There has been a lot of debate as to whether she succeeded or failed at her job, but at the end of the day all I can say: I really chose the wrong career path, as I can't imagine a scenario where a dev's comparative performance results in a 218m$ payout. (In more direct terms, I would gladly take the internet-hate-firehose in the face if it means making even single digit millions.)

To make some more reasonable statement to try and add value to this non-comment, more than anything of yahoo's fall, every time it gets brought it it just makes me shake my head at the current state of compensation. For the same reason I can't comprehend what freedom and power $10m+ buys you, I can't comprehend how we change the system such that more of us get more of that.

FWIW, Marissa was essentially a developer. She taught CS at Stanford and majored in Symbolic Systems, which is closely related.

taught CS ? I doubt that's accurate. At most she was a TA for some course.

Here's the quote from the original source[0], it doesn't make it entirely clear but may add some context:

> Later at Stanford, Mayer found herself in a group setting that was less social, more comfortable, and more familiar for her. As an upperclassman in symbolic systems, she was tapped to teach a class.

> She took to it naturally.

> Computer science professor Eric Roberts, still Mayer’s mentor, supervised her teaching. He says she was “unusually good at it” and “extremely effective.”

> After Mayer taught a course in the spring, Roberts took a survey of her students. The results were astounding: They loved her — even if she did sometimes talk “a mile a minute.”

> Roberts asked Mayer to stick around Stanford to teach another class over the summer; she readily agreed.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130826113249/http://www.busine...

According to Wikipedia, it seems accurate.

> During her junior year, she taught a class in symbolic systems, with Eric S. Roberts as her supervisor. The class was so well received by students that Roberts asked Mayer to teach another class over the summer.

as a Stanford alum, I can tell you that undergrads don't teach classes at Stanford. At most she was a TA or was allowed to give a lecture. Outstanding grads are sometimes given the opportunity to teach whole undergrad courses, but only during summer. More rarely, students may give lectures (uncredited) while their professor is present in the class room. I'd love to see a link to a Stanford course page if that's not the case.

You're right, she was only a "teaching assistant for some course"

http://news.stanford.edu/news/1999/june16/taawards-616.html

Soon-to-be a freshman in college. If you don't mind me asking, what career path do you wish you took?

Hahaha. I'm sorry if I was unclear, the statement was _slightly_ tongue in cheek. I'm not sure I could have made it in any field other than dev and I do mostly like that I chose it. Bio-engineering maybe? PERHAPS finance, but I don't play too well in that sandbox.

The gist I was going for was more that even in a dev's greatest successes, they will likely never see most of the returns they generate for others without taking on some sort of "other" role (founder, CTO, etc), while to the other side of that coin, we do often get hit by the fallout of a failure (slipping a deadline, etc) and certainly don't get a payout that I would consider MASSIVE.

I've heard many arguments that this is aligned with the respective risk we take, but as my original statement, I'd take a hell of a lot more risk if it meant never working again a day in my life, but that's not even a choice us normal schmucks can really make :) (I'm also not convinced the risk argument is even sound, as that one MONTH's pay at a top exec salary essentially frees me from financial risk for the rest of my life, whereas I'll be working for decades even at a top eng salary to achieve the same)

On the flip side, what percentage of people who go down the management route actually end up as CEO of a company that can pay hundreds of millions? Is that number larger than the percentage of developers who strike it big by being one of the first devs at a unicorn? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know that both percentages are small enough to be virtually zero in the terms of a single life. Considering that, I am happy to be doing work that I like for a wage that something like 95% of people in this country would envy.

its a choice. Create your own startup, get lucky, sell your company for big money.

Easy.

Getting lucky is a one in a million occurrence. And those who do get lucky had to have at least some base funds to make their startup. So getting lucky isn't available for everyone.

Also getting lucky is on another level than Mayer who simply got a job in the early Google years and surfed on that reputation ever since.

So: Live in the right place, have money, preferrably get out of a very well known school such as Stanford or MIT, get lucky.

Yeah, that's not an option for 99.99% of people.

I believe he was being a being slightly tongue in cheek. In reply to your question though - never follow the money, follow the path where your interests lie and where your strengths lie. Biggest career mistake I ever made was to move from a job I really enjoyed to another because they offered to more than double my salary.

My slightly different take on this:

At the beginning of your career, I think the most important thing is to learn. Any company where you're learning a lot is a good place to be.

But I think you need to be able to learn to like what you're doing, even if it doesn't sound like your cup of tea. Get out of your confort zone. Go into a company that does something that's not just IT (that is, not a company that sells stuff for programmers). Human Resources, healthcare, geology, law, finance, advertising, any other domain other than IT. If I were re-doing my career, I'd try to get into any good situation with not only interesting tech, but interesting non-tech problems to solve.

Getting domain expertise outside of tech + strong tech fundamentals is huge, and a great way to build a really good company later on if that's your cup of tea, or be a great consultant or team member.

That way, you get both an interesting job, and very likely, very good financial rewards if you're good at what you're doing.

