10 ms·

This is just as much an argument in support that she doesn't deserve to get 55 million. Just because you took the helm of the titanic as it was hitting the iceb

by hueving 11y ago

This is just as much an argument in support that she doesn't deserve to get 55 million. Just because you took the helm of the titanic as it was hitting the iceberg doesn't mean you deserve to make 250 times what a regular engineer makes.

cft 11y ago
More than 250x. Her total compensation during her tenure at Yahoo was http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-365-million-5-year-compensation-package-2015-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-365-million-5-y... This is probably 365x what an engineer makes there, she makes in a day what an engineer makes in a year. With this kind of compensation, the actual outcome of Yahoo's business is irrelevant to her. That and the fact that it is not her own business. This is an illustration of the modern problem of separation of real ownership from control. Henry Ford for example strived to buy out his investors and became close to being the sole proprietor of Ford Motor.
- yeukhon 11y ago
  > the actual outcome of Yahoo's business is irrelevant to her Maybe, but I doubt. An executive like her wouldn't settle just for a paycheck, success and image are way more important. Instead of becoming the CEO that saved Yahoo, her legacy is that she will become the last CEO of Yahoo (when the worst case happens) that didn't turn Yahoo around plus acquired a bunch of expensive startups. Oh yeah she did turn the culture around inside Yahoo more Google-like benefit, but history book usually tells the bad things first. In fact it doesn't take an executive role to understand. I wouldn't want to go to another job with little accomplishment in my previous job. I just feel shit if I do.
  - ohazi 11y ago
    > An executive like her wouldn't settle just for a paycheck, success and image are way more important. > I wouldn't want to go to another job with little accomplishment in my previous job. I just feel shit if I do. Bullshit. Most people would be fine feeling a little shitty for a few years for THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. This theory that somehow executives are motivated "differently" is totally bonkers. They're just as selfish and short sighted and apathetic as you or me, but they're playing at the high-roller table with other people's money.
    - tmptmp 11y ago
      Very good and apt reply. I mean there wasn't much of a "push" for her to perform as compared to an engineer. She was already making way too much more. But so do many a politicians. They just successfully sell themselves to "foolish" willing buyers.
    - rdslw 11y ago
      There is no reason to use bullshit here. I think you're completely wrong, maybe you dont know what youre talking about (by not being at exec mulit m position). You judge compensation from your perspective. My argument is: you forgotten (financial) starting point of her. Jump to yahoo didnt increase her situation x7 (capital) and this is currently widely believed change which must happen to individual to have permanent happines increase because of financial change (inducing financial backed motivation). She for sure is aware of how it works. That being told your argument against that success and image is not important to her is wrong. It is much more important to her than money compensation.
    - gaius 11y ago
      Quite; consider that in terms of both jobs and shareholder value destroyed, Fiorina has a decent claim on the title of "worst CEO ever" but she did alright out of it herself and is now bragging about how her corporate experience makes her presidential material.
      - rvense 11y ago
        The part of me that loves satire was hoping for a joint Trump/Fiorina bill where they'd both be talking about applying their fantastic business experience in the White House.
    - geodel 11y ago
      This is excellent response. All this 'Greater calling' by most people at top of corporate ladder is bullshit. They have orders of magnitude more time and money to talk about issues irrelevant to business. This way they can ensure tragic/glorious profiles by hacks about their life and times.
    - 11y ago
  - drauh 11y ago
    Have a look at the history of "failed" CEOs. Do they end up back at middle management? How does one measure success in industry? Simple answer: by the size of the check you receive. With $55 million, she could bloody retire and laugh her way to the bank. Who's shortsighted, here?
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  This is certainly a factor. Family run businesses are, on average, twice as profitable as those run by salaried managers.
  - cma 11y ago
    A family owned business is no longer family owned after a bankrupcy. A salaried-manager-run business is usually still salaried-manager-run after a bankruptcy.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Bankrupcy is not the only way to stop being family owned. Walmart and many other major companies used to be a family business. Overall, family's are more likely to think long term and extract money now instead of aiming for growth for growth's sake, both of which promote profitability.
      - dforrestwilson1 11y ago
        Your fundamental argument seems to be that the board was shortsighted, not necessarily Marissa. No argument here.
- Touche 11y ago
