What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by wehadfun » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22

bitL wrote: post #15

Sorry, so she raised comfort of some employees (which developer "on a mission to save a company" really needs free food instead of interesting challenges?) and decreased the ability to hire top talent by introducing other employee-unfriendly policies like banning remote work, i.e. working while living on Hawaii, giving superb motivation to stay at Yahoo and see it prosper. The rest seems more like a COO would do and…

I may get downvoted for saying this since it's not fashionable to say things like this but I will anyway: When a company is going down, the type of people you need is people who are enthusiastic and team players. The last type of people you need are competent yet not so much of a team player. It's because: 1. Pampering these people will only result in lowering rest of the team's morale. 2. When a company is going dow…

That could explain the anti work from home policy but what about buying that pre-teens app for like $15M. What did that accomplish?

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

#32

Post by ucaetano » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

I remember that is was usually claimed that Yahoo's valuation (net of Alibaba's stake) was either zero or negative.

She was able to sell it for $5B.

That sounds like an amazing success story.

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

#33

Post by akkartik » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #20

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,..

[ignore: Didn't they get an offer from Microsoft a few years ago for 125B or something?] I think what makes it a huge failure is that 5B is basically what they spent just to acquire one company. Edit: Based on the replies the first part of my comment is inaccurate.

The Microsoft offer was for $45B: http://news.microsoft.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-proposes-acqu...

The market cap of Yahoo was still around half that when Mayer was appointed. But that was all from their stake in Alibaba, which has already been spun off. The rest of Yahoo had a negative value, I think. So it's gone from 0 (conservatively) to $5B.

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

#34

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #28

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may get downvoted for saying this since it's not fashionable to say things like this but I will anyway: When a company is going down, the type of people you need is people who are enthusiastic and team players. The last type of people you need are competent yet not so much of a team player. It's because: 1. Pampering these people will only result in lowering rest of the team's morale. 2. When a company is going dow…

I believe what you actually need is to hire 2-3 teams of 10x developers/artists including a few visionaires and let them figure out projects that might one day become cash cows keeping company afloat (and give them massive stake in success). You need to both expose them to problems of the company so that they feel pressure as well as completely isolate them from toxic culture that brought down your company, so that t…

I think that's easier said than done when a company is going down, as we've witnessed through Yahoo. That's exactly what she tried to do by hiring bunch of startups but failed, probably because the board became impatient. I know people criticize her saying she did a half assed job of dealing with acquired companies but I'll bet that it's not entirely because of her decisions but because of lack of support from the board.

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

#35

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #28

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may get downvoted for saying this since it's not fashionable to say things like this but I will anyway: When a company is going down, the type of people you need is people who are enthusiastic and team players. The last type of people you need are competent yet not so much of a team player. It's because: 1. Pampering these people will only result in lowering rest of the team's morale. 2. When a company is going dow…

I believe what you actually need is to hire 2-3 teams of 10x developers/artists including a few visionaires and let them figure out projects that might one day become cash cows keeping company afloat (and give them massive stake in success). You need to both expose them to problems of the company so that they feel pressure as well as completely isolate them from toxic culture that brought down your company, so that t…

[deleted]

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

#36

Post by dudul » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

yesplorer wrote: post #27

dudul wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ignore: Didn't they get an offer from Microsoft a few years ago for 125B or something?] I think what makes it a huge failure is that 5B is basically what they spent just to acquire one company. Edit: Based on the replies the first part of my comment is inaccurate.

No. The $125b was the valuation during the 1990s. Microsoft offered way less - $44b.

OK, my bad, I got confused with the numbers :)

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

#37

Post by 1024core » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

Heh, I remember Jelena from discussion on devel-random. I would like to correct (mildly) a couple of anecdotes in her article, because I was there and closer.

> A friend relayed this story: The Sunnyvale campus had a building with redundant turnstiles, which required a badge scan seconds after employees had scanned their badges to open the main doors. People complained about it when the building was remodeled years before, and kept complaining through several CEOs. After Marissa read an email griping about the turnstiles, they were gone the next day.

I remember it a little differently. This was Building D, where the executives sit. Before Marissa got there, there were plans to put an additional set of card-activated turnstiles inside the door. (This building is also where the Yahoo store is, and the main reception desk). Yahoo was plagued with leaks, and some people thought that adding an additional turnstile will keep people from tailgating in.

When Marissa got there, she took one look at the turnstiles and said, "this is stupid", and ordered them removed. Not only that: there were card-activated gates in the parking lots, and those were gone too immediately. She didn't want barriers to coming in to work.

And about devel-random, or "d-r": I was pretty active on that. No one told Marissa about d-r, but just a couple of days after she got there, on a Saturday IIRC, she responded to someone on d-r. This sent shockwaves throughout the upper echelons, and soon senior management were clamoring to get on d-r. Most of them dropped out, exhausted by the volume; but she stuck around.

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.

It's the small things that mattered a lot to the battered egos at Yahoo; and Marissa did a lot of good. She was the best CEO of all the ones Yahoo had seen, bar none (OK, I wasn't around during Koogle's tenure).

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

#38

Post by Lagged2Death » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

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

#39

Post by jey » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #15

Sorry, so she raised comfort of some employees (which developer "on a mission to save a company" really needs free food instead of interesting challenges?) and decreased the ability to hire top talent by introducing other employee-unfriendly policies like banning remote work, i.e. working while living on Hawaii, giving superb motivation to stay at Yahoo and see it prosper. The rest seems more like a COO would do and…

> The rest seems more like a COO would do and not a strategic CEO.

Yeah, which of these are tasks a good CEO should see to, and which would be more appropriate or acceptable to delegate to a COO?

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

#40

Post by bitL » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

wehadfun wrote: post #31

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may get downvoted for saying this since it's not fashionable to say things like this but I will anyway: When a company is going down, the type of people you need is people who are enthusiastic and team players. The last type of people you need are competent yet not so much of a team player. It's because: 1. Pampering these people will only result in lowering rest of the team's morale. 2. When a company is going dow…

That could explain the anti work from home policy but what about buying that pre-teens app for like $15M. What did that accomplish?

That was probably some favor to the guy behind the teen, some VC IIRC. They might not be able to give each other money directly, so they use a useless acquisition for money transfer. Probably what Larry did today.