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

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

#81

Post by Kluny »

exelius wrote: post #62
GuiA wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Coding is different from normal work though, isn't it? I mean, if I have 3 hours of data entry ahead of me, I get in the zone almost instantly and crack through it at high speed with little difficulty, take lunch, then go on to the next thing. I've never had 3 hours worth of emails or administrative work to do, but I imagine it to be the same. 3 hours of solid code, on the other hand, takes a special day of the office being unusually quiet, at least half an hour to get in the zone, and at the end of it, I'm done for the day. It's not just my own arrogance, is it, to say that "code" work and "admin" work are two completely different categories that ought to be evaluated differently?

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

#82

Post by arcticfox »

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…

This may be true, but I don't think Mayer is a great example of excelling. Maybe if she had a different approach than answering random emails in the middle of the night, her tenure wouldn't have gone like it did.

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

#83

Post by exelius »

GuiA wrote: post #65
exelius wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I work with major company C-suite guys on a regular basis, and while not everyone is the "4 hours a night" type, they're definitely overrepresented. Keep in mind I don't see this as a positive thing -- I think it's unhealthy and sets a bad example for your employees. But there are some people who just have more stamina, and that's something I've had to accept. I have less stamina, so I need to be more effective with the time that I do have and delegate work to others.

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

#84

Post by rogerbinns »

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…

Note that they are also doing a different kind of work. Paul Graham's essay on Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule - http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html - is a good highlight of the differences. (It covers what both sides take to get into the "zone" etc.)

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

#85

Post by likeclockwork »

exelius wrote: post #62
GuiA wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think you're right and people aren't productive working 10 hours a day.

Occupants of executive positions aren't expected to actually produce anything.

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

#86

Post by 1024core »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #38

I'm no biz-geek, I probably can't name a dozen CEOs. But for years, MM's name was called put in every critical mainstream headline about Yahoo, of which there were many. I do not believe that's an accident. I do not believe a man would have been treated the same way.

> I do not believe a man would have been treated the same way.

This. Larry Ellison fucks around on a sailboat. Larry is busy with "X" for years. And no one bats an eye.

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

#87

Post by cookiecaper »

exelius wrote: post #62
GuiA wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Most people are lucky to squeeze 3 hours of actually-useful work into a single work day. In your average office, the rest of the 8-or-10-hour work day is burned on socializing with colleagues, responding to and reading emails, attending interviews, trainings, or other rote meetings not specifically related to one's job, traveling around the building, eating, taking restroom and Facebook/reddit breaks, and so on.

I don't think this number goes up as you expand the requisite work hours or push people against their will. I think people just find increasingly creative ways to avoid real work while still filling the butt-in-chair requirements.

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

#88

Post by marcosdumay »

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 get your point about wanting people to be all-in. (Must make for a good sign for everybody to stop being it, but yes, it's a point.) But this:

> 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.

Committees don't save failing companies. They also don't steer successful companies.

In fact, the one thing you can expect from a committee is business as usual. And if your company is already failing, that's failure.

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

#89

Post by Bartweiss »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #74
Bartweiss wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy this argument. There are reasons for acqui-hires, but it's usually to bring on board a strong existing team, a world-class domain expert, or a tech base with employee support. Summly was none of those. They got one 17 year old dev, and a fairly-decent product they made basically no use of. I don't know how good D'Aloisio is, but he's not that good. Especially without the kind of status and support…

> I don't know how good D'Aloisio is, but he's not that good What does that even mean?

It means that if you're acqui-hiring, you're paying a massive premium to get good talent you couldn't get another way. I'm saying that nothing about Summly suggested that it was worth spending $30,000,000 for 18 months of the sole employee's time.

I wrote it that way to point out that I'm not calling D'Aloisio a bad hire or a bad developer. He's got a good reputation, and Yahoo News Digest (his big project there) was actually really well received.

Rather, it wasn't worth the commitment Yahoo made for him, because he wasn't taking on the kind of sweeping rework or major new project needed to help with the death spiral. It fit into the general pattern of grabbing shiny new things at high prices, without really chasing the outcomes in users or revenue that might have mattered.

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