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

What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 268 posts

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#21

Post by jazzyk »

burkaman wrote: post #17
boterock wrote: post #7

I have to admit that when she started in Yahoo, they tried to do their best to not suck that much, but I think it was too late. In a time where internet and word of mouth can punish very hard bad PR/bad UX, they tried with Tumblr showing they weren't going to screw up anymore, but still they couldn't go back to what they were before.

Yeah, Marissa Mayer is how I was first introduced to the concept of the glass cliff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff . I don't think she ever had a chance.

She was consoled with ~$200M for not having had a chance.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#22

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

bitL wrote: post #15

Sorry, so she raised comfort of some employees (which developer "on a mission to save a company" really needs free food instead of interesting challenges?) and decreased the ability to hire top talent by introducing other employee-unfriendly policies like banning remote work, i.e. working while living on Hawaii, giving superb motivation to stay at Yahoo and see it prosper. The rest seems more like a COO would do and…

I may get downvoted for saying this since it's not fashionable to say things like this but I will anyway:

When a company is going down, the type of people you need is people who are enthusiastic and team players. The last type of people you need are competent yet not so much of a team player. It's because:

1. Pampering these people will only result in lowering rest of the team's morale. 2. When a company is going down, a 10x or 100x or even 1000x developer (whatever that means) won't be able to save the company alone.

In a sense I think she was trying to filter out people who were not "all-in", because that's what it takes for a sinking ship to have even 1% chance of coming back up.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#23

Post by scholia »

wehadfun wrote: post #8

Off topic but what would the selling price for Yahoo have to be for MM to be considered a success? 20B, 100B,..

Success would have been growing revenues, instead of watching them decline.

Success would have been at least one really successful mobile app.

Success would have been not selling Yahoo....

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#24

Post by zekevermillion »

From a non-insider perspective, it certainly looks as if MM accomplished the mission. Stock price went up, and she locked it in with a well-timed sale. Her compensation package appears to have been designed to produce exactly this outcome. It's not Steve Jobs' return to Apple. But she did help the investors salvage a respectable outcome.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#25

Post by mankash666 »

pboutros wrote: post #9

That's a good read. Just goes to show that it's important to remember people's humanity, especially when all the cards are stacked against them. People have said some really ugly stuff about MM.

Yes- it's important to stay human while thousands of employees get laid off and the CEO makes a few hundred million for the valiant effort of letting good employees go

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#26

Post by seanalltogether »

burkaman wrote: post #17
boterock wrote: post #7

I have to admit that when she started in Yahoo, they tried to do their best to not suck that much, but I think it was too late. In a time where internet and word of mouth can punish very hard bad PR/bad UX, they tried with Tumblr showing they weren't going to screw up anymore, but still they couldn't go back to what they were before.

Yeah, Marissa Mayer is how I was first introduced to the concept of the glass cliff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff . I don't think she ever had a chance.

This explains the seemingly easy path Theresa May had to becoming Prime Minister following the Brexit vote.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#27

Post by yesplorer »

dudul wrote: post #20
wehadfun wrote: post #8

Off topic but what would the selling price for Yahoo have to be for MM to be considered a success? 20B, 100B,..

[ignore: Didn't they get an offer from Microsoft a few years ago for 125B or something?] I think what makes it a huge failure is that 5B is basically what they spent just to acquire one company. Edit: Based on the replies the first part of my comment is inaccurate.

No. The $125b was the valuation during the 1990s. Microsoft offered way less - $44b.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#28

Post by bitL »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22
bitL wrote: post #15

Sorry, so she raised comfort of some employees (which developer "on a mission to save a company" really needs free food instead of interesting challenges?) and decreased the ability to hire top talent by introducing other employee-unfriendly policies like banning remote work, i.e. working while living on Hawaii, giving superb motivation to stay at Yahoo and see it prosper. The rest seems more like a COO would do and…

I may get downvoted for saying this since it's not fashionable to say things like this but I will anyway: When a company is going down, the type of people you need is people who are enthusiastic and team players. The last type of people you need are competent yet not so much of a team player. It's because: 1. Pampering these people will only result in lowering rest of the team's morale. 2. When a company is going dow…

I believe what you actually need is to hire 2-3 teams of 10x developers/artists including a few visionaires and let them figure out projects that might one day become cash cows keeping company afloat (and give them massive stake in success). You need to both expose them to problems of the company so that they feel pressure as well as completely isolate them from toxic culture that brought down your company, so that they can give an all-out effort.

Imagine if that lone guy at Microsoft didn't figure out trick with 286 protected mode that allowed Windows to survive and wasn't heard by top management - we would all be running OS/2 10 now.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#30

Post by dominotw »

bitL wrote: post #15

Sorry, so she raised comfort of some employees (which developer "on a mission to save a company" really needs free food instead of interesting challenges?) and decreased the ability to hire top talent by introducing other employee-unfriendly policies like banning remote work, i.e. working while living on Hawaii, giving superb motivation to stay at Yahoo and see it prosper. The rest seems more like a COO would do and…

>introducing other employee-unfriendly policies like banning remote work

I heard for friends working at yahoo that this was perceived as positive by a lot of employees at yahoo.

for years yahoo was so directionless that there were a lots of people who were simply slacking off using wfh as an excuse. This was breeding a lot of resentment among people who were actually doing work.

Sure it might have hurt honest wfh workers but saying all companies regardless of their situation should allow wfh is not fair.

Post reply on HN