  This is why I laugh when people want to flock into the software engineering profession, or act like we are well paid. Software engineering is the watch maker of the 21st century. I can't think of any profession where the demands to compensation ratio is so out of whack. As an engineer you're expected to be exceptionally bright, exceptionally creative (we have to invent new things all of the time), exceptionally passionate, deal with stress (an off-by-one error can cost your company millions) all while living a very middle class life. I'm sure being a brain surgeon is much more stressful and takes longer to achieve, but hey, those people live in neighborhoods I can't afford to go into.
  - dave_sullivan 11y ago
    > I'm sure being a brain surgeon is much more stressful and takes longer to achieve, but hey, those people live in neighborhoods I can't afford to go into. Most doctors and lawyers don't make lots of money in comparison to a reasonably well paid software engineer. There are tracks that will lead to bigger bucks (if lucky) where you essentially sell your soul for the chance to get there. Big law firms have "partner track", doctors and lawyers can start their own practice, and various areas in medicine can still be very lucrative (eg, plastic surgery). Those tracks are all super hard. The equivalent for software engineers is starting a company or seeking a high level position at a large, fast-growing company. I agree that software as it exists today will change: more people will come into it, wages will go down in many areas. Smart people that want to make more money will specialize (hopefully choosing the right specialization). As a comparison though, an independent consultant with a reasonably sought after technical specialty can make significantly more money, with less school and regulation, than lawyers or doctors at similar levels. If you start a successful software business (even a tiny ISV with real customers), you can make considerably more than doctors or lawyers, again with less school and regulation. I'm sticking with software!
    - vemy 11y ago
      Almost all doctors will make much more than the vast majority programmers. I think you are underestimating how much doctors earn.
- dpweb 11y ago
  There are cases where the CEO deserves many millions of dollars. They are supposed to move the business in ways that are growing very fast and profitable. There are all kinds of startups that Yahoo could have bought or invested in, all kinds of areas that have the potential to be wildly successful. Who would have thought Amazon, a retailer, would be the platform of the cloud computing world. It's the CEO job to see this, what not everyone else can see. That's what deserves the many millions of $.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Has Marissa Mayer achieved what you say is the job of a CEO, though?
  - usrusr 11y ago
    Amazon is an interesting case. With their radical reinvestment strategy of quiet, organic growth, they are the absolute anti-Yahoo. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single high profile acquisition that Amazon did, whereas Yahoo has a reputation for being the place where the flickrs of the world go to die. Amazon contrasts this with being more like a old economy corporation with merely an internet front. They invest in boring brick-and-mortar logistics-factories, computing-factories and so on that no "true internet company" would touch with a long stick. Maybe Yahoo has long ago accepted that their only remaining shareholders must be in it for the exciting, flashy news headlines. In that case, they might feel compelled to go for an exceptionally expensive CEO only for the news value, just like very expensive watches are not bought despite their price but because of it. Marissa Mayer then would not have made it if she offered to do the job for half the price, not beating everybody else's CEO spending would have been out of character for Yahoo.
yuzi 11y ago
But maybe she did a great job responding to the crises and swerved the ship in the right direction, out of harms way, but just not enough to prevent the crash. Maybe she did a better job than many others would have done. What would you expect them to do... give up? I don't understand the engineer comparison at all. Every person in her role adopts much more responsibility, takes on a huge risk of failure that can be career ending and they can face a media frenzy that attempts to bash them into the ground. Why would anyone try to compare her salary to an engineers?
- afterburner 11y ago
  You think CEOs fall on hard times when they fail?
  - yuzi 11y ago
    I agree they are paid generously and even overpaid, but they deserve to be paid more than an engineer. How much is debatable, but that's really established by the market. I just don't get the engineer comparison.
    - nikcub 11y ago
      > but that's really established by the market. It isn't really, tho. It's established by the compensation committee that is convened by the board and comprises of board members. Starboard bitched about the compensation committee since it only had 2 members on it, and they were favorable to Mayer (giving her credit for what is effectively a rise in Alibaba). Starboard got 3 of it's own board members onto that committee now, so the fun times are over. The conflict of interest in the process has always been that you have your own board members, some of whom you bought into the board, deciding compensation. A lot of these directors are themselves the subject of compensation committees at other public companies - so there is a quid pro quo amongst those who serve on each others boards. It takes an outside activist investor to break up these friendly and circular compensation cliques. I like Mayer, but it is really difficult to justify these compensation packages when the core business she is running is performing so poorly. I don't think many people would have any problem with her earnings hundreds of millions of dollars - but only as a portion of gains made by rescuing Yahoo's decline.
