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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

#211

Post by ethbro »

yosefk wrote: post #120
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?

Because Yahoo pissed off fewer people than MS of that era? CEOs are proxies for their companies, for better and worse.

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

#213

Post by stinkytaco »

jessaustin wrote: post #106
0xmohit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pico being the default editor for pine would make a natural choice. I wonder how can someone who prefers console-based email clients ignore mutt.

If I went back to the console for email, I'd probably use pine, just because that's what we used in college.

I used pine until 2004. Then I moved on from where I was and was forced into the world of webmail since there wasn't much else for me then. Inertia is strong in my world, I wonder if I could go back?

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

#214

Post by smacktoward »

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…

There's a simple reason why you'll never see this strategy attempted: who decides which people get fired? Middle management and above.

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

#215

Post by throwaway_xx9 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #122
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.

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.

The posting from nsxworld is un-informed.

One of the few good things that Mayer did as CEO was to ban Outlook and force Yahoos to fix ymail and dogfood it. I much prefer ymail today over gmail.

Whether she used pine or not is a separate thing, but with her email volume likely would make sense.

In every other way she was a failure though - from micromanaging hiring and approving each resume to "redesigning" the Yahoo logo instead of monetizing tumblr and the smaller controversial businesses she overpaid for.

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

#216

Post by ethbro »

bogomipz wrote: post #180
superuser2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

That's a slippery slope right there. I don't care about Yahoo or celebrity CEO culture at all. But I also feel like people should be able to express their opinions on a CEO and not be worried that doing so constitutes being labeled a sexist if the CEO happens to be a woman. There have been many males CEOs that have been derided as well - Bezos, Jobs et al so lets keep this in perspective. Star CEOs with their insanel…

I think this issue the other poster is referring to is whether we should act to decrease sexism (their argument) or ignore sexism (your argument).

There's no right answer, but the other commenter has a point that if sexism is what causes Mayer to appear more often in stories about underperforming CEOs with exit packages (sexism), and we comment negatively on all stories of the like (neutral), then we become complicit in generating a sexist culture. Essentially because sexists chose the only things we saw to comment on in the first place.

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

#217

Post by peeters »

nsxwolf wrote: post #122
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.

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.

The dogfood argument is just such bullshit. Just because you make a product, doesn't mean you're the target audience for that product. It's great to dogfood where you can, but that should not get in the way of your productivity if it's not the right tool for the job (and is not meant to be).

I'm reminded of the April Fool's joke a couple years ago where the lead of the Subversion project announced they were switching to git. It was actually a really mature response, I was really disappointed it was just a joke.

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

#218

Post by sokoloff »

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…

I think the market for CEOs is more like the market for sports stars (MLB pitchers, NFL quarterbacks, and the like).

If the Yankees are offering $100MM over 5 years, why would an MLB pitcher sign for $5MM over 5 years with a second market team? Even $1MM/year seems absurd for someone to throw a ball 65' a couple hundred times per day for a few dozen days a year. Conversely, why would the Yankees pay that much to someone when there are hundreds of minor league pitchers who would all jump at the chance to pitch in the show for the league minimum? Because it's important to get the best (or among the best), rather than someone who is simply adequate and meets the minimum requirements.

Is there some amount of board collusion in some company somewhere? I'm sure of it. Is board collusion driving CEO compensation across all industries? I doubt it.

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

#219

Post by scholia »

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…

> 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.

No, it went badly. If she'd been able to increase sales, and if she'd launched one or more successful apps, Yahoo would have been more valuable. In fact, they might even have sold Yahoo for more before she spent loads of money buying lots of companies and writing down their 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.

Don't think so. You'd be welcome to provide some evidence for that claim, but the publicly stated aim at the time was to turn Yahoo around. She failed badly at that.

Yahoo: The challenges facing new boss Marissa Mayer By Matthew Wall Business reporter, BBC News 17 July 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18867477

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

#220

Post by forgetsusername »

nsxwolf wrote: post #122
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.

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.

Really. Is the bar so low on CEO performance that we credit them for removing turnstiles and changing the cafeteria menu?
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