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Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

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Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#91

Post by wodenokoto »

braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

I think you put it very elegantly in the first paragraph but I disagree with the rest.

The problem is much worse. The owners of Yahoo don't even want a tech giant. They don't even want a company, they want to sell it as scrap.

That's a tough environment to work in when you are hired to run a company.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#92

Post by thieving_magpie »

braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

Agree that beating up on MM serves no purpose. But what are you saying? They should slim down in every business sense of the word and focus on X. What is X?

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#94

Post by crikli »

GlideCleanser wrote: post #73
crikli wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mayer is a prime example of what happens when someone whose career should have peaked at COO becomes CEO. You see it all the time in sports when guys who are brilliant technical coordinators get moved to head coach and subsequently flounder. There's more to being CEO (and head coach, to continue my analogy) than technical proficiency and strategic capability. There's a mix of requirements that are hard to quantify: h…

> There's more to being CEO (and head coach, to continue my analogy) than technical proficiency and strategic capability. Eh, not that I totally disagree with you, but I dunno that that's really true. There are plenty of head coaches (and CEOs) who are just so technically proficient and/or excellent strategists that their lack of charm/empathy/charisma is a non-issue. Belichick and Jim Harbaugh (say what you want, bu…

Bill Belichick and Jim Harbaugh inspire absolute confidence in their players. The teams buys in 100%. Subsequently you hear a lot of the "run through walls/gates of hell" sentiment from men they coach.

Conversely Marissa has failed to build that type of atmosphere and loyalty, referenced by the slew of departures as well as reports, both on the record and off, about the environment at Yahoo!

This is where the comparison breaks down of course: a football team is 80ish atheletes over which a head coach has personal influence over every member of the team, Yahoo! is a gargantuan corporation where Marissa's personal influence only directly affects a tiny percentage of the "team."

But...even if you don't directly interact with a coach or CEO, you either buy in to them as leaders or you do not. People do not buy in to Marissa, and I believe* that's what's at the core of why she is failing as CEO.

*believe = I can't empirically prove the statement so it's just unsubstantiated opinion and should only be given the value of that other thing that we all have.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#95

Post by WoodenChair »

SeeDave wrote: post #76
GlideCleanser wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's more to being CEO (and head coach, to continue my analogy) than technical proficiency and strategic capability. Eh, not that I totally disagree with you, but I dunno that that's really true. There are plenty of head coaches (and CEOs) who are just so technically proficient and/or excellent strategists that their lack of charm/empathy/charisma is a non-issue. Belichick and Jim Harbaugh (say what you want, bu…

I encourage you to read the book 'First Rate Madness' to get an understanding of the link between crisis leaders and mental illness. Meyer appears to be a peacetime leader, not a crisis leader. Yahoo honestly needs a nutjob the likes of Steve Ballmer to survive.

I would really enjoy seeing Steve Ballmer take a break from his basketball career to be the CEO of Yahoo! Great idea! A part of me thinks he could actually turn the place around, and a part of me just thinks it would be hilarious.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#96

Post by braythwayt »

thieving_magpie wrote: post #92
braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

Agree that beating up on MM serves no purpose. But what are you saying? They should slim down in every business sense of the word and focus on X. What is X?

That’s a great conversation to have. “Given that trying to be massive isn’t going to work no matter who’s in charge, is there something smaller that would actually be a great company? If so, what could it be?”

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#98

Post by dang »

mdorazio wrote: post #28
parfe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to do with yahoo. Mayer failing makes hn happy. Wonder why?

HN likes it when overpaid, over-hyped leaders fail in general, especially after doing massively unpopular and short-sighted things like killing work from home policies. If Mayer had actually done a good job at Yahoo and turned things around, HN would be propping her up as a hero. Instead, she proved her inexperience, inflexibility, and narrow focus make her a poor CEO for a company like Yahoo, and the board and media…

Statements about HN that could just as easily say "humans in general" should probably not say "HN".

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#99

Post by Apocryphon »

_greim_ wrote: post #82
braythwayt wrote: post #79

Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo. But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today’s investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant. Because they bought tech…

Nice insight. Seems like there's a pattern here, in which high public visibility creates expectations which push a company out of its optimal mode of operation.

Much has been made about how the financialization of our economy is wrecking the public sector. But it seems like similarly, the credo of "the investor is always right" and "the board is law" is also harming the private sector.

Re: Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

#100

Post by agumonkey »

dang wrote: post #89
irq-1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only available only certain days of the week. WTF? Hilarious. Conways law in action. "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

I recently learned that Mel Conway (the same Conway) did some of the earliest work on recursive descent parsers. http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html Appel's compiler book credits him with the invention, but Cooper and Torczon cite one earlier reference. Edit: poking around that site reveals an article which seems like it deserves a thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273710 .

Slightly related, I learned today that the 4-color theorem Appel is Compiler Appel's father.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_co...

https://twitter.com/agumonkey/status/708681730278989824

(all this after reading that prolog primer http://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.h...)

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