0xmohit 11y ago
This is the reward for ensuring that the ship sinks.
- gavanwoolery 11y ago
  Joking or not - it would be a great move by Google to install her as Yahoo's CEO, drive down the worth of the company, and gather up the ashes for a cheap price.
  - jedmeyers 11y ago
    You mean like Microsoft did with Elop and Nokia?
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Nokia did that to themselves, why do people keep blaming Microsoft? It was the Nokia board that made a bonus clause in Elop's contract if he managed to sell the company. "Now We Know Why - Nokia's Elop had a $25M personal bonus clause from the Nokia Board if he was able to sell the handset unit to Microsoft" http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/now-we-know-why-nokias-elop-had-a-25m-personal-bonus-clause-from-the-nokia-board-if-he-was-able-to-s.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/now-we-... Blame Nokia board, not Microsoft!
      - RyanZAG 11y ago
        If you look at the composition of that board, they were actually the same people on both. So I guess blame Microsoft board/blame Nokia board are both accurate as it's one and the same.
      - mtgx 11y ago
        There's enough blame to go around, and ultimately the most to blame was the board. However, Microsoft did play a big role in trying to convince Nokia to get their former VP as their CEO, which was their long con into getting Nokia to adopt Windows Phone, because Microsoft thought a company such as Nokia could surely turn WP's fortunes around. But yes, Nokia itself was most to blame for its failure to "pee in its pants" and adopt Android when it still had 2x Samsung's market share in phones.
tn13 11y ago
You are not qualified to judge what others deserve. Steph Curry's net worth is $44M and I don't think anybody deserves $44networth for being good at throwing balls through hoops. But it is market that often determines these numbers and we simply do not possess the information to look at all those variables.
- moonshinefe 11y ago
  Someone's opinion on what someone deserves in relation to someone else has nothing to do with market value quite often. It's not a hard distinction.
- nihonde 11y ago
  His net worth isn't based on being able to throw balls through hoops; it's based on his ability to attract and retain a huge audience for advertisers.
  - Reedx 11y ago
    Yep. To be one of the best at throwing balls through hoops is no small feat, and the market has shown that lots of people will buy tickets and merchandise as a result. Therefore he's worth the $. It's also a very risky and short lived career.
  - tn13 11y ago
    Doesn't matter. I dont think advertisers should pay that much money to him. Case in point is that worth of Mayers might depend on far too many factors which we cant comprehend and we must not judge her.
    - nihonde 11y ago
      Advertisers are notoriously poor at proving ROI, so you could be right in your assessment of his worth to them. Anyway, if putting a ball through a hoop was a bankable skill, this guy would be a billionaire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG_DQXEK764 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG_DQXEK764
- 11y ago
skuhn 11y ago
I don't see it as direct payment for the job that she's doing, but rather paying to cover her downside risk. An engineer at Yahoo, if they're sufficiently good (and they do exist), can make it to a life raft and continue their career elsewhere. Marissa likely has no post-Yahoo career. I doubt she will ever have another regular job after Yahoo, and instead after a little while she'll be a board member and have advisory roles at some places. I don't see how there is another CEO role in her future after Yahoo gets ripped apart by an acquiring iceberg. The money she stands to make is meant to compensate her for that scenario. It's also meant to be a deterrent to proceeding with a sale in the first place, although I think it will prove to be insufficient.
- csallen 11y ago
  55M is an absurdly big life raft.
- 0xmohit 11y ago
  OK. The takeaway from this: As a CEO, you can screw up a company -- as a result, the employees and shareholders. However, the CEO's future must be secured. Not bad.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    There aren't daily HN threads with hundreds of people bashing the employees. The employees aren't walking into every job interview as "the person that killed Yahoo." We like to hold CEOs accountable for failures (i.e. they may never work again). Nobody who can help it is going to take that gig unless they know they're set for life in case of failure.
- Rexxar 11y ago
  What downside risk is worth 55M ? She don't risk her life. Why couldn't she have a regular job and a normal life after being yahoo CEO ?
  - 0xmohit 11y ago
    55M is the price for not realizing the (in)competence upfront.
dexterdog 11y ago
But Yahoo was going to be an albatross for any big name that took it. She was a big and rising name in SV for a long time. I think she knew that she was likely selling all of her potential future for this so she took the gamble with her reputation by not gambling with her finances. That being said I still don't think she did a particularly good job even given where she started, but you never know that about a person until they get to sit in the big chair.
- eternalban 11y ago
  > Yahoo was going to be an albatross for any big name that took it. No, that is the 55,000,000.00 question.

