this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024

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391

Reddit Files to Go Public, Reveals That It Paid CEO $193 Million Last Year (www.thedailybeast.com)

submitted 8 months ago by MataVatnik@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We live under corporate feudalism

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[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 165 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

$804M in revenue... $286M to CEO and COO pay alone... so just two officers are worth 35% of the company's annual revenue? Not profit, because it isn't profitable, but just base revenue. Not even Elon Musk is paid that high a percentage of revenue.

Even ignoring the fact reddit doesn't pay anyone for moderation, and all their other reliance on community freebies... That's insane.

And they want to go public with that info? They believe that's a financially sound position to be in heading into an IPO? Spez is even more stupid than I thought.

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 36 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

It’s impossible to underestimate Spez’s intelligence.

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[–] casmael@lemm.ee 26 points 8 months ago

Yeah I didn’t really have a frame of reference for this but I was shocked to discover that Tim Cook was ‘only’ paid 62million usd last year. (!) Looking at the success of both companies, Huffman’s pay seems wildly out of proportion.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 16 points 8 months ago

And lost $90M overall. As a certified financial genius, I know how to make Reddit profitable, and it has nothing to do with AI.

[–] RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

And they want to go public with that info?

99% of the users left there won't care about this. People here obviously do, but those are the ones that left because of the API debacle. I'd hope they start caring but I am pretty certain they won't.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

I'm not talking about reddit users. They have no bearing on public investors frankly. Investors don't give a shit about users, just profitability. And an unprofitable company with no end of unprofitability in sight spending 35% of their limited revenue on two executives is ridiculous.

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[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

His buddies are probably shorting it.

[–] Liz@midwest.social 9 points 8 months ago

If he weren't so stupid I'd say he's probably shorting it. I'd be shorting it if I had an investment account that could do that sort of thing.

[–] Hobbes@startrek.website 3 points 8 months ago

I haven’t been on Reddit in a very long time. I wonder if this story or any like it or getting posted on Reddit and surviving for more than five minutes before they’re pulled.

[–] PugJesus@kbin.social 101 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Public filings also showed that Huffman and Reddit’s chief operating officer, Jennifer Wong, were paid $286 million in 2023, including stock and option awards (the value accrues over several years, and the current cash value is substantially lower).

Over a FOURTH of the company's yearly revenue is going to TWO people?

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 35 points 8 months ago

Well, it's not like anyone here ever gave them free labor, right?

[–] HarriPotero@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The article states that part of the compensation was stock and stock options. Likely incentive programs from previous years that finally paid off.

edit: looks like spez got 600k salary, and the rest of the compensation is solely based on the stock's performance.. and he can't cash that out unless someone is willing to buy all that reddit stock.

[–] Coreidan@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I have no doubt some really dumb bag holders are willing to hold more bags.

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[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

What are they supposed to spend it on? Developing and implementing features that users and moderators actually want?

[–] LopensLeftArm@sh.itjust.works 93 points 8 months ago (1 children)

TL;DR - Spez is a greedy little pig boy.

[–] DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz 41 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Fuck you, spez.

[–] STOMPYI@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Fuck you spez

[–] DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz 76 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Jesus fuck, no wonder they never break even. "the site is expensive it doesnt return its investment we need to add spambots and superads, and also remove gold and completely ignore user needs"

[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 54 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Absolutely insane. Considering how shitty their UI is as well as them not paying their mods. This an incredibly naked theft of labour. This is many times more appalling than the 3rd party app debacle.

I went on the reddit post for this article. There is a lot of resignation from the people there, not anger like before. Most of them don't seem to know about the fediverse but I can tell they are truly seeing the death of Reddit and are not sure what to do. As much as I would like to I refuse to make an account to spread the word.

Anyway, I think this is an indication that we will be seeing further growth here on Lemmy.

[–] scrion@lemmy.world 44 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Even if they paid the kid only, I dunno, $100 million, how many community mods could have been paid with the remaining $93 million?

How anyone can believe that it is possible for any single person to do something so meaningful in the same 24 hours we each share every day that they deserve payment so drastically disproportionate, so...disgustingly obscene, really, is beyond me.

[–] Nougat@kbin.social 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Math time!

Let's use nice round numbers to make this easy. We're going to pay community mods a salary of US$100,000.00.

Now, keep in mind that the cost of labor to a business is much more than just salary. Employees need technology, 401K matching, health insurance subsidies, an HR department, management, company stock programs, training - all sorts of things. Again, to make this easy, we'll say that each community mod costs the business another US$100,000.00, at least in the first year. (I would expect that kind of cost to diminish as an employee gains tenure, even if it never vanishes.)