The worst mistake I've made was getting sucked into a dead-end path and staying because of the money. If I had gotten out early, I would have taken a financial hit early on, but would have continued an upward trajectory instead of plateauing (and working on stuff with non-marketable skills).

As somebody who started in software at a non-tech company, my first reaction to this was horror. On second thought, it seems like fine advice as long as your first job at the advertising firm is as a brand manager, or at a manufacturing firm you're in logistics, etc. I.e., if you are primarily an entrepreneur who might someday want to start a tech company, then by all means get some first-hand practical experience with fundamental problems of interest to your someday-customers.

My advice is to make sure wherever you are, you're working on the thing that senior management care most about. That's where you'll have the opportunity to work towards ambitious goals with the best mentors and exposure to real-world consequences.

That's good advice :) .

Your point of working on what senior management cares most about is also good (but easier said than done !!!).

Workers in secondary/support activities (as IT is in most non-tech companies) don't get that many opportunities.

But you still get to eat right? I followed my interests, and now can't afford food, literally. I should have went for a job a hate but that paid well.

This. I hate my job but tell me some other way I can make $300k (I'm basically doing management consulting). I'm 38 with 3 kids and my wife doesn't earn an income (she homeschools the kids). I suck it up so they're well provided for.

300k is nearly 6 times the median US income, and even the median US income is double that of high-quality-of-life places like Germany. Literally most of the planet has happy families with significantly less money than that.

It's facile of me to diagnose your life over the internet but I often think of the deathbed quote:

"I wish I had earned more money and spent less time with my family" -- no one ever

I think that deathbed quote is more about people who had reasonably successful life and had family. I doubt that 100s of millions in 3rd world dying in penury with no family to talk of would make similar statements. Perhaps their statements would be so pedestrian as not to be noted down.

I dated a Columbian girl (an illegal actually) before I met my wife. I remember one day she slapped me across the face and with tears of anger made it clear how stupid I was. My mistake? Uttering the bullshit platitude: "better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable". She said, "you don't know what poor is, we couldn't even afford a toothbrush. We weren't happy we were miserable. How dare you."

That's just evidence that wages are low. Seriously. If I make 6 times the median, we have a problem in this country. I don't know how you buy groceries for a family and pay for healthcare on 50k / yr.

You say "a problem in this country", but my point is that even the <=50k that literally half the US households make is itself a lot of money compared to the 25k earned in a "rich" country like Germany, and other countries are even poorer.

Universal healthcare in Germany likely helps offset the cost to some extent, but in the US those who even have healthcare usually get it through their employer. Really, it's more just a different expectation about what a reasonable life is.

I always think of how complex a television is, with thousands of little tiny components that had to be mined from the earth and forged and assembled and soldered (likely involving some child labor that we'd all prefer not to think about) and how many hundreds of people were involved. And then how it's just assumed in the US that it's reasonable to be able afford one of these in exchange for doing something simple like working a cash register at a bank for a few weeks, or how your quality of life somehow requires having multiple televisions etc.

You literally can't afford food and you are on hacker news? You can afford a computer, your own web site, ... I mean I suppose if you value technology above eating then I suppose technically you can't afford food after you spend your money elsewhere, but the full picture doesn't seem quite as bad as you originally painted it.

I used to type that post a 2013 MacMini, sort of smuggled in the country, that belongs to my startup (not me personally).

The startup ran out of money, and I took the MacMini with me, so I could continue working.

The MacMini is also currently using a damaged HDD, that S.M.A.R.T. keeps telling me should be replaced and is already critical, because I can't afford actually replacing the HDD.

I was kicked out of the apartment I was living, and now I live with my parents, my parents own a store, and by law, all sales must have a tax form filled online, thus internet is a hard requeriment to have a store, I am using that internet connection.

The maintenance of my websites, cost for me in total, about half a month of food.

Currently my source of food is mostly debt (ie: me, my parents, and other extended family members are taking loans to pay basic stuff).

It is not like getting rid of my computer, would help me, my choosen profession, the unprofitable one, is to be a programmer, so I need it to work anyway.

So, it is not a question of valuing technology above eating, it is that I already have technology because of my work, and getting rid of it won't make food sprout on my plate.

Even if I managed to sell all my belongings, I would still be unable to buy food anyway (my net worth is negative, even if I sold every single object I own, somehow for their "new" non-depreciated value, even my glasses, I would still not pay all my debts).

Sorry, I don't buy any of this.

The startup that own the MacMini: http://www.kidoteca.com

Screenshot of my desktop, with MacMini about screen, and smartctl -a /dev/disk0/

http://imgur.com/a/61brQ

You want my bank account screenshot too? I can tell you how much it has (positive 37.71 BRL, overdraft is disabled)

I honestly doesn't understand why people think I am coming up with lies, I didn't asked for anything, I just shared an anecdote, I am not begging, not trying to guilt-trip people, I was only sharing personal information, the fact that I made a mistake when I decided to follow my passion (programming), when people advised me to instead take a safer profession (construction worker for example) instead.

You don't have to justify yourself to him, he's not going to listen anyways.

I read through his comment history, so it's not that I'm not listening to what he's saying here, I'm listening to what he's said in the past.

