What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by woliveirajr » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #28

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Was OS/2 bad? :-|

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

#62

Post by exelius » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #55

deelowe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really sucks when your manager thinks this kind of work ethic is healthy.

Yes. I am very lucky to have a manager that will frequently tell me to just leave if I stay too long after 6p, and actively encourages me to do less work (which I find quite frustrating - I feel like I'm already not doing that much!). I work at a very profitable, well known company FWIW, in a fairly core role with plenty of people depending on my productivity.

In general, people aren't productive working more than 10 hours a day. Unfortunately, some people are -- and those people very often find themselves in executive positions, surrounded by other people with exceptional stamina who wonder why everyone below them is so lazy.

Fortunately, a lot of companies have realized this and started making employee retention a metric (because recruiting is expensive, especially for tech positions.) Keeping people happy is still important.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

sluukkonen wrote: post #48

bitL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. I haven't heard this story before. Got a link?

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by estebank » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

sluukkonen wrote: post #48

bitL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. I haven't heard this story before. Got a link?

Google turned this up:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/12/07/saving-w...

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

#65

Post by GuiA » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #58

GuiA wrote: post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

There's a certain workaholic personality that excels at executive-level positions. I'm convinced they simply have better genetics than the rest of us -- after 10 or so hours of work, my memory is garbage and I wouldn't feel confident dealing with anything important but some people are totally fine. Plus, you couldn't work that hard for any amount of money unless you loved the work. I'm not sure I want to be a CEO for…

I work with high level executives at a well known company regularly. Most of them are normal people. Hard working, smarter than the average? Sure. Answering emails at 1am on a Sunday with a newborn? Certainly not. In fact, my director just took a month off when his second child was born, and is taking another month off soon.

There is no "better genetics" or "sleeping 4 hours a night". That's just the media and tech echo chamber doing its thing.

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

#66

Post by robertcorey » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #37

Heh, I remember Jelena from discussion on devel-random. I would like to correct (mildly) a couple of anecdotes in her article, because I was there and closer. > A friend relayed this story: The Sunnyvale campus had a building with redundant turnstiles, which required a badge scan seconds after employees had scanned their badges to open the main doors. People complained about it when the building was remodeled years b…

Were you able to post to d-r anonymously?

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

#67

Post by treehau5 » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #58

GuiA wrote: post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

There's a certain workaholic personality that excels at executive-level positions. I'm convinced they simply have better genetics than the rest of us -- after 10 or so hours of work, my memory is garbage and I wouldn't feel confident dealing with anything important but some people are totally fine. Plus, you couldn't work that hard for any amount of money unless you loved the work. I'm not sure I want to be a CEO for…

Being a high level executive does not require the type of Deep Thought that being a software engineer requires. Not to say that CEO's and such are all shallow thinkers, but they have to respond to multiple streams of information at all times (Which is why I think women make great CEO's, there are many studies that show women are better multi-taskers).

* This is also articulated well in the book "Deep Thought"

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

#68

Post by gaius » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #30

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 wor…

This was breeding a lot of resentment among people who were actually doing work.

Serious question: what work? Everything tech at Yahoo seems to have been in maintenance mode at best for a decade. New products that never saw the light of day?

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

#69

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

sluukkonen wrote: post #48

bitL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. I haven't heard this story before. Got a link?

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

[deleted]