This means that for every US$1M Reddit decides to spend on human capital instead of a CEO whose job appears to be largely centered around cuntery, you get five community mods. Since we are referring to diverting US$93M, that would give us 465 community mods.

This doesn't work perfectly, since employees generally like to be paid in cash, while executives (who already have all the cash they'll ever need) are much more willing to be compensated with stock options and other similar non-cash strategies. Huffman certainly got some kind of pre-IPO stock grants and/or options that make this IPO very personally rewarding for him, and which cost Reddit US$0.00. (One of the drivers of inflation is how public companies get to essentially print money by issuing stocks.)

All that said, you can keep that kind of math in your back pocket whenever you become aware of any executive salary. Every million dollars one dick swinger gets would employ five well-paid workers (or ten who can live independently with some level of comfort). That executive who gets $200M a year? Half of that would put 500 people to work, and not impact the quality of life of the executive at all.

[–] MxM111@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago

When I once in a while visit Reddit for one of those particularly tailored adult subreddits, I still use old.reddit.com. It is amazing how they managed to screw up UI and still did not fix it.

[–] Octospider@kbin.social 60 points 8 months ago

Content Creators (Users): $0.00
Moderators: $0.00
Spez: $193,000,000

"Fuck you, got mine".

[–] qooqie@lemmy.world 52 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I haven’t been on Reddit since the API mess. How are most users reacting to this news? I would assume either not happy, but ultimately don’t care or ignorant completely.

[–] flipthetube@lemmy.world 43 points 8 months ago

It is and has been a mainstream site for a while now. It’s followed the same trajectory as Facebook. The typical user only cares about the topics that interest them. They have zero interest in what’s happening in the background and are fully accustomed to being blasted in the face with ads 24/7.

[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Recommend reading some of the comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/eEL6RLmxkx

[–] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. Similar comments between Reddit and Lemmy on this topic. Like very similar but the tone on Reddit is of the victims whereas here we are wondering why they are still over there when they do not have to be.

[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

From what I gathered the vast majority of them don't know the fediverse exists. Lot of "where do we go". But I saw a couple of comments mention it.

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[–] IdiosyncraticIdiot@sh.itjust.works 50 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It's super depressing that Aaron Swartz is just straight up ignored as a co-founder these days.

I hope for a slow and painful death to Reddit.

[–] Stamets@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Spez removed him from the founders page on reddit a year or so after he became CEO. The most recent time.

[–] thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev 6 points 8 months ago

I love that Aaron Swartz is mentioned anytime Spez is mentioned. Aaron will always be a hero to me, and Spez is the antithesis of everything Aaron stood for.

[–] DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works 38 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Fuck Spez, what an asshole

[–] STOMPYI@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

Fuck spez

[–] STOMPYI@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Fuck spez

[–] Arthur_Leywin@lemmy.world 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What's he gonna do with 193 million, trickle down economics? -_-

[–] STOMPYI@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

trickle deez nutz on spez and all oglirarchs

[–] pedestrian@links.hackliberty.org 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

From the article:

"Public filings also showed that Huffman and Reddit’s chief operating officer, Jennifer Wong, were paid $286 million in 2023, including stock and option awards (the value accrues over several years, and the current cash value is substantially lower)."

Were they actually compensated that amount in cash? Or is this assuming that the stock value actually amounts to something.

Obviously compensated too much, but it looks like the compensation total is being obfuscated for shock value.

[–] naught@sh.itjust.works 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

He was paid $341,346 in cash. The rest of the compensation is basically monopoly money until they IPO, and even then it depends on the valuation, strike price, etc. Very much a clickbait tactic since most people don't ever deal with options at a scale like this, or at all.

Source

[–] STOMPYI@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

Let's just agree on one thing here... fuck that snot bag spez...

[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Stock options. Which means the valuation is completely arbitrary tbh. It probably isn't worth nearly that much and that's probably why they gave themselves that much. Theyre likely overvaluating themselves. Because as soon as they go public, or as soon as they try to unload these stocks, their value will probably plummet.

Either way, these are stock options they could have given to their mods, it literally costs them nothing.

[–] cpp_hleucka@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

Fuck you, Spez

[–] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Delusional. Feudalism. Reddit 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[–] bedrooms@kbin.social 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Reddit for reference

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

"We'll need an alternative but it doesn't exist!"

Lulz

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

Read through the Reddit thread until I hit your exact comment... Seriously? I swear only the fucking moron masses remain. I don't pity anyone who continued using Reddit after the API fuckery.

They protest about the corporations tone deaf exploitation and monetization of their content... By posting more content for the corporation to monetize... 6+ months after the corporation shat all over them and told them to go fuck themselves.

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[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

For me this is way worse than the 3rd party apps. It's interesting reading the comments there, they know it's over yet they probably will still stay there. It's like an abusive relationship.

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