(in my opinion)

Incidentally, in the comments here, `upwardbound` had an interesting plausible take on this familiar link. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657334

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

I expect grand promises, nothing delivered, and a personal enrichment agenda that harnesses a cult of idiots while ruthlessly silencing/bankrupting critics.

One thing that successful people are often good at is taking their good luck and portraying it as a genius master-stroke of planning that no-one could have foreseen.

Claiming to have actually engineered the string of leadership crises that engulfed Reddit is a bit far-fetched, and I suspect just bragging and taking credit for something that just happened.

Did they ultimately benefit from those crises? Clearly, they were opportunistic.

But actually engineering that as some kind of master-plan comes across to me as an attempt to puff up their ego.

It comes across as sociopathic regardless of how much is fact or fiction.

Then there's also the possibility that, if he starts to feel "not liked" by the population, that he'll go into full Elon Musk mode and use his power to become the greatest pal of Elon and Trump and use the tools to suppress what he doesn't like, as a retaliation for the lack of love. If you look at his interviews, he barely shows friendly emotions, as if he's got some empathy-problem.

It could become quite dangerous.

HN removes the "?context=3" when submitting the link as a post, which is why I have to put it here in a comment.

Credit to dalant979 for surfacing this, which they did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41652513

    In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.

    Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager [named Yishan Wong] with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, [Yishan Wong] would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.

    Once this was done, [Yishan Wong] and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.

    JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.

My understanding of what Sam meant by "I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot" was that he was conveying respect for Yishan essentially out-playing Sam at the end (the two of them are friends) by distancing himself (Yishan) from the situation and any potential liability in order to leave Sam "holding the bag" of possible liability.