Why would anyone?
That's what I don't get about these people. I'm not saying they should retire, but they can still keep their professional connections and a semblance of "work" life by sitting on various boards or doing non-profit stuff, and not actually have to deal with the humongous stresses of C-level work.
I mean let's be honest: $186M is enough to last Marrissa's descendants forever and ever. If I were in her position, I would figure out a way to make my exit. It's not like she's the founder of Yahoo so there won't be any emotional or moral attachment.
The thing is, the reason you think this way is the same reason why you won't be as successful as her. Because by the time you make your 1MM, you won't take these big risks any more.
Money was clearly not the issue. She was at Google very early and ended up VP. Clearly she didn't need the money.
If you define success as "has money" then yeah, probably. But that's okay, I don't need nearly as much money as MM. Money, after all, has significant marginal utility. The difference between having $10M and $50M is not that much, unless you have extremely expensive hobbies.
If I had that kind of money I don't think I would still be able to put a value on my time.
For example, let's assume she couldn't become CEO of something near the level of Yahoo again (which I think she still could possibly, although perhaps slim). I still bet you at the lower end that there would be plenty of 5MM-25MM/year revenue companies that would love for her to be CEO, if not for the press and connections she brings to the table. At that level it becomes whether she wants to accept a salary that she probably would make off the interest of her net worth alone.
I much prefer to go in with the mindset that she tried her best but the situation was unwinnable.
As a user, I found almost all of the changes made to sites like I once used (like the main page or flickr, or the finance page) to be worse than before she was there.
She did some very bad hires such as Henrique de Castro who in 15 months got over 100 million in salary, stock and severance.
She wasted billions on acquisitions that did not add value.
The comments from Yahoo employees since she was hired were never very good, and her behavior with employees was said to sometimes be somewhat bizarre (such as reading a children's book at a comm meeting)
I agree that she likely never had a real chance at fixing the company, but I don't think that proves that no one couldn't have improved the company.
The yahoo brand no longer exists. I think if you randomly choose someone on hn they could have at least saved the brand name.
Companies will line up to hire her again.