I think HN readers remember a bit more about the state that Yahoo was in when she took over (hint: not good.) I personally viewed her job as managing the divestiture of the valuable part of the company (Alibaba) in such a way that it delivered maximum value to the shareholders of Yahoo. I think she succeeded on that front: the market was probably undervaluing Yahoo's other assets, and she was able to sell those to Verizon for a fair price after divesting the Alibaba stake.
tl;dr: Yahoo was long dead before she arrived. WSJ readers forget that. HN readers don't. Plus she's an attractive woman, which will always paint a target on your back as an executive.
If that was the case she never would have been given the job. That's something any old bean counter could do and they wouldn't require hundreds of millions of dollars for the babysitting job.
She spent Yahoo's money like a drunken sailor, an odd thing to do if her job was managing Alibaba (how exactly do you manage a passive stake in anything?).
Some examples:
* Tumblr - $1.1b with the majority of that later written off because they have only figured out how to keep losing money
* Polyvore - $230m A fashion search engine run by people she used to mentor at Google
* Summly - $30m to a teenager for a news app that was shut down and never heard of again
Well, it's no small thing to divest a big chunk of equity like that without crushing the value. There are a few ways you can do it, but you need someone empowered to actually execute on it for the board. That's the CEO's job. She did a good job in that.
And yeah, she made some bad acquisitions. But most of these types of acquisitions fail (it's not like great companies put themselves up for sale -- just look at Microsoft's or HP's acquisition history) and the losses on those acquisitions were more than made up for by the additional amount she was able to get for the combined Alibaba + Yahoo. She basically ended up spinning off the entire value of the Alibaba stake plus $4.5 billion -- which is about $5 billion ahead of where the company was at when she started (remember the articles basically saying Yahoo's operations were worth negative money?)
I wouldn't think of HP or post-Gates Microsoft as very good examples of how to run a publicly-traded tech firm.
The market value of the company almost always is not equal to what the company could sell itself for to another company. In this case, the board would have likely gotten much more for the shareholders by spinning off Alibaba and selling the rest rather than hire Mayer.
For example:
- 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.
- Most of 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) or essentially throwing a company party where she is the guest of honor.
I don't know the numbers for sure, but with the security breaches, web site redesigns and inability to get ahead of technology trends, I think user engagement with the site is likely less than when she started.
Your anti-female bias is showing here. Polyvore has been profitable for years. I have a friend who works there and loves it.
Step back for a minute and think about how this relates to sexism at all. It is you who associated these two concepts together. You are the one who's being sexist. Once you take off your sexist glasses and see things clearly, you'll realize you are making as huge logical fallacy as the one you're criticizing.
Sexism needs to stop but comments like this are what makes it hard.
https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/31/why-polyvores-jess-lee-sol...
> "Yahoo bought Polyvore in what we’ve heard could be anywhere from a $25 million* to $60 million"
Quickly followed up by an update revealing it was actually ~10x more!
In specifically marginalizing a profitable business acquisition just because he'd assumed it was frivolous by its' nature.
I still don't understand. Can you please elaborate?
I was optimistic when she came on board, because Yahoo really needed a strong product vision and someone who had a touch of ruthlessness. But maybe it was unsalvageable.
To me that sounds like the wrong person to bet my money on. The employee who plays it safe is not right person to transform a dying company that needed radical change. You need a bolder person. Someone with a burning passion or an act to grind.
If you are google employee 20 and you haven't cashed out to build something you always wanted to but didn't have the resources yet I don't think I want you leading the transformation process. I would rather have employee 21 who quit and tried something else and failed.
By her own words, she thought Google had a 2% chance of success. Is that not enough risk for one life?
http://fortune.com/2011/10/03/marissa-mayer-i-thought-google...
Also, her experience running hundreds of projects and experiments at another billion dollar tech company is exactly what they wanted. Not whether she does all-nighters and knows Rails. I'm not going to argue that the Yahoo board made the right choice, but you would definitely have made the wrong choice.
Who said it wasn't?
Anyways, I agree with your point that Yahoo had already suffered most of its damage. In many ways, its latest CEO did the best that could be expected of anyone in that position.
Who said that? The non-existent, hypothetical people?
http://fortune.com/2017/03/13/yahoo-new-ceo-marissa-mayer-ne...
