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

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

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 was an advisor at

Quora Quora is an American social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can post questions, answ ...

. Wong was briefly a contributing blogger to ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' 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 E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

from 2001 to 2005. He is a member of PayPal's early group of employees known collectively as the

PayPal Mafia The PayPal Mafia is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies based in Silicon Valley, such as LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTu ...

. In 2005, he joined

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

as a director of engineering on projects including crowd translation. Before leaving Facebook in 2010, he became an active

user and posted often.

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, Wong said that the site should offer a platform for objectionable content: "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 Kangru Pao ( Chinese: 鮑康如; born 1970) is an American lawyer and businesswoman who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of the social media company Reddit from 2014 to 2015. Since 2016, she has been the cofounder and CEO of the non ...

as the Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships and later recommended her as CEO. In 2014, Reddit board member and YC president

Sam Altman Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI, briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023). He ...

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

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

Daly City Daly City () is the second-most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its northern border with almost all of San Francisco's southern ...

. Reportedly, Wong "stopped showing up at the office" when the board of directors ignored his proposal. 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 2020, Wong founded Terraformation to combat global warming through reforestation.

Personal life

Wong is a graduate of

Mounds View High School Mounds View High School is a public high school located in Arden Hills, Minnesota, United States. A part of the Mounds View Public Schools district, the high school is located in a suburban area approximately nine miles north of downtown Minne ...

Arden Hills, Minnesota Arden Hills ( ) is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 9,939 at the 2020 census. Bethel University and its seminary is located in the city. Also, the campus of University of Northwestern – St. Paul straddl ...

, and of

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

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 admi ...

in screenwriting. Wong supported

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

and spoke favorably about Obama's familiarity with the Internet.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wong, Yishan Facebook employees Living people 20th-century births 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