161–170 of 383 posts
Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship. Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.
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I don't really mind people failing. I do think there's something wrong with someone earning massive amounts of money to fail and then everyone saying, "Oh well, anyone would have failed in that role." Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?
Because it wasn't the expected outcome. Or, at least, there was a chance that things could be saved. The high risk is even more reason to offer huge compensation. We can only see in retrospect that it was doomed to failure.
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As an enthusiast photographer, she did one great thing in my book: She oversaw the attempted revitalization of Flickr. The old Flickr product and UI had stagnated for the better part of a decade, and under her administration, Yahoo rebooted a lot of the core experience. Some parts were rebooted more successfully than others, but on the balance, it was for the better.
She did the bare minimum that needed to be done to keep flickr alive, I'm not sure it's worthy of praise. Flickr is currently comatose or dead, given that they haven't updated their mobile app in over a year, let alone anything else on the site. Yahoo could've used flickr to pre-empt YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram all in one, but Yahoo instead neglected it and ran it into the ground. I feel bad for the engineering…
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> If he had failed he would have wasted years and got nothing in return. Steve Jobs' personal wealth is mainly from Pixar (acquired by Disney) and less from Apple, especially after SEC shut down the goldmine of backdated options http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/01/snow...
Yes, and he was already rich from previous money he made in Apple's early days. Just like Marissa Mayer was already rich from Google stock. Neither needed the money at all. Jobs knew that and didn't take any. Mayer for some reason took as much as possible.
His total grants from 1997 and until death amounted to 5.5 mln AAPL shares (one would have to multiple this number by 7 to account for 2014 stock split).
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> If he had failed he would have wasted years and got nothing in return. Steve Jobs' personal wealth is mainly from Pixar (acquired by Disney) and less from Apple, especially after SEC shut down the goldmine of backdated options http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/01/snow...
Yes, and he was already rich from previous money he made in Apple's early days. Just like Marissa Mayer was already rich from Google stock. Neither needed the money at all. Jobs knew that and didn't take any. Mayer for some reason took as much as possible.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/12/09/maris...
I wish there was a real alternative to search. I use DuckDuckGo, but I believe they run on AWS and purchase index data from Yandex et. al. At this point, is it even feasible for anyone to enter the general search market, or has Google simply set the barrier to entry too high? Are there any niche search engines that focus on things Google has either removed or doesn't index? Are there other alternatives besides DDG, S…
What I miss about Yahoo! in the early days was explorability. Many sites were categorized. You could browse a category or find a site you liked and explore from there.
Well, at least they registered Altaba.com. No IP address as of now, though it looks like their mail is handled by Google Apps!
AHHAHAHAHAHA wow
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> If he had failed he would have wasted years and got nothing in return. Steve Jobs' personal wealth is mainly from Pixar (acquired by Disney) and less from Apple, especially after SEC shut down the goldmine of backdated options http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/01/snow...
Yes, and he was already rich from previous money he made in Apple's early days. Just like Marissa Mayer was already rich from Google stock. Neither needed the money at all. Jobs knew that and didn't take any. Mayer for some reason took as much as possible.
We don't need a narrative of sacrifice to glorify an exec with. She has a family, 100 different wealthy suitors if she were to look, and the board approved the compensation because they thought it was worth the risk of turning the company around. The reason was because she could and had to reason not to.
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> If he had failed he would have wasted years and got nothing in return. Steve Jobs' personal wealth is mainly from Pixar (acquired by Disney) and less from Apple, especially after SEC shut down the goldmine of backdated options http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/01/snow...
Yes, and he was already rich from previous money he made in Apple's early days. Just like Marissa Mayer was already rich from Google stock. Neither needed the money at all. Jobs knew that and didn't take any. Mayer for some reason took as much as possible.
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Not sure why a "good faith effort" requires taking such a crazy amount of personal risk. Yahoo was willing to pay millions to the exec they thought had the best chance to turn the company around. She should have declined that and and unnecessarily played on Extra Hard mode instead?
That's why the responsibility was on the board to find somebody willing and capable of playing Extra Hard.
Turns out it's not.