Yishan Wong () is an American engineer and entrepreneur who was CEO of

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

from March 2012 until his resignation in November 2014. With Niniane Wang he is also co-founder of the Mountain View coworking space Sunfire Offices, and an advisor at

Quora Quora () is a social question-and-answer website based in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that ...

. Since April 2011, Wong has been a contributing editor at ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' magazine.

Career

PayPal and Facebook

Wong worked as a senior engineering manager at

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

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 Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

as a director of engineering on projects including crowd translation. Before leaving Facebook in 2010, he took a liking to

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". In 2012, when asked about various

controversial Reddit communities Controversial Reddit communities are communities on the social news site Reddit (known as "subreddits"), often devoted to explicit, violent, or hateful material, that have been the topic of controversy. Controversial Reddit communities sometim ...

, 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." In 2013, he hired

Ellen Pao Ellen Kangourou Pao (born 1970) is an American investor and former CEO of social media company Reddit. Pao first became known in 2012 for filing a failed gender discrimination suit against her employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, a ...

to the board of Reddit as the Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships and would later recommend her as CEO. In 2014, Wong took the unusual step of deriding a previous employee who complained about the circumstances surrounding his termination in an

AMA Ama or AMA may refer to: Ama Languages * Ama language (New Guinea) * Ama language (Sudan) People * Ama (Ama Kōhei), former ring name for sumo wrestler Harumafuji Kōhei * Mary Ama, a New Zealand artist * Shola Ama, a British singer * Ām ...

. One month later, Reddit board member and YC president

Sam Altman Samuel H. Altman ( ; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator. Early life and education Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mothe ...

announced that Wong was leaving after being unable to garner support for a proposal to move the Reddit office from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

Daly City Daly City () is the second most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, with population of 104,901 according to the 2020 census. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its ...

. Reportedly, Wong "stopped showing up at the office" when the board ignored his demand. 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.

Terraformation

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

Personal life

Wong is a graduate of Mounds View High School in

Arden Hills, Minnesota Arden Hills is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 9,552 at the 2010 census. Bethel University and Seminary is located in the city of Arden Hills. Also, the campus of University of Northwestern – St. Paul ...

, and of

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is married to Kimberly Algeri-Wong who holds a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts ...

in screenwriting. Wong supported

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

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

References

External links

official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wong, Yishan Facebook employees Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Carnegie Mellon University alumni PayPal people Reddit people American people of Chinese descent American technology company founders American technology chief executives 21st-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Minnesota