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

#161

Post by pfarnsworth » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #101

tlogan wrote: post #50

> Yahoo is a Failure, but Marissa is a Success I have to be living in some alternate universe. Because in my universe, if you do not accomplish the goal (revenue grow) you failed. It could that the goal was too hard to achieve, maybe the goal was impossible to achieve, etc. But, at end of the day, she failed. And as result of her failure people will lose their jobs :(

> And as result of her failure people will lose their jobs They will most probably get jobs again like they did earlier. Life is full of ups and down, you can blame one person for that..but try not to.

She gets paid $50M/yr for the sole purpose of being held to blame and credit for everything that happens.

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

#162

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:22 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #88

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 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…

To be fair, I can't think of any significant tech company coming back from near death, except Apple. But we all know that's an exception.

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

#163

Post by pfarnsworth » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:22 PM UTC

iopq wrote: post #141

excitom wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" if you burn through your cash reserves doing those things and now you don't have any money, that doesn't do anything for you since you burned all your cash - even if employees and customers are happy the first rule should be "make money", the second rule should be "spend less money than you make" if those two…

Not true. Sometimes shareholders want metrics like Return on Equity, which forces the hand of management to sell profitable parts of the business... but not profitable enough. That's the insanity of trying to maximize shareholder value.

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

#164

Post by freyir » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:22 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #127

freyir wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But look what she did to Yahoo

You say this like she single-handedly took down a healthy company. It's possible she went in with the best intentions, and worked her hardest to rescue a sinking ship.

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

#165

Post by ebbv » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #150

ebbv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, yeah this same excuse is always used to justify insane executive pays but it's baloney. It's a self perpetuating cycle, "Oh WE Have to pay more because companies X, Y and Z are offering $N million!" Executive pay has skyrocketed in relation to worker pay over the last 30 years and it's not for any good reason like executives are so much more important or talented. It's because the executive pay is decided by bo…

Market supply and demand is another big part of it. And you are responsible for the fate of mega $$$ corps. If you can create something more efficient you would outcompete those companies.

I get that a lot of people think that's how the real world market works, but it isn't. Look how long it took Yahoo! to die. It hasn't been relevant for over a decade but it has coasted by on pure momentum, and even as its dying it throws 1% of its purchase price to the CEO as a parting gift.

Entrenched corporations have a lot of momentum and a lot of power. Taking them on is nearly impossible. Tesla has only been able to do what it has done so far because Elon Musk was already a billionaire and willing to risk his entire fortune on it. The Model 3 is obviously in high demand but even so the future of Tesla is far from assured (they have an enormous ramping up of production to do. I have hope they can do it but it's far from guaranteed.)

Verizon and Google made attempts at competing in the telco industry and have basically both failed miserably. Comcast, Charter and TWC continue to dominate the entire country and instead of competing with each other grant each other regional monopolies and try to merge.

The game is rigged and it's not in the favor of the average person.

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

#166

Post by ebbv » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #135

ebbv wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>She's just the latest high profile example. She's attracted an order of magnitude more vitriol than any of the other "tons of execs." It's her that HN chooses to complain about. It matters which instances you choose to be vocal about. And it's extremely suspicious, to say the least, that an industry which insists it has no sexism problem because men are just better at it, spends a great deal of time and energy attac…

I'm not going to deny there's a rise in misogyny on the internet recently with the MRA b.s. but personally my objections to her pay are the same as every other executive. I can't speak to anyone else's motivations.

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

#167

Post by kalsk » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #130

outworlder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The only thing that should matter is which text editor she uses.

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

#168

Post by drstewart » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #145

sokoloff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executives have [employment] options. If you believe you need a talented executive to have a chance at turning around your company and your company is in dire straits, you may very well have to offer a golden parachute package to have any hope of engaging the services of the talented exec you seek, particularly when that's the norm at that level. Failing to offer such terms amounts to forfeiting any chance to hire th…

Yeah, yeah this same excuse is always used to justify insane executive pays but it's baloney. It's a self perpetuating cycle, "Oh WE Have to pay more because companies X, Y and Z are offering $N million!" Executive pay has skyrocketed in relation to worker pay over the last 30 years and it's not for any good reason like executives are so much more important or talented. It's because the executive pay is decided by bo…

What sort of regulation do you propose?

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

#169

Post by finid » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:30 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…

>She was the best CEO of all the ones Yahoo had seen

So the best CEO Yahoo! has ever seen couldn't turn the ship around. does that say more about the state of Yahoo! or the competence of the CEO?

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

#170

Post by 1024core » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #129

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…

> She did fail at the job she was hired to do.

But did she? The market had valued Yahoo's core assets at -7B (that is, negative 7 Billion), if you added all of Yahoo's assets and compared it to the market price. But she sold those same assets for +5B. That's a decent turnaround, isn't it?