Nineteen years since its founding, the social media site is finally going public.

We live under corporate feudalism

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    $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.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      4·
      6 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.

    • casmael@lemm.ee
      3·
      6 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.

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      6 months ago

      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.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 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.

  • PugJesus@kbin.social
    4·
    6 months ago

    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?

    • HarriPotero@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 months ago

      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.

  • DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyzEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    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”

    • Stamets@lemmy.world
      21·
      6 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
      1·
      6 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.

  • pedestrian@links.hackliberty.org
    1·
    6 months ago

    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
      3·
      6 months ago

      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

  • qooqie@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    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.