It is possible for people to listen to what is said and disagree with it, or refuse to believe it.

Do you think he literally can't afford food?

It is a guideline, and like every guideline, there are exceptions. If your interests and strengths are comic reading, you are not likely to get a job making money in that direction. However if you really enjoy teaching but think accountants would make more money - rather do teaching. You will earn less money, but you will be way happier and more fulfilled.

checked out your site - nice. pinging you on linked in. interesting, I was just chatting with a coworker today about lua and corona sdk ..serendipity?

That sounds like it could be an interesting story...

Any specific answer to that question will be useless. Collect data, not anecdotes.

Developers are the demographic in the best position to launch startups. We have that going for us.

If more people could get more, then price inflation would adjust to reduce its buying power :-(

I just find it odd that so many people on HN give Mayer a pass for failing to turn it around because no one could turn it around.

I suggest reading the various articles that were written about her in 2015. From what I've read of her tenure, this isn't a case of an MVP who didn't have enough support. Mayer being a bad hire / performing poorly AND Yahoo being at a point of no return can certainly co-exist with one another.

> Mayer being a bad hire / performing poorly AND Yahoo being at a point of no return can certainly co-exist with one another.

Sure they can, but if Yahoo really was at the point of no return, then it ultimately being sold for parts can't (in isolation) be used as an indicator of her performance. I remember when she took the helm thinking that it would take an unbelievable feat from anybody to turn that company around.

She's similar to John Chen (Blackberry) in the task they seemed to be given. Both brought on to captain a ship that was taking on water.

I think it is crazy to say Yahoo was a sinking ship unable to be made buoyant. The number one thing they have going for them is Name/Legacy Habit. People still yahoo just because they still do. You could have let 90% off the company go, destroyed all the technology (but not the data, always import it into the new systems to not alienate long term customers) and started over.

Instead she decided she wanted to be a newspaper/tv channel, instead of a tech company. Look at the trajectory Medium.com has taken, or wordpress, even atavist. Vox Chorus and Gawker Kinja. Instead yahoo chose to continue to compete with about.com as a crappy content mill / 2nd layer newswire.

Yahoo Fantasy and Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Messenger and Flickr were all basically left to die. There was really no reason NOT to clone FBMessenger/Line/WeChat/QQ/WhatsApp. They should have been adding features to Finance and Messenger every week.

I know people who worked like just a few levels under here and they seemed to think some of your criticism of Mayer is true. However, she at least sold the company and will learn from this and will be a better CEO for the next company she joins.

Why does everyone keep pointing out Mayer's compensation on this deal?

Nobody said a word about the $200M that went Tim Armstrong's way in the Aol deal. [1]

Can't help but think that if Yahoo had a male ceo nobody would be making these comments.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2015/05/12/tim-armst...

People complain about golden parachutes all the time, e.g. the executive payouts in the Blackberry and Nokia acquisitions were also heavily criticized. One of thousands of articles: http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/how-golden-...

I think that's probably true, but I bet not directly. People know her name because she is a woman who is a CEO (which unfortunately is still noteworthy), and people note her compensation because they know her name. Who has even heard of Tim Armstrong?

Tim Armstrong was in the news a couple years ago, but the only reason I remember his name is because he shares it with the lead singer of Rancid.

And yeah, if you haven't noticed the widespread backlash against executive compensation in the past few years, you really haven't been paying attention.

People know her name only because the media forced it down our throats since she is a woman.

Did anyone care what happened to AOL though?

Yahoo had several well loved properties that they bought and ran into the ground.

You're comparing someone selling a truckload of junk for decent profit to someone who keeps buying expensive stuff, actively breaking it or leaving it to fester then selling it for a loss and being paid off for doing so.

I find it hard to parse "not expected to join Verizon" against Mayer's explicit statement that "For me personally, I’m planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It’s important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter":

http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/147941613134/verizon-to-a...

She can "plan to stay" all she wants. If she's forced out, then the best-laid plans are for naught.

Unless there's still a Yahoo (with the patents, Alibaba stake, and whatever else is left over), which in that case she could technically stay. I'd imagine most of that is going onto the block too.

AIUI Verizon is buying the brand, so although there'll be corporate continuity from today's Yahoo! to Lucky Internet Investments Inc. (or whatever the China/Japan/patents vehicle is called), "staying at Yahoo" means "moving to Verizon".

I believe it's "#1 Lucky Internet Investments Inc." Also that's racist.

Had genuinely not thought of that angle: I simply meant they were lucky investments.

Well, when she says she plans to 'stay', does she mean she's going to Verizon or staying with what's left of the original company (alibaba, etc)

wait, so they sold off billions worth of the company, but then instead of re-investing any of it to keep the remaining company afloat, or give them any competitive advantage, they're just going to give it all to stock holders, and move on to the next piece?

The only remaining pieces are holdings in Yahoo Japan and AliBaba. There's no operating company left.

Yahoo Japan is a different company.

Yes. That's what "Holdings in Yahoo Japan" mean. It's a different company but Yahoo proper has a stake in it.