Reddit’s first-ever chief product officer, Pali Bhat, is leaving the company in “the coming months,” spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt confirmed to The Verge. Bhat, a former Google executive, joined Reddit in October 2021.
“His tenure was about as clear pre / post test as we could run,” CEO Steve Huffman said in an internal message about the change provided by Rathschmidt. “He developed a culture of execution, built a talented team, raised the bar, and navigated some of the most challenging and important moments in our history.”
The company is actively looking for a new product leader, Rathschmidt said. In the meantime, COO Jennifer Wong will oversee user growth initiatives, CTO Chris Slowe will oversee engineering, and Huffman will “continue to” drive Reddit’s long-term product vision. “We’re still focused on expanding globally, building a great ad product, improving search, and making the core product better,” Rathschmidt said.
Bhat has served as CPO as the company rolled out initiatives like features to make Reddit simpler and an AI search tool. His time also overlapped with the huge protests on the platform over API pricing that forced popular apps like Apollo to shut down – protests that Reddit eventually crushed. Last month, Huffman said in a long post that the company is planning core product improvements, updates to moderation tools, and updates to search – let’s just hope that the next CPO also wants to keep old Reddit around.
