Reddit denies openning office in Kyiv (CORRECTED)

Editor’s Note: This is a corrected version of the story originally published on Feb. 24. We have changed the headline and parts of the story. The Kyiv Post reached out to Reddit while preparing the story, but the company couldn’t immediately respond to request for comment. On March 2, Reddit told the Kyiv Post it wasn’t opening an office in Ukraine and that its employee gave journalists inaccurate information.

Kyiv has again proven to be an enticing destination for international tech companies. Giants like Viber, Google and the Amazon-owned firm Ring – to name a few – have already put down roots in Ukraine’s capital, and now one more big player may be joining them.

U.S. social platform Reddit, which positions itself as “the front page of the internet,” has been reportedly planning to open an office in Kyiv, tapping into the pool of Ukrainian tech talent.

“We chose Kyiv because there are a lot of technically skilled engineers who are interested in product development,” Reddit’s senior user experience designer Pavlo Grozian told Ukrainian online tech journal AIN.ua on Feb. 21.

Grozian claimed Reddit plans to employ about 10 people in Ukraine by the end of 2020 and will create more jobs for mobile developers in the future. Recruited employees will work for the Special Projects division, but the company has not disclosed further details, Grozian said.

However, in a March 2 comment to the Kyiv Post, Reddit spokesperson Leigh Ann Benicewicz said that Grozian “misspoke” to the journalists. According to her, Reddit has two Ukrainian contractors who work from a co-working space called Creative Quarter in central Kyiv,  Grozian and software engineer Aleksey Yashchenko. But the company has no official office in Kyiv, and it is not planning to open one.

“We currently do not have any full-time staff located in Ukraine,” Benicewicz said. “If we hire further in the region, it is only contractors and not full-time employees. The employee who spoke to AIN.ua did not have proper information.”

Reddit isn’t popular with Ukrainians – people usually use Google if they’re looking for discussion of a certain topic, rather than Reddit.

Reddit is the 13th most visited website in the world, according to U.S. web traffic analyst Alexa Internet with nearly 1.5 billion users visiting it monthly. In February 2019, the company was valued at $3 billion.

Reddit consists of communities known as “subreddits” — there are over a million of them — and each covers a different topic. Because of its popularity and relative anonymity of users, Reddit is known for its “leaks” from big corporations and government.

The platform is also a direct way to get an answer from almost anyone in the world: Co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates, the 44th president of the United States Barack Obama and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson are the best known for replying to users’ questions.