Live data from Hacker News

Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

triplebyte.com

11–20 of 237 posts

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#11

She ruined Yahoo! Made stupid acquisitions like Tumblr and shit.

Tumblr wasn't a bad acquisition. I would also challenge that she ruined Yahoo. Yahoo was already on a downward trajectory with an existential identity crisis. At worst, she couldn't change the direction.

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#12

She ruined Yahoo! Made stupid acquisitions like Tumblr and shit.

According to some conspiracy theorists her job was to destroy Yahoo! She did that well. I don't know if it's true or not, but they sure sound convincing.

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#14

"I realized that, while I had a very deep understanding of artificial intelligence, I did not yet have some of the basics down. I knew how a database worked. I knew how an operating system worked. I knew how a compiler worked. But I hadn't taken classes on those topics, so I went back for my master's and took the rest of the AI offerings as well as a lot of programming basics. That way, I could actually go and market…

She's talking about foundation CS courses. She talk 7 (!) AI courses in Undergrad but apparently missed out on core CS courses.

In Masters she got to cover those off. I think her majoring in Symbolic Systems not CS meant she missed out on compilers, DBs, etc..

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#15
post #2

Marissa described possibly the most thorough and analytical job search process I've heard from anyone, when she was talking about how she joined Google. I really liked her reflection on this in hindsight on how being overly analytical is dangerous and it's something I try to remind myself of when I'm in danger of overthinking a decision: "I think this is a common thing that very analytical people trip themselves up w…

It's funny, this is the nugget of wisdom that stood out to me as well. I waste so much time in my daily life trying to make the "perfect" decision, when choosing something good and moving on would be a much better use of my time.

But that's an entirely analytical way of thinking about it! You're looking at the decision process and asking if the marginal return on investing another unit of time in it, in terms of the improvement of the goodness of the selected outcome, is greater than the return on using that unit of time in some other way.

The very term "overthinking" implies that there's a right amount of thinking for any decision, so your real problem is working out how much thinking to do.

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#16

"I realized that, while I had a very deep understanding of artificial intelligence, I did not yet have some of the basics down. I knew how a database worked. I knew how an operating system worked. I knew how a compiler worked. But I hadn't taken classes on those topics, so I went back for my master's and took the rest of the AI offerings as well as a lot of programming basics. That way, I could actually go and market…

You quoted her saying both, no? "I went back for my master's and took the rest of the AI offerings as well as a lot of programming basics."

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#17

"I realized that, while I had a very deep understanding of artificial intelligence, I did not yet have some of the basics down. I knew how a database worked. I knew how an operating system worked. I knew how a compiler worked. But I hadn't taken classes on those topics, so I went back for my master's and took the rest of the AI offerings as well as a lot of programming basics. That way, I could actually go and market…

The rest of the sentence says “...and a lot of the basics”, so she did both, took all 13 AI classes and CS classes on databases and compilers etc.

Hope that helps.

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, this is the nugget of wisdom that stood out to me as well. I waste so much time in my daily life trying to make the "perfect" decision, when choosing something good and moving on would be a much better use of my time.

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. - George S. Patton I think about this quote a lot. It's so easy to get trapped in analysis paralysis which is really just procrastinating a decision. Like most things, there is a balance. Notice he says 'good' plan, not any plan.

The trick is training yourself to separate out the shit plans from the good plans. Otherwise, you’re violently crossing the Isonzo river for the 9th time and violently dying.

So, don’t be McClellan, but don’t be Cadorna either.

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#19
post #12

She ruined Yahoo! Made stupid acquisitions like Tumblr and shit.

According to some conspiracy theorists her job was to destroy Yahoo! She did that well. I don't know if it's true or not, but they sure sound convincing.

They seemed to be more than capable of that prior to Mayer turning up.

Re: Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google

#20
post #2

Marissa described possibly the most thorough and analytical job search process I've heard from anyone, when she was talking about how she joined Google. I really liked her reflection on this in hindsight on how being overly analytical is dangerous and it's something I try to remind myself of when I'm in danger of overthinking a decision: "I think this is a common thing that very analytical people trip themselves up w…

Seem like one of those in group type biases. Where the more similar something is the more we obsesses over the differences. Presumably because we can relate to a lot more of the information.

Somewhat ironically being irrational can actually be a good way to make unknown, but largely equal, decisions. Because at least you picked something with conviction, rather than having analyzed the situation incorrectly.

Of course for a lot of us good choices aren't the problem so much as the downside. I remember someone made a calculator online for how many time one would most likely see their parents before they died.

Post reply on HN