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Yishan Wong
Yishan Wong (2019)
Born	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Alma mater	Carnegie Mellon University
Occupation	Co-founder of Sunfire Offices
Years active	2001-present
Known for	Former CEO of Reddit
Spouse	Kimberly Algeri-Wong
Website	algeri-wong.com

Yishan Wong (Chinese: 黃易山; pinyin: Huáng Yìshān) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who was CEO of Reddit 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. Wong was briefly a contributing blogger to Forbes magazine.

Career

PayPal and Facebook

Wong worked as a senior engineering manager at PayPal 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 as a director of engineering on projects including crowd translation. Before leaving Facebook in 2010, he became an active Reddit 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 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 announced that Wong was leaving the company, after being unable to garner support for a proposal to move the Reddit office from San Francisco to Daly City. 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 in Arden Hills, Minnesota, and of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is married to Kimberly Algeri-Wong, who holds a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting.

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

References

1. "I was born in Pittsb…". 21 April 2012.
2. "A new team at reddit". Sam Altman blog. 2014-11-13.
3. "Reddit CEO Wong resigns, co-founder Ohanian to return". Reuters. 2014-11-13.
4. Wong, Yishan (2012-03-08). "New reddit CEO reporting for duty". Reddit. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
5. "Longtime Facebook Engineer Yishan Wong Departs". TechCrunch. 2010-03-24.
6. "Ex-Googler and Ex-Facebooker Start Invite-Only Workspace Sunfire Offices". TechCrunch. 2010-08-28.
7. "Yishan Wong - SNIPPETS FROM SILICON VALLEY". Forbes. April 2011. Archived from the original on May 6, 2011. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
8. "Longtime Facebook Engineer Yishan Wong Departs". techcrunch.com. 24 March 2010. Retrieved 2022-10-19.
9. "Reddit's chief executive resigns, co-founder returns to helm". Los Angeles Times. 13 November 2014. Retrieved 2022-10-19.
10. Kain, Erik (2012-04-09). "An interview with new Reddit CEO Yishan Wong". Forbes. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
11. "New CEO: Some People on Reddit 'Shouldn't Be Here at All'". Re/Code. 14 Jul 2015.
12. Cuthbertson, Anthony (2014-11-14). "Reddit CEO resignation 'so weird it must be true'". IB Times. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
13. Kumparak, Greg (2014-11-13). "Ex-Reddit CEO wanted to move the company to Daly City instead of SF". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
14. Ouellette, Jennifer (30 December 2018). "Book tells the inside story of how Reddit came to be the Internet's "id"". arstechnica.com. Ars Technica. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
15. Mendoza, Menchie (2014-11-14). "Reddit CEO Yishan Wong steps down, here's the real reason why". Tech Times. Retrieved 2015-09-14.
16. "Terraformation helping mitigate climate change through reforestation". West Hawaii Today. 2021-04-25. Retrieved 2021-06-11.
17. Wong, Yishan (2009-04-18). "Things I learned from my wife's screenwriting education". Retrieved 2015-09-14.
18. Morris, Kevin (2012-03-09). "Stalking Reddit's new CEO Yishan Wong". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2015-09-14.

External links

• Official website

• Facebook employees
• Living people
• 20th-century births
• 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