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I see a lot of parallels between Marissa Mayer's tenure at Yahoo and Dick Costolo's tenure at Twitter. Dick left two quarters ago and Twitter is still strugglin

I see a lot of parallels between Marissa Mayer's tenure at Yahoo and Dick Costolo's tenure at Twitter. Dick left two quarters ago and Twitter is still struggling to meet investor expectations. I have a feeling that there are structural problems at Yahoo, like Twitter, that even a unicorn CEO would have difficulty fixing. A lot of analysts and investors seem very leadership oriented in their blame anyway.

SwellJoe 11y ago
There's a strong cult of personality around our industry, in general. The belief that a special CEO can make a billion dollar company. It ignores the role of luck, the other employees (sometimes there are thousands of employees, as in the case of Yahoo!, and every single one of them can make or break the company in small ways every day), changes in the market, etc. Steve Jobs is the epitome of the Magic CEO archetype, in this school of thought, and yet, he founded expensive failures, too, and almost rode Apple into the ground, to boot. There are so many variables that it seems harmful to the industry and the world as a whole to place so much value and so much blame on CEOs when things go right or wrong. All that said, I'd like to see an experiment where a CEO steps in, cuts C-level salaries dramatically (taking the hit from people leaving who care more about the million dollar bonus than the company itself), including their own, and re-directing that money to higher wages for employees and deeper, further ranging, research and development. Kinda replicate the history of HP, in reverse: Start with high executive salaries, awful outdated products, and defeated company morale, and start building a culture that looks toward the future, takes care of everyone in the company (before C-levels get bonuses) and treats them all with respect from top to bottom, and build products that define the market not follow it. But, I've never built or run a billion dollar company. I might be an idiot that no one should ever listen to.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  I wouldn't call NeXT an expensive failure, especially seeing how it laid the framework for Apple's current success. It is hard to say what would have happened if Steve Jobs stayed at Apple in the 80s....he was never actually CEO before 1997 (see http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-ceos-from-1977-to-2011/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-ceos...).
  - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
    NeXT effectively replaced Apple's leadership post-1996. Arguably NeXT affected the single most successful 'reverse takeover' of all time.
    - robotresearcher 11y ago
      Pixar did the same at Disney.
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      Still too complicated of a story and too much tied up with time and place and team for it to be "Steve Jobs did this". And, there were many points during his story where he was catching more flack than Marissa Mayer has ever had directed her way, and probably ever will get. Kinda reinforces my point that CEOs get too much credit and too much blame. But, you're right, I guess. Steve Jobs' life is a long story arc that ends in massive success, with many smaller successes and failures along the path. In all cases, the credit and blame should (in a just world) be distributed a bit more widely than it is. Apple without Wozniak (or any of the several dozen other superstar engineers that Apple attracted in the early years) would not have become Apple.
  - setpatchaddress 11y ago
    But NeXT was a big failure commercially. And the software light at the end of the tunnel in 1996 was WebObjects, not OpenStep. If Apple hadn't bought them, they'd have eventually been reduced to WebObjects, Inc, in all but name. Steve would have destroyed Apple completely had he been CEO prior to his experiences running NeXT and Pixar. He almost did anyway -- read up on the stories about how he treated the Apple II division -- the only part of the company that made money up until after the point Steve had left.
rajacombinator 11y ago
In the case of these execs, it's live by PR, die by PR.
jonknee 11y ago
Jack was just named CEO on October 5th, it will still be a little bit before we see how the Street reacts. The next quarterly earnings should be telling.
- danharaj 11y ago
  He was part time for the quarter before that tho.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    Yes, but you don't go around making big changes when you're in a temp position. Once he was the real CEO he had free reign to execute a new plan and has shown steps that he's doing that (Moments launched literally the next day!).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

SwellJoe 11y ago

There's a strong cult of personality around our industry, in general. The belief that a special CEO can make a billion dollar company. It ignores the role of luck, the other employees (sometimes there are thousands of employees, as in the case of Yahoo!, and every single one of them can make or break the company in small ways every day), changes in the market, etc. Steve Jobs is the epitome of the Magic CEO archetype, in this school of thought, and yet, he founded expensive failures, too, and almost rode Apple into the ground, to boot. There are so many variables that it seems harmful to the industry and the world as a whole to place so much value and so much blame on CEOs when things go right or wrong. All that said, I'd like to see an experiment where a CEO steps in, cuts C-level salaries dramatically (taking the hit from people leaving who care more about the million dollar bonus than the company itself), including their own, and re-directing that money to higher wages for employees and deeper, further ranging, research and development. Kinda replicate the history of HP, in reverse: Start with high executive salaries, awful outdated products, and defeated company morale, and start building a culture that looks toward the future, takes care of everyone in the company (before C-levels get bonuses) and treats them all with respect from top to bottom, and build products that define the market not follow it. But, I've never built or run a billion dollar company. I might be an idiot that no one should ever listen to.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
I wouldn't call NeXT an expensive failure, especially seeing how it laid the framework for Apple's current success. It is hard to say what would have happened if Steve Jobs stayed at Apple in the 80s....he was never actually CEO before 1997 (see http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-ceos-from-1977-to-2011/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-look-at-apples-ceos...).
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  NeXT effectively replaced Apple's leadership post-1996. Arguably NeXT affected the single most successful 'reverse takeover' of all time.
  - robotresearcher 11y ago
    Pixar did the same at Disney.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    Still too complicated of a story and too much tied up with time and place and team for it to be "Steve Jobs did this". And, there were many points during his story where he was catching more flack than Marissa Mayer has ever had directed her way, and probably ever will get. Kinda reinforces my point that CEOs get too much credit and too much blame. But, you're right, I guess. Steve Jobs' life is a long story arc that ends in massive success, with many smaller successes and failures along the path. In all cases, the credit and blame should (in a just world) be distributed a bit more widely than it is. Apple without Wozniak (or any of the several dozen other superstar engineers that Apple attracted in the early years) would not have become Apple.
- setpatchaddress 11y ago
  But NeXT was a big failure commercially. And the software light at the end of the tunnel in 1996 was WebObjects, not OpenStep. If Apple hadn't bought them, they'd have eventually been reduced to WebObjects, Inc, in all but name. Steve would have destroyed Apple completely had he been CEO prior to his experiences running NeXT and Pixar. He almost did anyway -- read up on the stories about how he treated the Apple II division -- the only part of the company that made money up until after the point Steve had left.

rajacombinator 11y ago

In the case of these execs, it's live by PR, die by PR.

jonknee 11y ago

Jack was just named CEO on October 5th, it will still be a little bit before we see how the Street reacts. The next quarterly earnings should be telling.

danharaj 11y ago
He was part time for the quarter before that tho.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Yes, but you don't go around making big changes when you're in a temp position. Once he was the real CEO he had free reign to execute a new plan and has shown steps that he's doing that (Moments launched literally the next day!).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]