No, it does not set a precedent that gives the reddit community too much power over the company. First, there is an implicit assumption in this question, that it was the reddit community alone who caused Ellen Pao's departure. That hasn't been established, and it is probably unknowable, other than through rumors. See Did Ellen Pao get fired from reddit? quoting Sam Altman saying that it was mutually agreed upon for her to depart. While a revolting user base and two blow-ups in two months were the most visible indications that all was not well with Ellen Pao's tenure as reddit CEO, they aren't everything. For example, Fortune asked, Can Reddit save itself by going back to the future?
One of the things that contributed to her decision to leave was that the board
“asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles.”The reddit community SHOULD have some power over the company
That is because reddit, the company, gets much of its value from the uncompensated contributions of the community. No one is paid to contribute and moderate reddit content. Also, reddit's management system is divorced from the actual content of the website. For some additional observations about the power of the reddit community, see Reddit and Wikipedia Share the Same Disease.
In Reddit’s case, the management also has a problem with the site’s contributors. They want to make money off the free work of the writers and moderators, yet haven’t supplied them with the correct tools. But tools don’t just take the form of better buttons to delete trolls and manage comments — they should go deeper. As Gina Bianchini points out, As reddit burns some hard-earned lessons on community building, the key to the discussion is revenue-sharing with users.
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