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What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

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Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#141

Post by iopq »

excitom wrote: post #112
stinkytaco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo is a publicly traded company. Selling Yahoo went very well for the shareholders and the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. I think it's very clear that the goal when she was hired was to sell the company and get the shareholder's some payout. Considering where the company was when she came in, I'd say she did an admirable job at this. You might say that's not success, b…

> the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. It always bothers me to see this, as I feel it is the reason many companies decline. The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" since happy employees help implement the first rule. If rule one and two are achieved then as a side effect shareholder value is maximized.

>The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy"

if you burn through your cash reserves doing those things and now you don't have any money, that doesn't do anything for you since you burned all your cash - even if employees and customers are happy

the first rule should be "make money", the second rule should be "spend less money than you make"

if those two are achieved, THEN shareholder value is maximized

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#142

Post by the_improbable »

I was a Yahoo for a couple of years before getting caught up in the recent layoffs. When I talk about my time there, I use the term "organizational inertia". It's amazing how people will fight for products, methodologies, and workflows that are clearly not going to be feasible if the company is going to survive. A company that's been around for as long as Yahoo has, and has locked in to a certain way of doing things, is hard to turn around no matter how good the CEO is.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#143

Post by smhost »

arcatek wrote: post #138
collyw wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFS. Judging people based on their email client?

People usually judge others based on what they can see ("you are what you eat", but not only). Why not based on what tool they use? It contributes to establish a persona.

It's like looking into a stranger's face and seeing yourself. "omg she's one of us."

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#144

Post by pavlov »

arcatek wrote: post #138
collyw wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFS. Judging people based on their email client?

People usually judge others based on what they can see ("you are what you eat", but not only). Why not based on what tool they use? It contributes to establish a persona.

Steve Jobs famously used a Thinkpad after returning to Apple.

A Time interview from August 1997 confirms that:

http://allaboutstevejobs.com/sayings/stevejobsinterviews/tim...

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#145

Post by ebbv »

sokoloff wrote: post #136
ebbv wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years Why? That is $50mil/year which is an insane amount of money for any one person to receive. Yes you can point to tons of examples of people earning even more, but that's still way more money than most people will ever see in their lifetimes per year to fail. It's a total cop-out to say that "Well Yahoo was already…

Executives have [employment] options. If you believe you need a talented executive to have a chance at turning around your company and your company is in dire straits, you may very well have to offer a golden parachute package to have any hope of engaging the services of the talented exec you seek, particularly when that's the norm at that level. Failing to offer such terms amounts to forfeiting any chance to hire th…

Yeah, yeah this same excuse is always used to justify insane executive pays but it's baloney. It's a self perpetuating cycle, "Oh WE Have to pay more because companies X, Y and Z are offering $N million!"

Executive pay has skyrocketed in relation to worker pay over the last 30 years and it's not for any good reason like executives are so much more important or talented. It's because the executive pay is decided by boards that are full of friends of the executives, people who are executives at the same or other companies, and want everyone involved to hook them up when their pay is being decided.

The only way it's going to get fixed is regulation, and I hope it comes sooner rather than later. The greed displayed by boards and high level executives is revolting.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#146

Post by TheCoelacanth »

scholia wrote: post #23
wehadfun wrote: post #8

Off topic but what would the selling price for Yahoo have to be for MM to be considered a success? 20B, 100B,..

Success would have been growing revenues, instead of watching them decline. Success would have been at least one really successful mobile app. Success would have been not selling Yahoo....

Conceivably, you could consider it a phenomenal success to sell something for $5 billion that the stock market was once valuing at less than $0.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#147

Post by AndrewKemendo »

1024core wrote: post #91

It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years. The spotlight has always been on her, and her failings are magnified beyond reason. Is it because she's young woman and pretty? I was at Yahoo from 2004 through 2015. I saw some seriously stupid CEOs. One of them being Terry Semel. He made more than $200M in just one year (and even more, according to rumors). Here…

No, because nobody knows who Terry Semel is.

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#148

Post by jbigelow76 »

collyw wrote: post #130
outworlder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. That increased her stature in my eyes, and those of quite a few other engineers. Ok, now that is amazing. That speaks more about her culture and background than a hundred random actions.

FFS. Judging people based on their email client?

Not uncommon in this industry, see choice of: browser, OS, smart phone, text editor/IDE, etc...

Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#149

Post by fizx »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #38

I'm no biz-geek, I probably can't name a dozen CEOs. But for years, MM's name was called put in every critical mainstream headline about Yahoo, of which there were many. I do not believe that's an accident. I do not believe a man would have been treated the same way.

> I'm no biz-geek, I probably can't name a dozen CEOs. But for years, MM's name was called put in every critical mainstream headline about Yahoo, of which there were many. I do not believe that's an accident. I do not believe a man would have been treated the same way.

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Re: What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold

#150

Post by mahyarm »

ebbv wrote: post #145
sokoloff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executives have [employment] options. If you believe you need a talented executive to have a chance at turning around your company and your company is in dire straits, you may very well have to offer a golden parachute package to have any hope of engaging the services of the talented exec you seek, particularly when that's the norm at that level. Failing to offer such terms amounts to forfeiting any chance to hire th…

Yeah, yeah this same excuse is always used to justify insane executive pays but it's baloney. It's a self perpetuating cycle, "Oh WE Have to pay more because companies X, Y and Z are offering $N million!" Executive pay has skyrocketed in relation to worker pay over the last 30 years and it's not for any good reason like executives are so much more important or talented. It's because the executive pay is decided by bo…

Market supply and demand is another big part of it. And you are responsible for the fate of mega $$$ corps.

If you can create something more efficient you would outcompete those companies.

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