"Marissa Mayer's replacement as CEO of Yahoo, Thomas McInerney, will get paid twice as much as she did—for a job basically doing nothing."
"After all, the company that McInerney will run will not be an operating business like the one Yahoo is today, but rather an investment company not all that different from a mutual fund."
"In short, McInerney is getting paid a huge amount to sit atop a fund that basically runs itself. The way Yahoo describes McInerney's responsibilities in a filing Monday makes it sound like he will be little more than a glorified trustee, the way a retiree might occasionally check in on the status of the family nest egg."
Your comment reads a little disingenuously, or maybe you didn't understand the article.
The pushback is due to the perception that the incentives are misaligned. Right or wrong, people feel she ran the company into the ground. In that light, they feel the compensation is undue.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with the perception that she is a charlatan.
When she was hired, I thought, "she's qualified." And then I watched and listened during her press tour on the morning news shows and conference interviews... she spoke like a visionary -- someone with all the ideas to turn Yahoo around. And I thought, "that's awesome, let's see how she does." And now, here we are.
I've seen the same pushback against Shai Agassi -- a male -- for being a visionary charlatan... for somehow falling into great fortunes with little to show.
I've followed her role as CEO closely, and I don't think I've read that in a single article, out of the 40+ that I've read over the last few years.
Look at Satya Nadella. His new vision for Microsoft and all the key decisions he made are really what you see in its stocks. From +12 years of nothing to twice its valuation.
The difference is like night and day. Ballmer was all about monopolization, vendor lock-in, ruling the developer community with an iron fist, and funneling all business into the proven profit centers. Nadella understands the value of interoperability, evangelizing your own tech while trying to advance community efforts, embracing open source, and developing new lines of business independent of legacy products.
He behaves like a proper CEO.
> Also, Satya doesn't act like a clown in public
Are we talking about the same Satya who said that women shouldn't ask for better salaries but instead trust karma? Are you fucking kidding me?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/10/microsoft...
Care to guess what job (or, equally likely, what prison) Steve Jobs would've found himself in had he not stumbled into Steve Wozniak? Because without Wozniak, Jobs' best chance at success would have been a cart full of hot dogs after some ball game. Or, knowing his cult-like charisma, maybe a few old ladies he could've conned for money.
I'm not trying to be gratuitously mean, I genuinely would like you to think about this. If the "visionary" would not have had this head start, i.e. Wozniak creating something amazing; suppose Wozniak would've never existed, do you still think Jobs would have actually been in any way successful?
You can look all the problems a bad CEO can do : Kenneth Lay with Enron, Theranos, Twitter, Caterpillar 2 years ago even thought he said he didn't know. But it was his job to know... And now Travis Kalanick with the culture he created at Uber and now the damages it makes.
And you can look at all the value a great CEO can do too.
Though that is not normal. You wouldn't expect a new CEO of a small bank to overtake JPMorgan Chase.
Let me give you some insight that you might be unaware of. When the iPhone was announced, there were a few offices in Nokia where people were crying more than they would at their relatives' funerals. You know why? Because they had that exact technology and prototypes similar to the iPhone, except that the Nokia execs didn't believe something like that would succeed, for multiple (and seemingly valid) reasons. Since Apple didn't really have much to lose they launched the iPhone, a phone that despite being initially inferior to other phones (multiple reasons which I'm not going to get into) managed to get a huge market share eventually (never underestimate people's desire to show off fancy new trinkets; I think it's called fashion).
Anyway, arguably one of the biggest reasons for iPhone's success were the apps. Now, this isn't mentioned often because it risks spoiling a nice fantasy, but did you know that Jobs was actually against the concept of developer-written apps, as the ones that you find in the App Store? Yeah, there were some people who came up with the idea and had to work very hard to convince the "visionary" that this would be indeed a game-changer. He reluctantly had to concede, because in the end money is better than ego.
So yeah, judging by everything that I read, and by the fact that I don't go building shrines to any person associated to with a successful project, leads me to believe that the Jobs success story was a simple accident. Simple example - look at the huge market share that Mac's have. Oh wait, that's right; they don't. And not for lack of trying, also. Jobs lucked out with the iPhone, just as he lucked out when he bumped into Wozniak and managed to somehow be in charge without actually putting in too much work. Actually, dodging work without being caught was probably one of his most developed features (I know, fanboys will say it's a good thing; sure it's good, if you're a parasite feeding off other people's work).
