Reddit Hires Its First-Ever Product Chief From Google

Reddit has announced the addition of Pali Bhat to the company’s executive as the internet company’s first Chief Product Officer.

A 15-year tech veteran, Bhat will report directly to CEO Steve Huffman and lead the product team as they create new tools and features for the website known as “the front page of the internet.”

In the company’s announcement, Huffman added that “As a part of our leadership team, he’ll build on our critical work to offer new ways for people to contribute to endless conversations that encourage authentic human connection.”

Bhat joins Reddit from Google where spent the last 10 years leading teams across a wide array of core services, including Google Assistant and Google Pay. Most recently, he led an almost thousand employee team as the VP of Product and Design for Google Cloud. Before his time at Google, Bhat held senior roles at SAP Labs and McKinsey & Company.

Reddit’s userbase has grown quickly over the past couple of years, ending 2020 with 52 million daily users, up 44% year-over-year. While this quick-growing userbase is still much smaller than Twitter and Facebook, the new features and tools Bhat and his team dream up will help Reddit retain its current users and continue its growth.

“I’ve long admired Reddit and am energized to build on the work the team does to help millions of people around the world,” Bhat stated. “Being part of the Reddit team enables me to bring together my passions for community, creators, and technology platforms -- and provides me a unique opportunity to contribute to Reddit as it scales its platform and expands its user community around the world.”