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Dear Marissa: Think Different

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Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#61

Post by Terretta »

dtran wrote: post #31
mikeleeorg wrote: post #22

Just an FYI: two of Yahoo's stronger properties are Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance, both of whom haven't historically had a large female audience. The other properties that might attract a female audience haven't done as well. That's not to say Yahoo can't sell these and purchase the properties Dave mentions, of course. It's just that Yahoo currently doesn't have a core strength in targeting women and would need to r…

I remember when I interned at Yahoo! several years ago, Yahoo! Shine, their women's lifestyle portal, had a fairly large audience. According to Alexa, it's still one of their larger web properties: mail.yahoo.com 48.76% login.yahoo.com 29.14% yahoo.com 24.39% search.yahoo.com 19.22% answers.yahoo.com 16.42% news.yahoo.com 15.16% sports.yahoo.com 6.35% finance.yahoo.com 6.25% omg.yahoo.com 5.86% my.yahoo.com 4.71% in.…

http://omg.yahoo.com is the more relevant "portal" from that list, and http://answers.yahoo.com is the kind of demographic very few of us HN users rub shoulders with.

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#62

Post by ebiester »

rimantas wrote: post #55
danilocampos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the shitheads here who down voted you for pointing that out.

I am one of those. Let me tell you why: shitty attitude like this helps no one. What kind of stupid censorship is this? I hate every move towards "thought-crime" and I will downvote either on HN or in real voting anything what tries to bring us closer to this orvelian world. People may be upset by the metaphorical use of the word "rape"? How about the litteral use then? Should we just censor it out? What if someone w…

Very simply, there is a significant difference between someone's body being violated in possibly the worst way possible, in a way that can destroy someone's life, and being subjected to advertising or losing a video game.

It trivializes someone's tramautic experience, and reminds them how others see it as No Big Deal.

I am completely about freedom of speech, but I reserve my right to condemn those who use certain types of speech.

What is wrong with a little bit of courtesy?

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#63

Post by podperson »

dave1619 wrote: post #8
ericabiz wrote: post #4

As one of the few women on Hacker News, I'm going to come right out and say it: I think this is a fantastic idea, and Marissa Mayer would do well to take it to heart. Imagine if Yahoo made a serious bid for Pinterest, and then Marissa went really crazy and made their homepage into a Pinterest-like site. Not only would it cause a great sensational uproar in the press, but it would make Yahoo a serious contender again.…

Yahoo acquiring Pinterest would definitely be interesting. I don't know though how affordable Pinterest would be.

Step 1: acquire Pinterest.

Step 2: add no new features to it for five years, but force users to create a yahoo account to use it.

Step 3: fire all the developers.

Step 4: ???

Step 5: profit.

Oh wait, that was Flickr.

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#64

Post by podperson »

halayli wrote: post #50

I don't think a gender focus, or discrimination should be part of any strategy.

Depends on whether you differentiate between implicit gender focus (we mostly hire guys, guys make most of our decisions, but we don't FOCUS on guys) and expliciy (we need to appeal more to guys).

It seems to me that it's almost always better for a strategy to be explicit rather than implicit. Plenty of successful strategies are gender focused, so you're opting for some kind of ideological purity over possible success.

But I tend to agree with you on discrimination in the bad sense ("discrimination" just means telling things apart, but I assume you mean "bias").

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#65

Post by cheez »

Cushman wrote: post #13
realize wrote: post #2

"What if Marissa made it known that Yahoo would be the best tech company in the world for hiring women execs, putting women in leadership positions, and advancing the opportunities for women in the workplace (as Sheryl Sandberg is so well-known for promoting at Facebook)?" Sounds discriminatory to me.

This presupposes that the industry-wide preference for male employees is not discriminatory, which scarcely goes without saying.

Give me an effing break.

My family is a computer family, through and through. Surprise, surprise, my sister is in software too.

Don't attribute malice where there is none. Quite simply, women are not encouraged to be scientists by OTHER WOMEN. Not men. Men LOVE women who love science.

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#66

Post by Cushman »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #36
Cushman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there is a preference is a statistical fact; the controversial question is what is the cause for the preference. Incidentally, even if we were to pretend to compare the industries of "technology" and "education of children between the ages of 6 and 12", your quip fails the test: A majority of teachers may be female, but there is no such majority among those in "leadership positions" (administrators, principals a…

I think I misunderstand what you mean by "preference". Take as example a company where 90% of the programmer applicants are male. As I understand the word "preference", a resulting workforce of 90% males would indicate no preference one way or the other (assuming the men and women were equally skilled). Further, a 91% male workforce would be evidence of a male preference, while an 89% male workforce evidence of a fem…

Yeah, obviously a lot of people misunderstood that. I apologize for the confusion.