by hueving 11y ago

cft 11y ago

More than 250x. Her total compensation during her tenure at Yahoo was http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-365-million-5-year-compensation-package-2015-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-365-million-5-y... This is probably 365x what an engineer makes there, she makes in a day what an engineer makes in a year. With this kind of compensation, the actual outcome of Yahoo's business is irrelevant to her. That and the fact that it is not her own business. This is an illustration of the modern problem of separation of real ownership from control. Henry Ford for example strived to buy out his investors and became close to being the sole proprietor of Ford Motor.

yeukhon 11y ago
> the actual outcome of Yahoo's business is irrelevant to her Maybe, but I doubt. An executive like her wouldn't settle just for a paycheck, success and image are way more important. Instead of becoming the CEO that saved Yahoo, her legacy is that she will become the last CEO of Yahoo (when the worst case happens) that didn't turn Yahoo around plus acquired a bunch of expensive startups. Oh yeah she did turn the culture around inside Yahoo more Google-like benefit, but history book usually tells the bad things first. In fact it doesn't take an executive role to understand. I wouldn't want to go to another job with little accomplishment in my previous job. I just feel shit if I do.
- ohazi 11y ago
  > An executive like her wouldn't settle just for a paycheck, success and image are way more important. > I wouldn't want to go to another job with little accomplishment in my previous job. I just feel shit if I do. Bullshit. Most people would be fine feeling a little shitty for a few years for THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. This theory that somehow executives are motivated "differently" is totally bonkers. They're just as selfish and short sighted and apathetic as you or me, but they're playing at the high-roller table with other people's money.
  - tmptmp 11y ago
    Very good and apt reply. I mean there wasn't much of a "push" for her to perform as compared to an engineer. She was already making way too much more. But so do many a politicians. They just successfully sell themselves to "foolish" willing buyers.
  - rdslw 11y ago
    There is no reason to use bullshit here. I think you're completely wrong, maybe you dont know what youre talking about (by not being at exec mulit m position). You judge compensation from your perspective. My argument is: you forgotten (financial) starting point of her. Jump to yahoo didnt increase her situation x7 (capital) and this is currently widely believed change which must happen to individual to have permanent happines increase because of financial change (inducing financial backed motivation). She for sure is aware of how it works. That being told your argument against that success and image is not important to her is wrong. It is much more important to her than money compensation.
  - gaius 11y ago
    Quite; consider that in terms of both jobs and shareholder value destroyed, Fiorina has a decent claim on the title of "worst CEO ever" but she did alright out of it herself and is now bragging about how her corporate experience makes her presidential material.
    - rvense 11y ago
      The part of me that loves satire was hoping for a joint Trump/Fiorina bill where they'd both be talking about applying their fantastic business experience in the White House.
  - geodel 11y ago
    This is excellent response. All this 'Greater calling' by most people at top of corporate ladder is bullshit. They have orders of magnitude more time and money to talk about issues irrelevant to business. This way they can ensure tragic/glorious profiles by hacks about their life and times.
  - 11y ago
- drauh 11y ago
  Have a look at the history of "failed" CEOs. Do they end up back at middle management? How does one measure success in industry? Simple answer: by the size of the check you receive. With $55 million, she could bloody retire and laugh her way to the bank. Who's shortsighted, here?
MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
This is certainly a factor. Family run businesses are, on average, twice as profitable as those run by salaried managers.
- cma 11y ago
  A family owned business is no longer family owned after a bankrupcy. A salaried-manager-run business is usually still salaried-manager-run after a bankruptcy.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Bankrupcy is not the only way to stop being family owned. Walmart and many other major companies used to be a family business. Overall, family's are more likely to think long term and extract money now instead of aiming for growth for growth's sake, both of which promote profitability.
    - dforrestwilson1 11y ago
      Your fundamental argument seems to be that the board was shortsighted, not necessarily Marissa. No argument here.
Touche 11y ago
This is why I laugh when people want to flock into the software engineering profession, or act like we are well paid. Software engineering is the watch maker of the 21st century. I can't think of any profession where the demands to compensation ratio is so out of whack. As an engineer you're expected to be exceptionally bright, exceptionally creative (we have to invent new things all of the time), exceptionally passionate, deal with stress (an off-by-one error can cost your company millions) all while living a very middle class life. I'm sure being a brain surgeon is much more stressful and takes longer to achieve, but hey, those people live in neighborhoods I can't afford to go into.
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  > I'm sure being a brain surgeon is much more stressful and takes longer to achieve, but hey, those people live in neighborhoods I can't afford to go into. Most doctors and lawyers don't make lots of money in comparison to a reasonably well paid software engineer. There are tracks that will lead to bigger bucks (if lucky) where you essentially sell your soul for the chance to get there. Big law firms have "partner track", doctors and lawyers can start their own practice, and various areas in medicine can still be very lucrative (eg, plastic surgery). Those tracks are all super hard. The equivalent for software engineers is starting a company or seeking a high level position at a large, fast-growing company. I agree that software as it exists today will change: more people will come into it, wages will go down in many areas. Smart people that want to make more money will specialize (hopefully choosing the right specialization). As a comparison though, an independent consultant with a reasonably sought after technical specialty can make significantly more money, with less school and regulation, than lawyers or doctors at similar levels. If you start a successful software business (even a tiny ISV with real customers), you can make considerably more than doctors or lawyers, again with less school and regulation. I'm sticking with software!
  - vemy 11y ago
    Almost all doctors will make much more than the vast majority programmers. I think you are underestimating how much doctors earn.
dpweb 11y ago
There are cases where the CEO deserves many millions of dollars. They are supposed to move the business in ways that are growing very fast and profitable. There are all kinds of startups that Yahoo could have bought or invested in, all kinds of areas that have the potential to be wildly successful. Who would have thought Amazon, a retailer, would be the platform of the cloud computing world. It's the CEO job to see this, what not everyone else can see. That's what deserves the many millions of $.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Has Marissa Mayer achieved what you say is the job of a CEO, though?
- usrusr 11y ago
  Amazon is an interesting case. With their radical reinvestment strategy of quiet, organic growth, they are the absolute anti-Yahoo. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single high profile acquisition that Amazon did, whereas Yahoo has a reputation for being the place where the flickrs of the world go to die. Amazon contrasts this with being more like a old economy corporation with merely an internet front. They invest in boring brick-and-mortar logistics-factories, computing-factories and so on that no "true internet company" would touch with a long stick. Maybe Yahoo has long ago accepted that their only remaining shareholders must be in it for the exciting, flashy news headlines. In that case, they might feel compelled to go for an exceptionally expensive CEO only for the news value, just like very expensive watches are not bought despite their price but because of it. Marissa Mayer then would not have made it if she offered to do the job for half the price, not beating everybody else's CEO spending would have been out of character for Yahoo.

