Should Reddit CEO Yishan Wong regret having publicly commented on the dismissal of a former employee?

To me, I don't know if it matters what the employee said or if the company should have responded to it. If the company feels they need to respond for whatever reason, that is their call.  And apparently they felt that this ex-employee could harm the company with what he was saying, so them responding to it doesn't really bother me too much. The issue to me is how it was dealt with, and I see a couple of flaws on that front. The first flaw I see is that  the CEO directly responded, Even if he was trying to defend his company's practices, this isn't really typical. Isn't this what executive managers or PR departments do? Why didn't Wong either ignore it or get one of his PR people to do this? This was an accusation by a low level employee. This doesn't deserve the white hot attention and wrath of the CEO-at least not directly. Even when companies are getting sued or have been accused by attorneys of wrongdoing, unless it's really a horrendous amount of PR that threatens the company's very viability, the CEO typically doesn't respond-that's why he has executive managers and PR people. As far as I know, termination reasons are usually directed to the employee when they are terminated, privately-they are not broadcast. I don't think there is a law concerning passing on this information to other potential employees, but the practice is typically not to comment or only confirm that the employee did work for them, because it can set up a lawsuit if the person cannot find a job. It does nobody any good to render someone unemployable, so companies won't discuss it with other employers. For those of us who are  not part of this field, this incident is probably a blip on the radar. But to the employers that would potentially be interested in this guy, he may now be someone they don't want. Part of it is his fault, going on your ex-employer's website  and venting about their motives as a company was incredibly stupid. And, since he has another job, it was pointless as well. Ya got canned. But you have a new job, so just let it go. But the CEO airing dirty laundry like that is just over the top, especially since Reddit is a very well known company.  We don't really know why this guy didn't perform-sometimes people are set up to fail with impossible deadlines and expectations or lack of resources. Sometimes the company isn't a good fit for people. Sometimes the company is such a mess that people cannot function, or the management are a bunch of impossible a-holes who fire people simply because they are having a bad day.  There are reasons why a person fails at a job that may have nothing to do with them.

It has to be a tough life of elitism (There is an answer below starting as if you have never been a CEO .....)  where you can contemplate regret as a policy. It means that it is just not there as a reflex or in this case as a deterrent. The feedback that was shoved down the ex-employee's throat as a spiteful reply on a website would have been better placed during the tenure in a much milder (read objective) form and hopefully in written and recorded instalments. He then may have known the reasons for his termination and may have probably made an effort towards correcting a percentage. All this is speculative but what is worrying is that this guy was no longer with reddit. WTF are they doing to the ones that still have a job to defend. As a CEO too one could get all kinds of feedbacks. For example, Orkut. Managers always look at performance and leaders create it through their skill of taking everyone alongside them. If this episode has generated one perception, it is .. Management is different from leadership.

No. He would not have commented publicly unless he was confident that there would be no material adverse consequences from his public comments. His response makes it clear that the ex employee has more to lose if he escalates than Reddit does.

It's a toss up. If Ehrmann can refute any part of Yishan Wong's statements about him, he may have a good cause of legal action against Reddit. And because of the high profile character of the events, a hungry litigator might well be interested. If Ehrmann has memos or job reviews that refute the statement that he "did not get much work done" or if the job candidates he interviewed tell a different story, that would be a start.

He accepted to answer questions about the job he lost He accepted to answer those questions publicly He accepted to answer those questions in the context of an AMA on Reddit Reddit is the product of the company he was fired from Yishan Wong is Reddit's CEO Taking these 5 points into account, I don't see how Yishan Wong's statement is inappropriate. As a former employee, you have the right to complain about being fired. That's what the former employee did. As a company CEO, you can defend your company's policy. That's what Yishan Wong did.

Such a point by point, targeted rebuttal will do no good for Reddit and Yishan Wong. Think about the employee who will be devastated by such a public outage. Agreed that the employee may have erred on his part in criticizing Reddit, but such a response was not warranted. Anyways who are we to judge, its a decision that has been made by the CEO of the company and I hope it doesn't come back to haunt them.

I think it was awesome. I fully support it was honest, transparent and to the point. It wasn't mean, it was just stating calmly what had been obfuscated. Far, far more people, businesses and CEOs should do this sort of honest and up front communication. I would go work there because of it.

This is a snippet from a direct reply to his post. I think it illustrates the stupidity of  commenting on the employee's dismissal the way he did. --- "In the jungle there lived a large, muscular lion. The lion was known by all other creatures to be King of the jungle. There also was a small but feisty skunk that lived in this same jungle. On a regular basis the proud, loud, and especially obnoxious skunk challenged the kingly lion to a fight. “Fight me, let us prove who is better.” said the skunk to the lion. The lion, though annoyed by this ridiculous challenge, would ignore the skunk and carry on his usual business. “Hah,” the skunk persists, you’re afraid to fight me!” “No,” answered the lion, “but why should I fight you? You would gain fame from fighting me, even though I gave you the worst beating of your life which I would do. But how about me? I couldn’t possibly gain anything defeating you. On the other hand, everyone I meet for a month knows that I had been in the company of a skunk.” http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama/cl21h0n ---

I would not have done it, but then again, I am not the CEO of reddit. It's not our place to judge him.  He made a decision that he felt was in the best interests of the company.  That's what CEOs do.  We may not agree but, in the grand scheme of things, it matters very little what we think of this particular decision.  We're not running the company, sitting in his chair or seeing what he sees.  What we are doing is sitting here judging, with an incomplete set of facts in front of us.