Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wang said Friday that he's resigning as CEO because he's worn out from the job.
When Reddit announced Thursday that Wang would step down from his position, it was unclear why there's a sudden change in administration.
Wang took to Quora, a question-and-answer website, to explain why he's leaving his post on Reddit. He said that the job is "incredibly stressful and draining." After two and a half years of being the chief executive, the former CEO said it has been detrimental to his health.
"If anything, I probably pushed myself way too far - as a first-time CEO, all I knew was that such jobs are supposed to be stressful, so I never really had a good baseline," Wang said in his post in Quora.
He said that the people he meet at and outside work kept telling him he looks worn out. After months, he realized that it wasn't supposed to be that difficult.
Sam Altman, president of Y Combination which funds Reddit, posted a blog entry on Thursday, citing dispute over work location to be the reason behind Wang's resignation.
"To be clear, though, we didn't ask or suggest that he resign-he decided to when we didn't approve the new office plan," said Altman.
Wang also mentioned the new office plan in his Quora post. He said, "On the office location issue: it's probably something we could have worked out."
While the team looked into moving to San Francisco, Wang felt that it will be difficult as the cost of living in the area will be too high for many employees. He said, however, that a lot of successful startup companies are based in the area.
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian comes back as the full-time executive chairman, and vice-president Ellen Pao becomes interim CEO.
"Finally, I look forward to being able to go back to using Reddit again as a regular user," said Wang.