yuzi 11y ago

But maybe she did a great job responding to the crises and swerved the ship in the right direction, out of harms way, but just not enough to prevent the crash. Maybe she did a better job than many others would have done. What would you expect them to do... give up? I don't understand the engineer comparison at all. Every person in her role adopts much more responsibility, takes on a huge risk of failure that can be career ending and they can face a media frenzy that attempts to bash them into the ground. Why would anyone try to compare her salary to an engineers?

afterburner 11y ago
You think CEOs fall on hard times when they fail?
- yuzi 11y ago
  I agree they are paid generously and even overpaid, but they deserve to be paid more than an engineer. How much is debatable, but that's really established by the market. I just don't get the engineer comparison.
  - nikcub 11y ago
    > but that's really established by the market. It isn't really, tho. It's established by the compensation committee that is convened by the board and comprises of board members. Starboard bitched about the compensation committee since it only had 2 members on it, and they were favorable to Mayer (giving her credit for what is effectively a rise in Alibaba). Starboard got 3 of it's own board members onto that committee now, so the fun times are over. The conflict of interest in the process has always been that you have your own board members, some of whom you bought into the board, deciding compensation. A lot of these directors are themselves the subject of compensation committees at other public companies - so there is a quid pro quo amongst those who serve on each others boards. It takes an outside activist investor to break up these friendly and circular compensation cliques. I like Mayer, but it is really difficult to justify these compensation packages when the core business she is running is performing so poorly. I don't think many people would have any problem with her earnings hundreds of millions of dollars - but only as a portion of gains made by rescuing Yahoo's decline.