I was using "preference" in a more generic complex-systems-analysis sense. We begin with a potential workforce, at birth, of half men and half women. Over time, the further you go into the industry, you see more and more men and fewer and fewer women. The women are being rejected, the men are being selected for, this demonstrates a preference. Again, not imputing any consciousness here, it's just what the system is doing.

The claim we are asked to accept is that this reflects a something real and measurable, such as my transportation preference for cars over horses, rather than something subjective and arbitrary, such as my berry preference for blueberries over strawberries.

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#67

Post by alanh »

nostromo wrote: post #38

My favorite success story of marketing towards the under-served gender is Dyson. Before Dyson vacuums were marketed to women exclusively. If you suggested marketing a vacuum to men before Dyson, you'd be laughed out of the boardroom. Dyson threw that all out the window and entered the market with a vacuum that actually looks like a sci-fi weapon, and to great success.

Says the guy with a username of the ship in the sci-fi movie Alien! (Just observing a humorous juxtaposition.)

Anyway, your point is noted. One of my favorite tweets ever was one by Amy Jane Gruber, to the effect of: Boys say “If we get a dog, I’ll clean up after it,” and men say, “If we get a Dyson, I’ll vacuum!”

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#68

Post by mikeleeorg »

Terretta wrote: post #61
dtran wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I interned at Yahoo! several years ago, Yahoo! Shine, their women's lifestyle portal, had a fairly large audience. According to Alexa, it's still one of their larger web properties: mail.yahoo.com 48.76% login.yahoo.com 29.14% yahoo.com 24.39% search.yahoo.com 19.22% answers.yahoo.com 16.42% news.yahoo.com 15.16% sports.yahoo.com 6.35% finance.yahoo.com 6.25% omg.yahoo.com 5.86% my.yahoo.com 4.71% in.…

http://omg.yahoo.com is the more relevant "portal" from that list, and http://answers.yahoo.com is the kind of demographic very few of us HN users rub shoulders with.

Just for curiosity's sake, I looked up Quantcast's demographic metrics on Yahoo! Answers:

http://www.quantcast.com/answers.yahoo.com#!demo&anchor=...

Female: 53%

Male: 47%

And interestingly, Yahoo.com's demographics are:

http://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com#!demo&anchor=panel-GE...

Female: 52%

Male: 48%

Whereas Google is:

http://www.quantcast.com/google.com#!demo&anchor=panel-G...

Female: 50%

Male: 50%

Looks like Yahoo does indeed have a slight skew towards a female audience. Dave may be on to something.

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#69

Post by evolve2k »

mkramlich wrote: post #35

I'm not a woman, but I agree this is a great strategy to consider. I think one of the reasons that both Pinterest and Instagram caught so many of the startup & wantrepreneur crowd off-guard was that their success, to a large extent, came from a predominantly female user base, and typically feminine interests. Google, for all it's strengths, is mostly run by intelligent but geeky male nerds. Same for Microsoft, Amazon…

'If you evolve your company to be female oriented in their product suite, you may make the company less attractive when recruiting and retaining male hackers.'

I think those currently working at companies like Pinterest and Etsy would disagree.

I greatly admire those companies and as a developer seek teams with a good culture that grt stuff done anf create great products. I would argue that the market focus of a company is not the key determinate in attracting developers but rather your reputation for valuing devs and being a great place to work.

Re: Dear Marissa: Think Different

#70

Post by ramblerman »

ericabiz wrote: post #43
joering2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just went there now and were visually raped by a huge background-ad by Disney and Verizon. Don't recall seeing those for a while now; thought horizontal background ads were a thing of a past. Learnt something new today, but definitely won't go back there in next couple years.

Please don't use the word "raped" in that context--as there are some people on here for whom that word conjures up a much worse image.

- Victims of murder, kidnapping, torture could all claim similar boycotts for those terms.

- PETA might say just hearing the word "slaughter" brings them to tears.

- religious groups are offended by all kinds of things. (eg. homosexuality)

No one can claim a monopoly on being offended. Part of living in our modern multicultural society is that you grow a shell towards these things. Your problem with these words should not impede the freedom of those around you.

Rape in and of itself is a terrible crime. Yet the word is just that, a word, and your personal offence is not unique. I get offended too, everyone does. Just to different things.

Can you imagine the bland and chaste world we might live in if every complaint for personal offense on the radio, tv or internet was taken into account.

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