Ellen Pao’s Goodbye Letter: ‘I Have Feelings’


Ellen Pao has released a goodbye letter after announcing her resignation from her position of CEO at Reddit. The Reddit community had been pressuring Pao to leave Reddit after Victoria Taylor, who coordinated AMAs on the site, was fired without explanation. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the backlash from Taylor’s termination was enough to generate a 200,000 signature petition for Pao’s removal from the company.

Aside from Victoria Taylor’s termination, the Reddit community was angered by other actions taken under Pao’s leadership. As The Guardian reported in May, Reddit began an anti-harrasment push, which meant shutting down certain subreddits. Many users took the action as an attempt to limit free speech on the site.

“Thank you to all the users who shared your excitement about reddit and what we’ve done and for encouraging everyone to remember the human. And thank you for making my time here at reddit an amazing learning experience.”

After a week of intense protest, Ellen Pao announced her resignation from Reddit. She had been acting CEO of the company for eight months.

Ellen Pao, however, is not leaving Reddit for the reason you may think. Rather than leaving because of all the backlash she has had to deal with, Pao says she’s leaving for a different reason. She said that the company wanted her to grow Reddit to a point beyond what she thought was realistic.

“So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles.”

Though she claims her resignation is in response to an inability to reach a user growth target, the timing of her resignation points to another explanation. The resignation is very likely in response to the tremendous amount of hate Mrs. Pao has endured. Regardless of her reason for resignation, many critics are happy to hear that Pao has left Reddit. Some users of the site have already set up subreddits to celebrate Ellen’s resignation.

Pao said that during her time at Reddit, she was inspired and at other times, doubted humanity.

“In my eight months as reddit’s CEO, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on reddit. The good has been off-the-wall inspiring, and the ugly made me doubt humanity”

Her goodbye letter ended on a positive note with a thank you to the Reddit community.

“Thank you to all the users who shared your excitement about reddit and what we’ve done and for encouraging everyone to remember the human. And thank you for making my time here at reddit an amazing learning experience.”

As the Inquisitr previously noted, Ellen Pao is expected to have received a large settlement for leaving the company.

[Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images]

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