VALLEY". Forbes. April 2011. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  7. ^ Kain, Erik (2012-04-09). "An interview with new Reddit CEO Yishan Wong". Forbes. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  8. ^ "New CEO: Some People on Reddit 'Shouldn't Be Here at All'". Re/Code. 14 Jul 2015.
  9. ^ Cuthbertson, Anthony (2014-11-14). "Reddit CEO resignation 'so weird it must be true'". IB Times. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  10. ^ Taylor, Lin (2014-10-07). "Reddit CEO Yishan Wong slams former employee on AMA thread". SBS. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  11. ^ Kumparak, Greg (2014-11-13). "Ex-Reddit CEO wanted to move the company to Daly City instead of SF". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  12. ^ Ouellette, Jennifer. "Book tells the inside story of how Reddit came to be the Internet's "id"". arstechnica.com. Ars Technica. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
  13. ^ Mendoza, Menchie (2014-11-14). "Reddit CEO Yishan Wong steps down, here's the real reason why". Tech Times. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  14. ^ April 25; 2021; A.m, 12:05 (2021-04-25). "Terraformation helping mitigate climate change through reforestation". West Hawaii Today. Retrieved 2021-06-11.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Wong, Yishan (2009-04-18). "Things I learned from my wife's screenwriting education". Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  16. ^ Morris, Kevin (2012-03-09). "Stalking Reddit's new CEO Yishan Wong". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2015-09-14.

External links[]

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