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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

#21

Post by sjg007 »

minderasure wrote: post #6
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…

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.

Go for the girl or the boy.. as made famous in good will hunting

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

#22

Post by thenaturalist »

tardo99 wrote: post #5

The cult of personality around Marissa is just confusing to me.

Wholeheartedly agree, and I think it comes down to "signalling by association". For sure she is a workaholic and that gets you far, but to me it seems like she is filling the gap of providing confirmation to insecure overachievers after she - being one herself - made mistakes and reflected on them. Mistakes that could have been avoided had you taken out the ego in the first place.

In contrast to my hypothesis: If you like her, feel free to share your thoughts or prove me wrong. What is special about her?

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

#24

Post by thomasjudge »

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…

Also keep in mind this is AI circa 1996. Some changes since then

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

#26

Post by compiler-guy »

thenaturalist wrote: post #22
tardo99 wrote: post #5

The cult of personality around Marissa is just confusing to me.

Wholeheartedly agree, and I think it comes down to "signalling by association". For sure she is a workaholic and that gets you far, but to me it seems like she is filling the gap of providing confirmation to insecure overachievers after she - being one herself - made mistakes and reflected on them. Mistakes that could have been avoided had you taken out the ego in the first place. In contrast to my hypothesis: If you…

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. She always had the knack of picking the right place to be at the right time, and the talent (or ability to bs) that she could get noticed when she needed to.

The yahoo thing was the worst misstep I've seen her take, but she got paid $200 million to take the risk, and I'm working for peanuts. So who is the smart one?

Edited to add: There is exactly zero chance she remembers me. But everyone I hung around remembers her. She has a very strange ability to be remembered.

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

#27

Post by strikelaserclaw »

thenaturalist wrote: post #22
tardo99 wrote: post #5

The cult of personality around Marissa is just confusing to me.

Wholeheartedly agree, and I think it comes down to "signalling by association". For sure she is a workaholic and that gets you far, but to me it seems like she is filling the gap of providing confirmation to insecure overachievers after she - being one herself - made mistakes and reflected on them. Mistakes that could have been avoided had you taken out the ego in the first place. In contrast to my hypothesis: If you…

She seems to care a lot about what school you went to and what gpa you got and idolize steve jobs at the same time.

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

#28

Post by hnzix »

macspoofing wrote: post #11
node-bayarea wrote: post #9

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.

I wonder what Yahoo would look like now if Jerry had accepted the Microsoft acquisition. Yahoo was already in troubled waters at the time, in hindsight it looks like a missed opportunity.

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

#29

Post by jkaptur »

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…

Sheryl Sandberg described a similarly thorough weighing of her decision to join Google.

Mayer: "I had a long analytical evening with a friend of mine where we looked at all the job offers I had received. We created a giant matrix with one row per job offer and one column per value. We compared everything from the basics like cash and stock to where I'd be living, happiness factor, and trajectory factor—all of these different elements. And so we went to work analyzing this problem."

Sandberg: "After a while I had a few offers and I had to make a decision, so what did I do? I am MBA trained, so I made a spreadsheet. I listed my jobs in the columns and my criteria in the rows, and compared the companies and the missions and the roles."

It's a fun bit of trivia that Sandberg put the criteria in the rows, which enables sorting the criteria - a nice way to see the upsides and downsides of each choice.

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

#30

Post by 4thaccount »

jkaptur wrote: post #29
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…

Sheryl Sandberg described a similarly thorough weighing of her decision to join Google. Mayer: "I had a long analytical evening with a friend of mine where we looked at all the job offers I had received. We created a giant matrix with one row per job offer and one column per value. We compared everything from the basics like cash and stock to where I'd be living, happiness factor, and trajectory factor—all of these d…

I don't think this is a rare thing to do. I've done it and so have co-workers. A simple pro/con chart is really all you need.
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