I know a lot of Americans believe in the American dream and that if they work as hard and are brilliant as Steve Jobs, they too could be successful like him. Heh. Funny.
Satya's is about openness and meeting developers and customers where they are. This is what has value and what Wall Street is excited about.
Uhh.. What are you talking about? Everyone complains about the pay scale of CEOs. Especially CEOs of failing or under performing companies. That's been a thing for years. She's a failed CEO. She was brought in to turn Yahoo around and didn't.
And among all those astounding achievements, you only think people are judging her because she is a female, you must being living in a bubble.
I think it is probably more correct that she grew the value of Yahoo significantly, ~0 -> 4.5B
Accusing anyone who disagree's with you as being a sexist/anti-sexist or whatever isn't helpful.
I doubt that Yahoo worth negative value with all the engineers they hire and assets they control, without Alibaba's stock. From another perspective, she doesn't really bring Yahoo back on track, that market thinks it is worthless without Alibaba's stock. As a CEO and a high profile one, that is a definitely a failure.
That's not a matter of opinion. The worth of the company and the worth of the Alibaba stock it held were common knowledge, and subtracting one from the other resulted in a negative number.
The market value of the company almost always is not equal to what the company could sell itself for to another company - sometimes more, sometimes less. If you think the value of Yahoo’s assets were actually negative back then, do a thought experiment - let’s say 4 years ago Yahoo decides to sell the Yahoo assets to another company - do you think they would have to pay another company to take the Yahoo front page, mail etc? In this case, the board would have likely gotten much more for the shareholders by keeping Alibaba and selling the rest rather than hire Mayer. I don't know the numbers for sure, but with the security breaches, web site redesigns and inability to get ahead of technology trends, I think user engagement with the Yahoo web sites is likely less than when she started.
A CEO's compensation is used to retain and motivate that talent to create value for the company. If investors feel dissatisfied with how much they paid for the level of value creation they received on a particular asset that is very much a capitalist sentiment. There is nothing even remotely anti-capitalist about that.
Those hundreds of millions of dollars in CEO pay have to come from somewhere and that somewhere is increasingly company stock. Company stock is an asset that belongs to the company and that company is owned by shareholders. Money spent on "rock star CEOs" is money that could have otherwise been used to deliver more value to shareholders, an example would be returning money to shareholders in the form of dividends.
I think this is the key to the confusion: seeing the shareholders as the true "owners" (and therefore controllers) of a corporation is, more and more, associated with socialist undertones: people recognize in phrases like "the shareholders are more important than the CEO" the sentiments of people who call for labor unions and co-ops, which want to assert not only employee shareholdership, but also shareholder primacy.
The current form of "capitalism" that exists in most Western countries, has a corporate structure that's a bit like the Bureaucracy of ancient China: we have self-perpetuating Boards of Directors that—while being nominated by the voting shareholders—also control the opinions of the same shareholders. Where the ideal corporation would be a "representative democracy of the shareholders", the current structure is more akin to a "plutocracy of the directors."
This is the hidden war that is being fought using the proxy of "CEO pay": Board-of-Directors-plutocracy corporate-model-ists like cronyist CEOs that are in their own pocket, doing things that serve the board in particular at the expense of the shareholders generally. They're willing to pay high premiums for this—and, also, when the CEO "comes from" their stock, to throw money at them "just because" (hoping they'll get their own turn to be thrown money at later on.)
Meanwhile, the representative-democracy corporate-model-ists resent CEOs that have any sort of elevated position; they see a CEO as a necessary evil—a general and strategist to serve with skilled experience their civilian representative who does not have those skills. To them, the CEO isn't a buddy, but rather a risk to be managed—a sort of genie, who the board (as the trusted elect) must do its best to keep in its bottle, even as they demand wishes from them.
Each side of this confrontation calls the other "anti-capitalist." But, as I hope should be obvious, neither of these sides really represents "capitalism" per se. Instead, one values the sort of concentration of wealth and power that anarchocapitalism enables; while the other side values the power of the corporate charter in an almost patriotic way.
No, there is no "confusion", share holders are in fact the owners of a publicly-traded company[1]. There is no need for quoting the word owners either.
