He actually sold out early in a much more obvious, objective way.

Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast on October 31, 2006, for a reported $10 million to $20 million. Huffman remained with Reddit until 2009, when he left his role as acting CEO.

That’s a tiny fraction of his current compensation. He then spent a while backpacking around and started a mediocre company that’s since closed down.

He is neither a shrewd businessman, coding god, nor visionary genius. He’s just some guy that was in the right place at the right time.

The same is true of practically every executive pocketing grotesque compensation, with the only difference being “the right place at the right time” is more often “in a rich woman’s womb” or “at an extremely expensive school”.

He isn’t being paid $200 million a year for his talent. He’s being paid $200 million a year because instead of paying staff better wages, or not enshittifying the site, or paying moderators and content creators, he simply pocketed that money for himself.

It’s what this neoliberal utopia always is. Executives stealing workers wealth and claiming they earned it for stealing so much wealth.