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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

#121

Post by freyir »

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…

I'm not sure what you're "correcting" in the original post.

The only difference I see is that the author said Marissa removed the turnstiles after reading an email complaint, and you say she removed the turnstiles after looking at them.

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

#122

Post by nsxwolf »

outworlder wrote: post #108
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…

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. That increased her stature in my eyes, and those of quite a few other engineers. Ok, now that is amazing. That speaks more about her culture and background than a hundred random actions.

Oh wow! She used pine! Freakin' pine! She sent the company down the tubes, but... holy shit did she ever read her emails in a terminal!

Also: Way to dogfood Yahoo Mail. Shows how much faith you have in your own products - as CEO no less.

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

#123

Post by freyir »

k__ wrote: post #103
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).

Seems to me like she was the "I say hello to you by first name in the morning but lay you off anyway" kind of CEO Worked with a bunch of such people. Always nice in the front.

Layoffs suck, but in some cases they're necessary. It doesn't really have anything to do with being nice or mean.

The alternatives include treating people poorly and laying them off, or treating them well and not performing the tough part of your job as CEO. Neither is better.

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

#124

Post by burkaman »

Bartweiss wrote: post #76
burkaman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seems like a funny place to cite that concept. The studies identifying it find it in roles like lead counsel or political candidate (which, at a glance, are both limited initiatives with well-defined success conditions). Meanwhile it specifically wasn't found for turnaround CEOs: "A 2007 study of corporate performance preceding CEO appointments showed that women executives are no more likely to be selected for p…

I think the evidence is sort of mixed. Here's an article responding to the study that quote came from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984315...

As for explanations that could explain this particular case: Men are more likely to get another chance at a CEO job, so they can afford to turn down a crisis position.

When an organization is in crisis, they are likely to look for a candidate as different as possible from the CEO that caused that crisis, and hiring a woman tends to send a very visible signal that the organization is going in a different direction, even if that's sort of a sexist assumption.

I think there are more likely explanations than the directly sexist idea of "male board members don't respect women and use them as scapegoats".

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

#125

Post by jessaustin »

bdavisx wrote: post #57

Her performance ranking program was so badly implemented by Yahoo’s ugly layers of middle management that it deserved every bit of the mocking and criticism it got, both on devel-random and in the tech press. I think one thing that could possibly "save" Yahoo would be to fire every single middle manager and above immediately (and probably most of the 1st line management as well), and then rebuild the management from…

Haha it would be great to see a troubled company try that. One suspects that we'd hear it more than see it however, as the great wailing and gnashing of teeth by PHBs would be audible on other continents. It would have to be a completely vendor-driven company, however... er, excuse me, "a company that concentrated on its core competencies". After all, the paychecks still have to go out, for the peons left after the great firing, and you can't just give the bank accounts to some random person.

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

#126

Post by burkaman »

seanalltogether wrote: post #26
burkaman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's definitely a reasonable explanation. Her only real opponent was a woman as well.

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

#127

Post by k__ »

freyir wrote: post #123
k__ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like she was the "I say hello to you by first name in the morning but lay you off anyway" kind of CEO Worked with a bunch of such people. Always nice in the front.

Layoffs suck, but in some cases they're necessary. It doesn't really have anything to do with being nice or mean. The alternatives include treating people poorly and laying them off, or treating them well and not performing the tough part of your job as CEO. Neither is better.

I know. But look what she did to Yahoo, doesn't seem to me like a bunch of people losing their jobs did help anyone.

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

#128

Post by Mendenhall »

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.

I could completely understand that feeling. Right now im nowhere near her scale but I answer emails at 1 am on a sunday. For me now it is just how I am wired, I want to do it. I also see a difference between being a ceo/owner and "working". I can make decissions all day and answer questions, to me it doesnt feel like work. Now to sit down and design\illustrate for 15 hours straight every day forget it, I burn out. Its like no one who does hard physical labor for 10-12hours a day answers emails at 1 am on sunday lol. For me there is a difference in the "work" being done.

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

#129

Post by ebbv »

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…

> It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years

Why? That is $50mil/year which is an insane amount of money for any one person to receive. Yes you can point to tons of examples of people earning even more, but that's still way more money than most people will ever see in their lifetimes per year to fail.

It's a total cop-out to say that "Well Yahoo was already failing when she came in and nobody could turn it around!" She was hired to turn it around. She did fail at the job she was hired to do. It doesn't matter if it was impossible, she took it on and she's getting tons of money despite failing. For me her compensation is one thing but the truly objectionable part is the $50mil golden parachute. And it's not just her, tons of execs that fail at their jobs get these golden parachutes and it's awful. She's just the latest high profile example.

If I take a developer position at a company with terrible project/team management, terrible culture, nasty legacy codebase, etc. and I do a bad job I'm still going to get fired. I'm not going to get a massive golden parachute. I might get two weeks severance. I'm not going to get a full year's severance.

Combine that cushy parachute with salary that is so out of sync with what the average person makes and yeah, people are going to go "What the fuck?" It shouldn't surprise you.

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

#130

Post by collyw »

outworlder wrote: post #108
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…

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. That increased her stature in my eyes, and those of quite a few other engineers. Ok, now that is amazing. That speaks more about her culture and background than a hundred random actions.

FFS. Judging people based on their email client?
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