The phrase "the shareholders are more important than the CEO" was not used by either myself or the OP. The discussion was also not about organized labor. Why you have chosen to invent a quote and introduce the topic of organized labor is just bizarre.
There is nothing at all socialist about equities as an asset class.
The rights of minority shareholders in public companies, like you and me, needs to be protected/regulated by law. If someone wants to pay their CEO $1B an hour they can take their company private. Otherwise what happens is that the average shareholders gets screwed (like I was for example when I held GM shares as it went bankrupt).
Influence and ownership are somewhat orthogonal concepts in the context of a corporation.
People like you and me are protected. Both CEOs and the Board of Directors have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders - all shareholders. And breach of fiduciary duties can incur both criminal and civil penalties:
https://www.nyccriminallawyer.com/fraud-charge/investment-fr...
When is the last time a CEO was on trial for share buybacks where clearly he has conflict of interest with the shareholders due to the $$$'s he makes in compensation?
Or I scratch your back you'll scratch my back kind of arrangements in boards?
And what got us here, the outrageous CEO compensation and other benefits. When a CEO is paid x100 the President of the USA you know something isn't right. Since any given company may claim they have to pay more to be competitive the only way to stop that looting is to force them by law to control those salaries.
I agree that in theory we're in a good place but in practice I think we can still make progress... Fiduciary duty apparently is insufficient.
No, If buy the stock I have a contractual right to future profits. This is true whether I am a small individual investor or whether I personally know every member of the Board of Directors. The stock represents that claim. Influence is completely orthogonal to the legal contract that the stock represents.
There are other situations like the company taking on debt, issuing more shares, bankruptcy, acquiring other companies, share buybacks, dividends. If you don't have control there are ways for the company to "steal" your share of the profits.
They are - the law requires the board to act in the fiduciary interests of shareholders of public companies. If the board didn't act as such, then you would have legal standing and be within your rights to sue.
It's not so much that the law needs to do a better job protecting shareholders, and more that the legal system needs to make it easier/cheaper/more accessible for common people to assert their rights.
(Edit: GM today, which is basically the same company that went under and then got Government $$'s is now worth $50B dollars. I didn't lose that much money but what pisses me off is that the dice was clearly loaded here. 80% of GM shares are held by institutions and funds and they're laughing all the way to the bank ... well, they are the bank!).
How is this different than that of any other employee?
Broadly there are commentators who seem nostalgic for the 'old' Yahoo (and by that I mean the turn of the century Yahoo) and they often express angst in 'over paying' the CEO more along the lines of "we could have used that money to may Yahoo! great again" rather than pay it to some CEO.
Then there are people who have some idea of the level of change Yahoo! has gone through and the number of founding assumptions that didn't work later in its life. Those people understand what Mayer was up against at least.
And there are a number of entrepreneurial folks who made lifestyle businesses out of one or more of the many Yahoo! APIs that powered a lot of web sites over the years.
My point is that the opinion of the commentator will often have more to do with their relationship to Yahoo! and less to do with how well or poorly Marissa did her job.
My pet theory is that the first comment or so sets the mood, and the opposing camp can't be bothered to participate where their opinion will be met with critique.
It might just be the way it is in the US, but I can't help read it as a way to depower someone. I dunno if "depower" is the right term, but it feels something like that.
Again, that might just be a cultural thing that I'm not aware of.
You're trying to make a point out of nothing. Some names are simply more prone to be called using the first name, the last name only, or both, because it might just "sound" better or be sufficiently recognizable. Of course no one would call Steve Jobs "teve" since it's such a common name. "Marissa" and "Elon" are more rare and directly identify the people they refer to
Your post is an interesting lesson in confirmation bias.
Mayer is a really common name. The only way to distinguish her from the 15 Mayers I know is by full name. But in a conversation about her, I'll use whatever's shorter.
But let's also address the partial vs full name argument that commonly comes up. I hear that argument a lot. Warren Buffett is a good example. Nearly every time he's mentioned, it's by full name unless you're already talking about investment. Using his full name adds a bit of gravitas.
Partial name usage over full name is usually indicative of a few things:
1. Familiarity: The speaker feels familiar with the person - either through personal contact, proximity or extensive exposure.
