Reddit Chief Engineer Bethanye Blount Quits After Less Than Two Months On the Job

Reddit’s chief engineer Bethanye Blount quit just days after interim CEO Ellen Pao left the high-profile online community.

In an interview, Blount confirmed her departure after only two months at Reddit, after coming there from Facebook. She said her move was not directly linked to Pao’s exit, but noted that she had lost confidence in the new direction of the company.

The unsettled situation at Reddit underscores the difficulty its management has had controlling the sprawling and bumptious community that has been created, and also the challenges in making it into a business (Reddit is owned in large part by Condé Nast).

In addition, Blount’s leaving means Reddit has also lost yet another prominent female employee. Setting off this recent round of uncertainty, Reddit fired Victoria Taylor, a well-regarded staffer who helped coordinate the site’s highly popular “Ask Me Anything” posts. That ignited a firestorm against Pao, who was appointed last fall and who resigned on Friday.

Blount said she left because she did not think she “could deliver on promises being made to the community.”

“I feel like there are going be some big bumps on the road ahead for Reddit,” Blount said. “Along the way, there are some very aggressive implied promises being made to the community — in comments to mods, quotes from board members and they’re going have some pretty big challenges in meeting those implied promises.”

These “implied promises” include improvements to tools to help subreddit moderators and addressing harassing comments and content.

Blount also said she believed Pao’s exit was an indirect consequence of gender discrimination, and that Pao was on placed on a “glass cliff.” It is a term used to describe women being set up for failure by being placed in leadership roles during crisis points.

“Victoria wasn’t on a glass cliff. But it’s hard for me to see it any other way than Ellen was,” Blount said. However, she added that “I wouldn’t say my decision to leave was directly related to my gender.”

Previously, Blount was the co-founder of the startup MailRank, which Facebook acquired in 2011. She worked for Facebook until June of this year, when she left to work for Reddit. Blount said she plans to launch a startup.

We reached out to Reddit for comment and will add when we hear back.