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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

#111

Post by pavlov »

GuiA wrote: post #59
pavlov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that she was getting paid tens of millions each year to do that job. (Sorry if I'm making a wrong assumption about your salary!) The original post makes Mayer sound like one of the most people-centric CEOs in the business. The contrast to someone like Léo Apotheker at HP is stark (just to pick a random tech CEO who seemed like the exact opposite).

Oh yeah, I get that if I were a CEO paid hundreds of millions I wouldn't have much time to feed the fish in my backyard. I just find the glorifying of answering emails at 1am on a a Sunday a little crazy, that's all.

It's the kind of thing that a CEO in a startup will often do because he/she cares and has an overwhelming personal involvement in the company. (I once was in that position for a tiny company of a handful of people, and I would write emails at 1:00 on Saturday night.)

It's rare to see that carried over into a tech giant. I imagine Larry Ellison does something rather different at that point of his weekend than responding to individual worker bees' concerns.

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

#112

Post by excitom »

stinkytaco wrote: post #44
scholia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Yahoo is a publicly traded company. Selling Yahoo went very well for the shareholders and the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. I think it's very clear that the goal when she was hired was to sell the company and get the shareholder's some payout. Considering where the company was when she came in, I'd say she did an admirable job at this. You might say that's not success, b…

> the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value.

It always bothers me to see this, as I feel it is the reason many companies decline. The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" since happy employees help implement the first rule. If rule one and two are achieved then as a side effect shareholder value is maximized.

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

#113

Post by dragonwriter »

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'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.

IME, male CEOs of formerly-high-flying-but-now-struggling companies are treated the same way that MM has been.

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

#114

Post by pboutros »

mankash666 wrote: post #25
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

That's exactly the sort of situation I'm referring to.

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

#115

Post by scient »

mankash666 wrote: post #25
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

"Good" tends to be very subjective. Actually good people rarely get let go, unless there is a very good reason. At the same time almost everyone who gets laid off thinks they are a very good employee, which obviously is not the case.

And execs get paid for the expectations and responsibility. You are just being salty right now.

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

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

1024core wrote: post #86
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.

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

If Oracle's valuation was less than the combined valuation of holdings it owned in other companies such that its core business had an apparent negative valuation, there'd probably be more negative attention to Larry's extracurricular activities.

When you are seen to be succeeding, no one questions your methods -- success implicitly validates them. That's not about sex or gender, its about apparent success.

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

#117

Post by telesilla »

ufmace wrote: post #98
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…

That's what stuck out to me the most. I'd rather work for a CEO/manager that communicates through actions that it's perfectly fine to go home at 6 and ignore work until you come in the next morning.

The right kind of CEO does that by not requiring that you copy her behaviour. It is her prerogative to work all through the night - I had a co-founder who was similar, but I work best in the mornings. It did take us a while to come to a mutual agreement on who was working "more" but once we did it was smooth sailing. We never, ever asked staff to work outside of hours unless in emergencies or with paid overtime and mutual agreement. And in fact, they pressured us back to take time off, and worked with us to make sure our own work was covered (where possible). It was a great environment I am fostering further: hard work comes in small, rewarding bursts, the rest of the time is to support others doing that hard work or having some mental downtime with less challenging work.

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

#118

Post by scient »

lintiness wrote: post #90

$200M for handing out free lunch, a self-esteem boost, a poorly implemented personnel ranking scheme, and a few emails at weird hours ... sounds like a pretty sweet deal. sign me up!

Salty about never making a management role, eh?

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

#119

Post by jessaustin »

woliveirajr wrote: post #61
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…

Was OS/2 bad? :-|

Everybody I knew who used it said it was better than Windows, but that's sort of a self-selecting crowd. More to the point, OS/2 wasn't a M$ product, so that sort of success for it would have been bad for M$.

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

#120

Post by yosefk »

1024core wrote: post #91

It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years. The spotlight has always been on her, and her failings are magnified beyond reason. Is it because she's young woman and pretty? I was at Yahoo from 2004 through 2015. I saw some seriously stupid CEOs. One of them being Terry Semel. He made more than $200M in just one year (and even more, according to rumors). Here…

Ballmer is white & male (well, like Semel, probably not white enough for white supremacists, but apparently white enough for the purposes of this discussion), MS market cap didn't shrink under his tenure, but he gets a lot of criticism for missing growth opportunities that others capitalized on.

Why is he criticized more than Terry Semel? I dunno, probably 'cause nobody cares about Semel any more?

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