0xmohit 11y ago

This is the reward for ensuring that the ship sinks.

gavanwoolery 11y ago
Joking or not - it would be a great move by Google to install her as Yahoo's CEO, drive down the worth of the company, and gather up the ashes for a cheap price.
- jedmeyers 11y ago
  You mean like Microsoft did with Elop and Nokia?
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Nokia did that to themselves, why do people keep blaming Microsoft? It was the Nokia board that made a bonus clause in Elop's contract if he managed to sell the company. "Now We Know Why - Nokia's Elop had a $25M personal bonus clause from the Nokia Board if he was able to sell the handset unit to Microsoft" http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/now-we-know-why-nokias-elop-had-a-25m-personal-bonus-clause-from-the-nokia-board-if-he-was-able-to-s.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/now-we-... Blame Nokia board, not Microsoft!
    - RyanZAG 11y ago
      If you look at the composition of that board, they were actually the same people on both. So I guess blame Microsoft board/blame Nokia board are both accurate as it's one and the same.
    - mtgx 11y ago
      There's enough blame to go around, and ultimately the most to blame was the board. However, Microsoft did play a big role in trying to convince Nokia to get their former VP as their CEO, which was their long con into getting Nokia to adopt Windows Phone, because Microsoft thought a company such as Nokia could surely turn WP's fortunes around. But yes, Nokia itself was most to blame for its failure to "pee in its pants" and adopt Android when it still had 2x Samsung's market share in phones.

tn13 11y ago

You are not qualified to judge what others deserve. Steph Curry's net worth is $44M and I don't think anybody deserves $44networth for being good at throwing balls through hoops. But it is market that often determines these numbers and we simply do not possess the information to look at all those variables.

moonshinefe 11y ago
Someone's opinion on what someone deserves in relation to someone else has nothing to do with market value quite often. It's not a hard distinction.
nihonde 11y ago
His net worth isn't based on being able to throw balls through hoops; it's based on his ability to attract and retain a huge audience for advertisers.
- Reedx 11y ago
  Yep. To be one of the best at throwing balls through hoops is no small feat, and the market has shown that lots of people will buy tickets and merchandise as a result. Therefore he's worth the $. It's also a very risky and short lived career.
- tn13 11y ago
  Doesn't matter. I dont think advertisers should pay that much money to him. Case in point is that worth of Mayers might depend on far too many factors which we cant comprehend and we must not judge her.
  - nihonde 11y ago
    Advertisers are notoriously poor at proving ROI, so you could be right in your assessment of his worth to them. Anyway, if putting a ball through a hoop was a bankable skill, this guy would be a billionaire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG_DQXEK764 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG_DQXEK764
11y ago

skuhn 11y ago

I don't see it as direct payment for the job that she's doing, but rather paying to cover her downside risk. An engineer at Yahoo, if they're sufficiently good (and they do exist), can make it to a life raft and continue their career elsewhere. Marissa likely has no post-Yahoo career. I doubt she will ever have another regular job after Yahoo, and instead after a little while she'll be a board member and have advisory roles at some places. I don't see how there is another CEO role in her future after Yahoo gets ripped apart by an acquiring iceberg. The money she stands to make is meant to compensate her for that scenario. It's also meant to be a deterrent to proceeding with a sale in the first place, although I think it will prove to be insufficient.

csallen 11y ago
55M is an absurdly big life raft.
0xmohit 11y ago
OK. The takeaway from this: As a CEO, you can screw up a company -- as a result, the employees and shareholders. However, the CEO's future must be secured. Not bad.
- superuser2 11y ago
  There aren't daily HN threads with hundreds of people bashing the employees. The employees aren't walking into every job interview as "the person that killed Yahoo." We like to hold CEOs accountable for failures (i.e. they may never work again). Nobody who can help it is going to take that gig unless they know they're set for life in case of failure.
Rexxar 11y ago
What downside risk is worth 55M ? She don't risk her life. Why couldn't she have a regular job and a normal life after being yahoo CEO ?
- 0xmohit 11y ago
  55M is the price for not realizing the (in)competence upfront.

dexterdog 11y ago

But Yahoo was going to be an albatross for any big name that took it. She was a big and rising name in SV for a long time. I think she knew that she was likely selling all of her potential future for this so she took the gamble with her reputation by not gambling with her finances. That being said I still don't think she did a particularly good job even given where she started, but you never know that about a person until they get to sit in the big chair.

eternalban 11y ago
> Yahoo was going to be an albatross for any big name that took it. No, that is the 55,000,000.00 question.