Someone once told me: "Never tell anybody that you're good. If you're good, they'll tell you."
Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#12Some things they mention should be done at every tech company: 1. Give employees free lunch 2. Give every employee an iphone 3. Github for code review
I wouldn't say GitHub is the best system for code review. Pull requests work OK for open source and outside contributors, but I'd rather use Gerrit instead.
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#13Some things they mention should be done at every tech company: 1. Give employees free lunch 2. Give every employee an iphone 3. Github for code review
Actually, I wouldn't be terribly happy if my company gave me a daily free lunch. It would be a disincentive to get out of the office and away from my co-workers once a day, which is something that I think makes me happier and more productive. (I work in a big city, where diverse types of food are a short walk away. If you work in an office park in Silicon Valley, I can see why a free lunch might be more appealing.) A…
> It would be a disincentive to get out of the office and away from my co-workers once a day, which is something that I think makes me happier and more productive.
If stepping away from your coworkers makes you happy and productive, your company has bigger problems than charging for meals.
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#14So far all of Marissa Meyer's moves (at least the one's getting publicity) have made Yahoo! a bit more Google-like. While that's probably for the best, I will be real interested to see when/where she breaks with Google culture for the first time.
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#15This is adorably cute, but Yahoo! won't be a great place to work until they begin creating great products again.
"Cute" it may be, but if new leadership inspires enough people to step up, want to do something great, and their path for bringing those ideas to fruition are cleared, then Yahoo can succeed.
That said, the biggest gripe I've read about Yahoo is the insane amount of middle management. If anyone (regardless of position -- an intern, an engineer, an architect) has an idea, I would hope there is a path for that idea to be evaluated and, if show potential, is allowed to come to fruition.
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#16I know almost nothing about her, but Marissa Mayer doesn't come off as a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk-like "visionary" who will drive Yahoo to unexplored and unexpected market openings. Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products. Some would say that she should focus on changing the market direction of the company, and that's certai…
> Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products
Why isn't that, in itself, "visionary"?
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#17I know almost nothing about her, but Marissa Mayer doesn't come off as a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk-like "visionary" who will drive Yahoo to unexplored and unexpected market openings. Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products. Some would say that she should focus on changing the market direction of the company, and that's certai…
Not every CEO has to be a visionary. If the CEO can hire good people who have good ideas and get out of their way, she doesn't have to provide all the ideas herself. But she'd need to create an environment where good ideas can be born and come to fruition. Giving people free food won't do this. You'd need to set up a culture in which good ideas actually get rewarded and people aren't afraid to fail.
That's actually what I'm trying to say - she doesn't come off as a visionary (in my opinion) but if she is able to set up a good and healthy work environment then she won't need to be the one coming up with all the ideas.
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#18I know almost nothing about her, but Marissa Mayer doesn't come off as a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk-like "visionary" who will drive Yahoo to unexplored and unexpected market openings. Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products. Some would say that she should focus on changing the market direction of the company, and that's certai…
What makes you say that she's not a visionary?
As I said, I barely know her/of her so my opinion is based on superficial things like reputation. The main point I was trying to make is not that she's not a "visionary" but that the things she's doing to help Yahoo are admirable and worthy of praise >.>
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#19I know almost nothing about her, but Marissa Mayer doesn't come off as a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk-like "visionary" who will drive Yahoo to unexplored and unexpected market openings. Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products. Some would say that she should focus on changing the market direction of the company, and that's certai…
> Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products Why isn't that, in itself, "visionary"?
That's part of the reason I put visionary in quotations. It's a slippery term. In this case, when you think Steve Jobs = visionary you don't think "he made Apple a great place to work." Since Steve Jobs seems to be one of the paragons of "visionary" leadership in the valley, all I meant to say was that Marissa is not in the same mold.
Re: Marissa Mayer's Email Promising To Make Yahoo 'The Absolute Best Place To Work'
#20I know almost nothing about her, but Marissa Mayer doesn't come off as a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk-like "visionary" who will drive Yahoo to unexplored and unexpected market openings. Her approach seems to be to make Yahoo a great place to work, attract and empower talent, and let said talent churn out great products. Some would say that she should focus on changing the market direction of the company, and that's certai…
Yahoo! is a conglomerate with many, many offerings. It isn't a company with one product. From the tales in the valley, it seems that bureaucracy and infighting are the greatest impediment to doing good work. "Hire great people and get out of their way" is a great strategy -- not everyone has to be a despot.