Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 138 posts

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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

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 .

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by valhalla »

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 actually thought MM had the right idea at first re: Yahoo! being a low-brow web entertainment portal. At one time Gweneth Paltrow was going to have her own lifestyle blog/website on Yahoo!. Even though anybody reading this comment or anyone we're close with probably wouldn't be interested in that there's a large number of US consumers who would be.

Either because of a personal bias or something else (we'll probably never know) she pulled a 180 and did things like buying the rights to every season of SNL (which was a favorite of her's growing up) and poached Katie Couric to run their news desk.

Having said all that, I don't know if I would anything different myself: If I'm bringing a tech giant back from the grave, I want to make it "sexy" again. I want the glory that comes with that. I don't want my company to be a mouthpiece for celebrities' personal brands

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

#103

Post by noir_lord »

crikli wrote: post #49
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…

"I was destined to become CEO from CTO but decided COO and second in command is the best position for me." I have a very good friend made exactly the same call. He just didn't feel he had the people skills to be the head guy...and given his slightly Aspergerish personality, he was right. So he now happily runs the company from the office of COO, as an absolutely brilliant technician, with a CEO who's smart enough to…

Another example of this working well is SpaceX with Elon Musk as CEO and Gwynn Shotwell as COO.

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

#104

Post by valhalla »

valhalla wrote: post #102
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 actually thought MM had the right idea at first re: Yahoo! being a low-brow web entertainment portal. At one time Gweneth Paltrow was going to have her own lifestyle blog/website on Yahoo!. Even though anybody reading this comment or anyone we're close with probably wouldn't be interested in that there's a large number of US consumers who would be. Either because of a personal bias or something else (we'll probably…

Here are some trending Yahoo! searches I texted to friends in July '15:

Buffalo Wild Wings| Janet Jackson | Mega Millions | Type 2 Diabetes |

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

#106

Post by redwood »

Yahoo could have been the dominant messenger. But then they killed the browser based messenger... forced you to use their terrible email based messenger. And then forced you to use their atrocious mobile app which forces you to verify phone number. They expelled at anon/safe communication before that but then everyone went to kik/snapchat/what's app/etc

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

#107

Post by ChuckMcM »

wodenokoto wrote: post #91
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.

I think that is pretty true, and since most think Yahoo! has negative value relative to their Alibaba stake, it would be interesting if they simply sold their Alibaba stake and used the proceeds to buyout the stock holders and took the remains of Yahoo! private. That would give them the breathing room to re-imagine what they could be, just as Dell has.

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

#108

Post by bane »

lisper wrote: post #87
bane wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can clarify what I mean, and it's not that she's simply ridden on other's coattails. She operated on her own and fantastically competently in what she did there. However, AFAIK, she did not originate or lead the early direction or kickoff of any of the products she worked on at Google. These were all products with directions and ideas that others put in place. She lead efforts to broaden the appeal and usability of…

> AFAIK, she did not originate or lead the early direction or kickoff of any of the products she worked on at Google. And how would you know that?

>And how would you know that?

short answer: By using google

long answer: It's pretty well known outside of Google what product groups she lead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer

"In 2005 she became Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. Mayer held key roles in Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail"

We know she didn't originate any of those things because the folks who started those products are either well known, or they predate her role over them:

- Search has a pretty well known history.

- Maps was started by Lars and Jens Rasmussen in a different company that google acquired in 2004.

- Books was started by Brin and Page

- Images was started because of an analysis of search data under Schmidt

- Google News was started by Krishna Bharat

- Google Product Search was by Craig Nevill-Manning

- Gmail was started by Rajen Sheth and Paul Buchheit

- No idea who started toolbar or iGoogle, but I'd bet an American dollar that it also wasn't Mayer.

Here's her Linkedin profile if that changes anything for you https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissamayer

Let me know if you can think of any she did have founding interest in.

This is made extra hard because she's only ever held one job in her career pre-Yahoo!

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

#109

Post by chris_wot »

ant6n wrote: post #36
linuxkerneldev wrote: post #2

I wish I could tell my customers, I just need 3 more years to solve these bugs.

I wish too that fixing those bugs last week had the same impact as turning around a struggling multi billion dollar business.

Yeah, because she hasn't had enough time already. Or made decisions that have made things worse at Yahoo.

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

#110

Post by zeemonkee3 »

valhalla wrote: post #102
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 actually thought MM had the right idea at first re: Yahoo! being a low-brow web entertainment portal. At one time Gweneth Paltrow was going to have her own lifestyle blog/website on Yahoo!. Even though anybody reading this comment or anyone we're close with probably wouldn't be interested in that there's a large number of US consumers who would be. Either because of a personal bias or something else (we'll probably…

But Gweneth Paltrow was completely unsuitable for a lifestyle blog on Yahoo! She was a college dropout!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

Post reply on HN