2. Uniqueness within context: There's only one person with that last name that people would think of when you mention the name. If you're talking about operating systems, saying Gates or Torvalds is often enough to understand. And if you're on stage sweating and awkwardly chanting at a tech conference, people will understand that you're "pulling a Ballmer".
3. Brevity: If you talk about a person long enough in a monologue or discourse, or over a long period of time you'll get tired of mentioning their full name. Last name is usually preferred culturally unless there's a chance of confusion with another person.
4. Personal preference: Sometimes some names roll off the tongue better than others. If a speaker finds a name hard to pronounce or spell, they might pick another.
5. Cultural unfamiliarity: Nadella was easier for me to remember by his last name than his first name "Satya".
6. Rhetoric: You might be trying to appeal to a well-known authority by their most common reference to add panache (e.g. "Gandhi" vs "Warren Buffet"). And this reference can depend on whether you're trying to put a positive spin vs. a negative one. "Barack Obama" vs "Obama" is a good example, with the first/last combo being used more frequently by supporters and just the last name (or the first/middle/last combo) used by detractors.
On the other hand, long names might be preferred due to alliteration or rhyming ("Marissa Mayer" and "Rami Rahim" just flow really well), possible confusion with regular nouns ("Elon Musk", "Steve Jobs"), or that's how they were introduced ("Tim Cook").
Finally, insiders (employees and/or industry partners) will refer to a person differently than outsiders.
So, no, it's not about sex. Sex might be a contributing factor to familiarity or rhetoric depending on the person. But there are plenty of famous men that are referred to by their full name with respect (Buffet) or scorn (Ballmer).
This. As I noted in a sibling, at the time I first responded to the comment, the use of just "Marissa" far outweighs the use of any form that includes her surname.
What are the chances the HN user-base is actually more familiar with Meyer? Sure, she came out of the SV world, but I don't see Musk referred to as "Elon" much on HN.
Nearly every time the people I interface with introduce him into a discussion, he's referred to by full name. His first name sounds a bit weird to me out of context - all strong vowels. But I hear his employees refer to him by first name. It'll differ from place to place.
> What are the chances the HN user-base is actually more familiar with Meyer?
There's also the fact that these huge comment trees are linked to articles and have titles that usually include the person's full name or company at the top. In every case we're talking about someone on Hacker News, we're immediately susceptible to the brevity exception as everyone reading and commenting already contextually knows who you're talking about.
Using a full name in contextual discussion sounds weird to me, honestly. I knew a person who would call me by my full name as I was leaving parties and other social engagements and it was weird and awkward because it was overly formal and I used to date that person. And I didn't appreciate the loud, immediate attention.
Which name you use when referring to strangers is kind of random. I have some people who call me by last name, others by first. A lot of it depended on how they were introduced to me, or whether I lived in a place where that name was uncommon. People like to categorize, and often the more unique a name, the better.
It's important to always assume good faith when someone does something that's weird to you. I've been recently working a lot with social services, which has a lot of good examples of deescalating situations. Like with abused children - when the come into care they will quite commonly interact in an uncomfortably familiar or even sexual fashion because they've lived in situations where those lines weren't very clear. It's not bad behavior - it's just the survival skills they've learned. In those cases, it's most important to just not freak out and calmly talk your way through things. Adults who attempt to read motive out of their behavior tend to start a lot of unnecessary conflict.
I'm a bit weird because I actually bought etiquette and flower arrangement books. This stuff is interesting to me, although the changing landscape of social etiquette frustrates nearly everyone. Just keep in mind that a lot of the words we speak, as well as the way we speak them and the way that we refer to each other is based on unspoken rules that subtly alter between generations and across cultures. There's no one rule for interactions anymore. Even though we like to pretend that there is when someone crosses our own boundaries.
why did you even write this?
this (Trump):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Trump_20...
and
this ("Hillary"):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Hillary_...
Hillary is a different case because her husband Bill was president, so most people associate Clinton with Bill.
Or maybe it's just because saying "Elon" or "Marissa" is enough to know whom we're talking about
They got that. The news of her hiring spiked the share price, and the media announced that Yahoo was suddenly relevant again.
Then the time came to actually save a business that was in dire straights. Not sure anyone could have done that.
I was expecting a new revolutionary product, a complete refocus of the company, such as Apple. She sure must have had this in her plan or she probably actually didn't.
