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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

#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's an article from around that time; I wish I had time to dig up more: https://3qdigital.com/analytics/terry-semel-you-owe-1000-yah...

But you never hear his name ever brought up. Because he was a white, male CEO?

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

#92
post #58
post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

There's a certain workaholic personality that excels at executive-level positions. I'm convinced they simply have better genetics than the rest of us -- after 10 or so hours of work, my memory is garbage and I wouldn't feel confident dealing with anything important but some people are totally fine. Plus, you couldn't work that hard for any amount of money unless you loved the work. I'm not sure I want to be a CEO for…

Trust me, at that level there are many things that help you artificially. It exists at lower levels too, of course.

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

#93
post #77

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 b…

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. And ed as the editor? Or was it pico?

Only hardcore masochists use ed(1) ! I think she used pico, but not sure.

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

#94
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Imagine if that lone guy at Microsoft didn't figure out trick with 286 protected mode that allowed Windows to survive and wasn't heard by top management - we would all be running OS/2 10 now. I haven't heard this story before. Got a link?

I believe this is it: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/02/08/fa...

The IBM way required IBM BIOS and an absurdly long time (as I recalled it was hundreds of milliseconds, not just milliseconds) to re-enter real mode.

The motivation was to be able to run DOS real-mode programs as well as protected mode programs.

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

#95
post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

Of course, with a new baby in the house, it's possible she was going to be up at 1 AM anyway...

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy this argument. There are reasons for acqui-hires, but it's usually to bring on board a strong existing team, a world-class domain expert, or a tech base with employee support. Summly was none of those. They got one 17 year old dev, and a fairly-decent product they made basically no use of. I don't know how good D'Aloisio is, but he's not that good. Especially without the kind of status and support…

> I don't know how good D'Aloisio is, but he's not that good What does that even mean?

That it doesn't matter how good they are; their skill could not explain the reason to spend that much money.

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

#97
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. And ed as the editor? Or was it pico?

Only hardcore masochists use ed(1) ! I think she used pico, but not sure.

pico being the default editor for pine would make a natural choice.

I wonder how can someone who prefers console-based email clients ignore mutt.

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

#98
post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

That's what stuck out to me the most. I'd rather work for a CEO/manager that communicates through actions that it's perfectly fine to go home at 6 and ignore work until you come in the next morning.

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

#99
post #62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am very lucky to have a manager that will frequently tell me to just leave if I stay too long after 6p, and actively encourages me to do less work (which I find quite frustrating - I feel like I'm already not doing that much!). I work at a very profitable, well known company FWIW, in a fairly core role with plenty of people depending on my productivity.

In general, people aren't productive working more than 10 hours a day. Unfortunately, some people are -- and those people very often find themselves in executive positions, surrounded by other people with exceptional stamina who wonder why everyone below them is so lazy. Fortunately, a lot of companies have realized this and started making employee retention a metric (because recruiting is expensive, especially for t…

I think even in the case of people who appear to be productive that long (and I'd argue most people aren't productive more than 4-5 hours a day, if that) in executive positions only appear as productive as they do because of extensive support networks.

It's a lot easier to be productive long hours if you e.g. has executive assistants that manage your calendar so you don't need to think about it, people to delegate all the menial stuff to, staff at home ensuring you don't need to worry about coming home to a messy house that needs cleaning and so on.

Doesn't mean it won't still be hard, but it's not as hard as it may seem when looking up from a position you have to handle 100% on your own.

Another factor is that while e-mailing late nights when you're low down the hierarchy generally means you are working long hours, e-mailing late nights when you're high up the hierarchy can mean that, and it can also mean that you have sufficient freedom to structure your day that you've chosen to e.g. spend that day taking a long lunch and chill in the afternoon and catch up on e-mails late at night instead, possibly realising that this ironically will make it seem like you're working harder.

A lot of people who are not used to have that freedom automatically assume it's the former, and then end up falling into trying to live up to that. My advice is don't. Carve out time. Appear busy. Seeming busy ironically often makes you seem harder working even if you just say you are and use it to give you breathing room to work less.

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

#100
post #58
post #43

"if I’m ever in a position like Marissa’s, I want to be the kind of CEO who answers emails from strangers six or seven levels down from herself at 1 AM on a Sunday morning, even when she has a new baby in the house." I'm grateful for this article reminding me why I never really will fit in with the techie fanatics. Yesterday I went home at 5p, after a very productive day, and trimmed plants in my garden, not checking…

There's a certain workaholic personality that excels at executive-level positions. I'm convinced they simply have better genetics than the rest of us -- after 10 or so hours of work, my memory is garbage and I wouldn't feel confident dealing with anything important but some people are totally fine. Plus, you couldn't work that hard for any amount of money unless you loved the work. I'm not sure I want to be a CEO for…

> There's a certain workaholic personality that excels at executive-level positions

Except that Marissa didn't excel.

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