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Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

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Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#201

Post by shitgoose »

prostoalex wrote: post #164
jinglbox wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Jobs knew that and didn't take any. 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).

right, they should pay Marissa with Yahoo (sorry, Altaba) stock. vesting in 3 years.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#202

Post by stefantalpalaru »

djsumdog wrote: post #55
akjainaj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is absolutely no indication that anybody, other than Jesus Christ himself descending from the skies mounted on a Harley Davidson in flames, could have saved Yahoo. So, bashing Marissa here would be really, really pointless and sad.

I think back to Gillard and Australia. I liked her as a PM and felt that the reason she didn't make it is she simply wasn't heartless and evil enough to fight in that chaotic, insane and corrupt political environment. Abbott was and Rudd..ugh..something something party implosion; whatever. It has nothing to do with her being a women. There just aren't many people who can put up with that endless rubbish. With Yahoo,…

> I think back to Gillard and Australia. I liked her as a PM

You need to watch this three-part documentary to better understand how she came to power: http://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/killing-season/

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#203

Post by vidarh »

jinglbox wrote: post #154
prostoalex wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Jobs was paid in the form of the NeXT acquisition and the personal vindication of being brought back and turning things around. He was strongly personally invested.

Mayer was brought into a company in a death spiral, that she had no strong personal investment in, presumably knowing very well that odds of failure were great and will likely affect her future opportunities (I'm sure she'll do fine, but I'm sure she'd have done better if she'd gone to a big success)

How many people would take the Yahoo! CEO job without a significant risk premium over their market rate?

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#204

Post by stefantalpalaru »

mortenjorck wrote: post #122
stanleydrew wrote: post #22

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.

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.

Flickr was the only service that insisted I should stop paying the yearly fee and switch to a free plan. Shortly afterwards they drove me away for good with some silly zoom and pan effect on photo views.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#205

Post by AnimalMuppet »

all_usernames wrote: post #200
stanleydrew wrote: post #22

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.

She made over $200M in salary over four years. Her risk was zero. I can see no analog here for anything a normal human being would recognize as a challenge despite tough odds.

There was a pretty major risk that her name would be tarred as "that loser who wrecked Yahoo". It might affect her ability to get any further C-level positions. That risk might not be something that a normal human being would want compensation to take on.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#206

Post by shitgoose »

prostoalex wrote: post #152
Gargoyle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The "failure" is subjective. What's objective is the stock price, which has grown from $15 to $41 under her management. As bulk of her compensation is locked in stock (negotiated at 2012 prices), it's increasingly hard for her to get compensated less while the stock has tripled in value.

all the stock growth is due to buybacks, so credit goes to Janet, not Marissa.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#207

Post by scott_karana »

uptown wrote: post #117
ubercow wrote: post #61

I wonder what's going to happen to Flickr. I still haven't found a replacement place to host my pictures that I want to show off to others.

Check out Koken. Self-hosting but it's pretty great.

Looks nice, but for some of us, Flickr is also about externalizing management of TBs of redundant storage ;)

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#208

Post by nikcub »

brandnewlow wrote: post #176
akjainaj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is absolutely no indication that anybody, other than Jesus Christ himself descending from the skies mounted on a Harley Davidson in flames, could have saved Yahoo. So, bashing Marissa here would be really, really pointless and sad.

Bashing her may also be naive. She may not have been hired to "save Yahoo!". She may have been hired to make a lot of money for Dan Loeb's hedge fund, and succeeded at that, if you believe the telling in this piece: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/marissa-mayer-biography-20... Summary: - Loeb decides he can make a bunch of money if he can invest in Yahoo!, clean out the board, and get a more compelling CEO in charg…

Loeb's thesis was simple - that Yahoo is worth a lot more as the sum of its parts as it was a combined entity. He was right - there were long periods of time where Yahoo on its own had a negative value.

The stock price was largely driven by Alibaba - hence why attributing stock growth to Mayer's appointment was misplaced.

The idea was that you sell off the BABA holding, distribute that to investors and then you end up with Yahoo on it's own which is then pivoted to being a tech company (higher PE's) rather than a boring media company.

Mayer ended up becoming far from the ideal hedge fund CEO. She kept more of the BABA sales for acquisitions than the activists wanted, she spent hundreds of millions on silly recruiting like Henrique De Castro and then spent $2.5B+ on 50+ acquisitions - all of which didn't move the needle and ended up being written down to near-zero.

That's a lot to spend for a company that had a negative value - and Mayer hastened / worsened the situation (hence why Loeb got the hell out of there when offered $29 by Mayer)

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#209

Post by stanleydrew »

Strom wrote: post #156
stanleydrew wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted since I think this discussion might be interesting. I'm wondering why people focus on financial compensation so much? Why does how much someone was paid justify more or less bashing, as the case might be? And what's unhealthy about tone policing? I'll leave aside the way you've negatively framed my attempt to steer the conversation in a more positive direction, and just say that I don't see what the purpose o…

> I'm wondering why people focus on financial compensation so much? Why does how much someone was paid justify more or less bashing, as the case might be? The payment and bashing might be slightly related, but I tend to think it's a minor factor. People focus on financials so much because that's what the western culture is built upon. The American Dream, if you will. However bashing, complimenting, or mentioning some…

> The ratio of criticism-to-compliments tends to go hand-in-hand with the person's perceived success-to-failure ratio.

Intuitively this seems accurate. Wondering if you know of actual research regarding this though?

To add to that, I think people have a hard time assessing relative success. Imagine being dropped in as the captain of the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg. If you manage to delay the sinking for an extra hour, which allows more people to escape, you are successful even if most people do drown. You're successful relative to some expected value. But drive-by armchair analysts will just see that the ship sunk and a bunch of people died and blame you.

Obviously this situation is much more complicated, since opinions will differ about whether Yahoo was in fact inevitably sinking, or whether a different captain could have helped it survive.

Re: Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations

#210

Post by shitgoose »

akjainaj wrote: post #50
Gargoyle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I suppose, there's a huge responsibility coming with that role, and you also know your name will be stained forever. But it's something somebody has to do.

their names are never stained. she will resurface in some other high profile position in no time. these C*O's live in their own universe, where common sense and peasants' logic do not apply.
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