Sounds to me like someone didn't know what they were doing instead of someone who really has a plan.
HN may be less pro-capitalist than the WSJ (though it's still pretty pro-capitalist, overall), but if anything it's more pro-elite-employee than the WSJ.
It isn't a business focused newspaper owned by News Corp, most anticapitalists aren't going to go anywhere near their comments section.
Google does not have a WFH policy. She killed the policy because internal audit showed that many people were just not working when they claimed to be; VPN and sign-in logs turned up many slackers. There were some who were allowed to WFH. So it wasn't a blanket "no one's allowed to WFH", but more a "justify your need to WFH and show that you're doing a good job".
> Then she promptly built a nursery in her office.
She did not take much of a maternity leave at all. She came back within 2 weeks of giving birth via a cesaerean(sp). She just converted a cube nearby to where she kept her kid.
Also remember that by the time she killed the WFH policy, Yahoo had been circling the drain for a long time. When your best folks can easily find new/better jobs, they do; and you're left with a company full of people who are having a hard time finding anything else. It's one thing to kill a successful WFH policy at a thriving company; it's another entirely to do it with a company that is having problems.
Google is also among the companies I wouldn't want to work for. It's just a deal breaker for me. Having a policy and then rescinding it would be another deal breaker. I get that there were slackers, but when it comes to developers, were team leads really not seeing this? They had to have an audit? How does this type of slacking even work? "Oh, I'm working on this thing that should have taken a few hours for the third day in a row".
My point was that I don't think she afforded the "bring your infant to work" policy for developers. One main reason I might choose to work from home, is that I would be able to look after an infant while my significant other ran errands. All kudos to heading right back to work especially after that tough of a procedure. (although I'd argue SHE should have worked from home at that point)...
Mayer was a bad CEO – take Alibaba out of the equation and Yahoo became materially worse off expressly because of the decisions she made. Look at the ridiculous acquisitions, look at the brain drain. What the hell is Yahoo’s product? Email? They can’t even keep that secure – compromising a BILLION accounts. They were warned about MD5 in 2008. Yahoo’s Security team was treated like second class citizens – requests being denied because of cost too much or they were considered a low priority. Who set those priorities? Mayer. A a billion accounts got compromised as a result. There is a direct cause-effect.
Complaining about her salary is completely valid – not because it was “high” but because she got such an incomprehensible salary for running the company into the ground. Nobody complains about Tim Cook’s salary because nobody cares – Apple is extremely profitable, which is the entire point of a CEO. Tim Cook is a liberal gay man – so if the idea that people are harder on Mayer is because of her sex – imagine how hard they should ostensibly be on Cook. Yet Cook is actually doing a good job. Nobody cares what someone has between their legs if the share price is good.
Mayer is criticized because she was horrible, ineffective and engaged in substance-poor grandstanding and she got paid enormously for essentially crashing the ship into an iceberg before Verizon came along like the Carpathia. Sure, Yahoo was the Titanic before Mayer arrived, but she knew that and yet still went full-ahead sailing Yahoo into the ice field or irrelevancy.
On what basis are you claiming that? Do you have any idea about how the other CEOs before her did?
Disclaimer: I worked at Yahoo for several CEOs, including Mayer. I think she was the best CEO at Yahoo in a long time. So please, enlighten me why my impression of her is incorrect.
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/top-10-management-mistake...
https://qz.com/314225/everything-we-learned-from-marissa-may...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/11/20/marissa-ma...
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/262704/why-wont-anyone-tal...
http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-may...
https://www.thestreet.com/story/13332877/1/yahoo-ceo-mayer-i...
http://variety.com/2016/digital/features/marissa-mayer-yahoo...
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2015/12/30/worst-ceos-20...
http://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/the-worst-ceos-in-corporate-...
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272469
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-wh...
Do you want more?
I was there. I saw the sea change she brought into the company. Morale skyrocketed, after the company was just drifting around for years. Compared to Carol Bartz, she was a CEO extraordinaire.
I remember reading Eric Jackson's screeds and he was clueless as hell.
All B2B industrials; not consumer tech companies that get reported on ad nauseam in the media. Lockheed's product lifecycles are measured in decades; Yahoo's in months. I don't think it's a fair comparison.
