Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

temphn wrote: post #185

TylerE wrote: post #84

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No, that's exactly how I took it. Oblig car metaphor: That's like saying hey, as an alternative to a free Lamborghini Aventador, you can have an old Pontiac Fiero chassis, and a Chevy 350 with a blown head gasket. If you're really lucky and amazing you might make something worth 1/10th what the Lamborghini is.

Not really a good metaphor. Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and many more entrepreneurs chose to start a second company rather than take a C level job somewhere else. A better analogy is whether to adapt an off the shelf piece of code to scratch your itch (often a reasonable choice) or to write your own from scratch, clean slate. The latter is much more risky, but that fits a certain personality.

Post by technoslut » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 1:42 PM UTC

curiouscats wrote: post #288

PakG1 wrote: post #262

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I really don't understand why people are saying she won't get a reputation hit from this if she fails. Every other CEO trying to steer Yahoo right so far in recent history has a black eye and had to leave in relative disgrace. None of them had the superstar status that she has right now, but the fact is, none of them were allowed the conclusion "well, Yahoo was just too screwed up anyway". I'm not convinced that she'…

I think because people believe at this point it is taken that failing at Yahoo would hardly be surprising. For 2 reasons: 1) the company is in much worse shape (especially in reputation) than it was when previous CEOs failed to turned things around and 2) after a bunch of people try and fail the stigma of failing is likely to be reduced. Also here reputation is so positive that failing at a task many think is going t…

Post by SatvikBeri » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 1:43 PM UTC

drumdance wrote: post #266

SatvikBeri wrote: post #246

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Look at the previous CEOs of Yahoo. Even excluding Scott Thompson (who lied on his resume) NONE of them have even held executive positions, or done anything significant in the business world. It doesn't seem like people forgave them just because Yahoo is a horrible mess.

You mean, since leaving Yahoo? In that case you're probably right. Carol Bartz did great things for Autodesk.

Post by obtu » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:19 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #313

larrys wrote: post #206

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"someone with a fresh viewpoint on how to transform the company" Prior to joining google in 1999 as employee number 20 "Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California" (wikipedia) for what appears to be only a few years. (She graduated high school in 1993, received a B.S. and and M.S. which must have taken at least 4 or 5 years afaik). My guess…

The other thing that I would be concerned about is her PR appeal. I have no idea who Google employee 19 or 21 is, and I have no idea what she actually did at Google, except that it sounded important. Yet I've heard of her, would probably recognize her in a news picture, and remember her name. I've had the opportunity to work with people who were very good at personal public relations, and based on that experience, I'…

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:43 PM UTC

pwaring wrote: post #299

ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

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Sure, there isn't really an enforceable non-compete in California, its one of the things that makes Silicon Valley, well Silicon Valley. Second there is a sort of hubris around 'the best revenge is beating them at their own game.' I know of at least two founder/co-founder pairs that split over different ideas about how the vision should go and rather than try to sue the other out of existence, the sense of invulnerab…

Even if non-competes are enforceable, sometimes it will make more sense for a company to let an employee go straightaway anyway, rather than having them hang around twiddling their thumbs with no motivation.