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

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

#121

Post by madrox »

Harj wrote: 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…

I've said something similar when mentoring engineering managers about how to let go of certain decision making. 90% of the decisions a team makes will have very little impact on the success of the project, but the other 10% do. You only learn from experience which decisions are the 90% and which decisions are the 10%.

It's how leaders need to operate to survive if they want to avoid micromanaging, honestly.

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

#122

Post by pilsetnieks »

kelnos wrote: post #102
pilsetnieks wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they needed someone with experience to do a controlled descent with minimum casualties instead of a fiery crash.

How was Marissa Mayer that person, though?

I'm guessing better than GP anyway. Or call it a smokescreen if you will, distracting people by making loud decisions while the board got ready for winding down everything. I mean I'm guessing - we'll never know for sure unless someone from Yahoo's leadership comes forward and lays it all out.

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

#123

Post by Phlarp »

kelnos wrote: post #102
pilsetnieks wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they needed someone with experience to do a controlled descent with minimum casualties instead of a fiery crash.

How was Marissa Mayer that person, though?

Likely an understanding that she would unwind the company gracefully without touching the shiney glass case full of $BABA and a trust that should would execute that understanding faithfully.

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

#124

Post by toast0 »

kayhi wrote: post #53
NelsonMinar wrote: post #46

I was also at Google when the AOL deal was signed and remember the decision and outcome quite differently. It was definitely a high risk deal, deliberately so, but in no way was it only "the best-case scenario had us breaking even". Nor was it the case that "all of our models were wrong". The product manager in charge of ads at the time had a clear understanding of exactly how the deal could be hugely profitable for…

What does that type of deal look like? AOL had ad inventory and Google had to get enough eye balls?

Inventory is slots to put ads. AOL had the eyeballs, Google had the platform to turn eyeballs into money, better than AOL was doing by itself. Google provided a guaranteed rate (cpm? cpc?) so that AOL would have confidence it wasn't bait and switch.

See also the Yahoo/Bing deal which didn't work out as well. Microsoft didn't end up actually hitting the targets, and convinced Yahoo to take less; and Yahoo also didn't reduce employee count anywhere near plan on searchy/advertising stuff, so they missed targets on revenue and cost and user experience.

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

#125

Post by pm90 »

erobbins wrote: post #51
Harj wrote: 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…

> "I think this is a common thing that very analytical people trip themselves up with. They look at things as if there’s a right answer and a wrong answer when, the truth is, there’s often just good choices, and maybe a great choice in there." This absolutely drives me crazy in design/engineering decisions. Very commonly there are a lot of good solutions and one great one, and the good ones are good enough. Yet all t…

> Yet all the brilliant intellectuals want to find the VERY BEST METHOD EVER instead of just getting stuff done.

For many mathematical, CS problems, it _does_ help to think very hard to find the very best solution to the problem, sometimes irrationally hard. I do agree that we operate in a real world, and the facts of running a business mean that you can't be spending all your time trying to figure out the best.

However, it was only by thinking very, very deeply about these problems have many of the technological improvements been possible. MapReduce, AI, ML, Cloud Computing... all started as ideas in companies where people dedicate quite a bit of thought into how to solve some basic problems.

I'll be honest: I am glad that I can reap the fruits of the labor of all these smart people, that they have enabled me to change the way computing is done, to make it easier for anyone to get started and to generate value very quickly, using the building blocks which they created after thinking about and working about this for so long.

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

#126

Post by treis »

antt wrote: post #77
rajeshp1986 wrote: post #10

"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…

Keep in mind that she is a queen of self promotion. When she was talking about 140 hour work weeks she conveniently left out the fact she was paying someone else to do her domestic work [0]. Or that most of her days involved meetings, lunches and dinners. I am reminded of the story of Henry IV who stood barefoot in the snow for three days. And through the grace of God not getting frost bite. We have come so far when…

>When she was talking about 140 hour work weeks she conveniently left out the fact she was paying someone else to do her domestic work [0]

This is such an odd post. Who expects someone working 140 hour weeks to do all of their own house work? Sure, they're working 20 hours a day but they ordered chinese takeout and drop off their laundry!

Then, you link to child care as an example of "her domestic work"? Who complains about someone leaving their kid in daycare?

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

#127

Post by mintplant »

ceph_ wrote: post #94
antt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that she is a queen of self promotion. When she was talking about 140 hour work weeks she conveniently left out the fact she was paying someone else to do her domestic work [0]. Or that most of her days involved meetings, lunches and dinners. I am reminded of the story of Henry IV who stood barefoot in the snow for three days. And through the grace of God not getting frost bite. We have come so far when…

> When she was talking about 140 hour work weeks she conveniently left out the fact she was paying someone else to do her domestic work HER domestic work? There is absolutely no reason why she should or would mention this other than your sexist expectations. Do you expect male CEOs to mention they pay someone to do their laundry and are abdicating their "domestic responsibilities"? Seriously?!

> Do you expect male CEOs to mention they pay someone to do their laundry and are abdicating their "domestic responsibilities"?

Um, yes, if they're bragging about how much time they spend working? It indicates that their ability to put in that much time comes from a position of privilege (i.e., having the money to pay other people to perform tasks most people would have to take care of themselves), and hence isn't a reasonable expectation to project onto people not in that same position.

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

#128

Post by antt »

JudasGoatse wrote: post #118
antt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cult of personality ~~around Marissa~~ is just confusing ~~to me~~. Lest we forget Elizabeth Holmes, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and for those old enough to remember Bill Gates in the 90s. If you're lucky you die before you start making terrible decisions. A quote from Napoleon that he supposedly said while in exile "Had I been hit by a canon ball on my entry into Moscow I would have been remembered as the greatest s…

Elizabeth Holmes is the only appropriate comparison here. Those others were worshipped because they actually created value. Marissa never did that. In fact, like Holmes, she destroyed quite a bit of it.

Hardly, they are worshiped because they have good spin doctors and are/were attention whores.

Value creation is a dangerous proposition to measure people by, after all today's value is tomorrow stock market crash.

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

#129

Post by jhwang5 »

JudasGoatse wrote: post #114
compiler-guy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which she crushed, and then she moved on and crushed the master's level courses. And then got a job at Google. Of all the dot-com companies hiring on campus at the time throwing million dollar opportunities at new graduates, she picks the unicorn. At some point it isn't luck anymore. Anyway, I'll agree to disagree here. The post I originally responded to was a question about what is so special about her. I only know…

So she completed a second-rate major and luckily joined the fastest-growing company in US history ... that makes her smart and capable? Like OP, I know several people who knew her at Stanford (I didn't go there) and she was regarded with uniform disdain by everyone who was technically sharp. I know several people who worked with her at Google, and she was fairly disliked there. She got frozen out and would have been…

TIL Jess Lee was Mayer's assistant

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

tardo99 wrote: post #62
compiler-guy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marissa is one of the smartest people I have ever been around. Most of my knowledge comes from running in neighboring circles at Stanford. The (then) girl just had an amazing ability to remember things, get things, and analyze them. She also has outstanding social intelligence, and a bit of a reality distortion field. Of course she chose the rocketship in 1999 while the rest of us fumbled around in the dot com bust.…

I've known Marissa since Stanford too, and you're wrong. I'm not sure if you're lying or what, but you're wrong. Edit: Before you pile on, I'm rich too. Not as rich as her but rich enough not to take issue with her for that reason. The reason people remember Marissa is she was pretty. End of story.

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