Agree that Yahoo had really shitty product focus, but that was true 10 years before she joined. Like you said, Yahoo had been warned about MD5 nearly a decade ago -- security had obviously been deprioritized for years before she arrived.
What did she do? She stopped the bleeding long enough to get a sale done. She basically acted like a private equity CEO. If you view her job as extracting the most value out of Yahoo, she did a pretty good job of that.
The criticism against Mayer was due to a combination of her age, gender and "celebrity" status (celebrities tend to be attractive, successful and wealthy). A man would not have had a media circus around him due to the fact that he chose to start a family while being a CEO (a choice that she informed the Yahoo board of before taking the job). Mayer also looks about 10 years younger than she is in most photos; which IMO leads to a lot of armchair executives criticizing her as inexperienced (lol, she was a key member of the team that built the product that destroyed Yahoo, so I'm pretty sure she's experienced).
IMO Mayer is a great example that having kids doesn't have to derail your career as a female executive. While she may set an unrealistic standard for other women (damn Stanford overachievers!) I can't fault her for figuring out a way to make the various elements of her life work for her.
Will she show humility for failing at turning the company around? Will she claim success for a coincidental share price increase she had nothing to do with? Will she claim nobody could have done better? This will allow for a better judgment of character.
Mary Barra made $22.6 million, more than all the male auto CEOs. I haven't really ever seen much bashing of her personally.
Elizabeth Holmes was a media love story until it all came crashing down, although she was a founder/CEO.
Agree about the cesspools though.
Carly Fiorina, ex-HP CEO
And if any CEO should be burned at a stake, shouldn't it be that guy that refused to sell Yahoo for 47 billion to Microsoft?
Mayer joined a horribly failing company with no core purpose for existing, experimented wildly in an attempt to shake things up and turn it around, then after failing, unwound the thing and sold it for far more than it was worth.
That was Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo. And yes, he was "burned at the stake". He was fired from the CEO job within months of tanking that deal.
After he left, Yahoo made the mistake of selling half of the Alibaba which are worth $36 Billion.
A lot has changed. Schmidt weaponized Google's offering and helped sell to DC, turning Google into the Halliburton of information.
I think the typical notion of capitalism is too broad (and encompasses the gamut of disruptive businesses, traditional "crony" capitalism, rent-seeking, and borderline fraud). The WSJ caters mainly to establishment ("crony" and rent-seeking) capitalist readers. HN includes more classically liberal views.
Also, I think few people realize that Mayer's comp package was an exercise in leverage and risk reduction for both parties. Taking the helm of a project that has failed under a handful of seasoned practitioners is certainly not something most people would feel comfortable doing in their own line of work.
This page does have more complementary comments than normal, I think startup world likes a clean exit, but maybe its just people have given up moaning about her and are over it.
Since when? It's a pro-capitalism, free-market, libertarian, Ayn Rand, love-fest in here most days.
Talking against those points is a great way to be voted down unless you happen to be commenting in a thread that has attracted the smaller left-wing side of HN.
I have ideas about muckraking. Give it a rest?
does not compute. has nothing to do with the money.
That may be true, but it doesn't make the comments about her being overpaid any less valid; or analysis of what happened with Yahoo any less interesting.
I think the special outrage over Mayer has an element of misogyny (how can it not?), but I honestly think it's mostly fueled by the fact that most of her public decisions (ending remote work, etc.) seem like changing uniforms on the staff of the Titanic as it sinks.
When someone does a terrible job I don't think they should get paid more money than most people will ever see in their lifetime. I think a lot of people feel that way. Mayer is not unique in this, there's plenty of terrible executives who are wealthy, she was just a really visible one.
(Yes, I know that lots of the vitriol aimed at Ballmer was for various weird public antics. But he was also regarded as a dud of a CEO, and roundly criticized for not actually knowing how to run Microsoft.)
But Yahoo was doing a much worse job before she got there! How many articles have you seen on HN about Scott Thompson? About Carol Bartz? About Terry Semel?
Take away Marissa Mayer from this story, and replace her with a generic CEO, and I'm not sure we'd see the same mood in either comment section.
Why is this? Is this because she's from Google? Because she's a former engineer? Because she's a female CEO? Is she just a politically polarizing topic ala Elon Musk?
Genuinely curious. Anyone have any ideas?