He lives in a bubble and he's certain that following Musk's example will make him richer. But what he fails to understand is that, while reddit is massive and people are addicted to or reliant on it, if it stops producing high-quality content, it's going to eventually be replaced by something else. Hopefully, by the fediverse.
I feel like the main step he's forgetting is that he wanted to install an interim CEO to make these unpopular changes so they didn't happen directly at his direction, so that the dust up can be laid at someone else's feet...after which he can swoop back in, replace them with himself again, not reverse the changes, and avoid the blame.
Not that she was great, but I do kinda feel bad for the way Ellen Pao got dicked over by Huffman and hated by the community.
He's been quoted saying it was a mistake to only get $15 mil when they sold reddit the first time. I bet he has a ton of stock options tied up in this and just wanted to cash out as much as he could now and be done. His greed (and mouth) probably got the better of him and it'll end up costing him. He'll still get richer from the IPO, reddit will be around for years and is valuable to advertisers, but he had a shot at being a billionaire if he played his cards right, that's pretty unlikely now.
Twitter and Reddit have really thrown the idea that the "elite" are somehow smarter or more competent into disrepute. They are literally just ideologues.