Reddit's general manager Erik Martin departs following $50M raise

Updated 10:15 a.m. PT with a statement from Reddit chief Yishan Wong.

Erik Martin, who’s been with Reddit since its early days, has decided to depart from his position as general manager after six years with the company.

Martin, who made the news official in a tweet this morning, was in charge of the popular community news sharing site’s biggest character-building moments, such as donating tons of money to good causes, leading the charge against bad tech policy like SOPA/PIPA, making Reddit the largest Secret Santa gift exchange in the world, and much more. Hell, Martin was even listed as one of Time’s most influential people of 2012 for his efforts with Reddit.

As far as we know, Reddit hasn’t issued an official blog post about Martin’s departure. Likewise, Martin hasn’t said much about the details of his departure, including where he’ll be going post-Reddit and why he decided to leave. VentureBeat is reaching out to both Reddit and Martin for more detail, and will update this post with any new information. (Update: Fittingly, Martin responded to VentureBeat to say he’ll only be responding to questions about his departure via animated GIFs on Twitter today.)

The move comes weeks after Reddit closed a massive $50 million round of funding from a handful of influential investors. Many users feared that the money would change the culture of the site — a fear reinforced most recently with CEO Yishan Wong’s decision to relocate remote employees to San Francisco.

Later, Reddit chief executive Yishan Wong provided VentureBeat with the following statement:

Erik has been involved with reddit and part of guiding the company for over 6 years, which we’re grateful for. We’ll be retaining him as a special advisor on community management issues. He’s been transitioning his responsibilities to other people for awhile now, so we don’t anticipate that much will change.