5 ms·

It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years. The spotlight has always been on her, and her failings

It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years. The spotlight has always been on her, and her failings are magnified beyond reason. Is it because she's young woman and pretty? I was at Yahoo from 2004 through 2015. I saw some seriously stupid CEOs. One of them being Terry Semel. He made more than $200M in just one year (and even more, according to rumors). Here's an article from around that time; I wish I had time to dig up more: https://3qdigital.com/analytics/terry-semel-you-owe-1000-yahoo-employees-200-million/ https://3qdigital.com/analytics/terry-semel-you-owe-1000-yah... But you never hear his name ever brought up. Because he was a white, male CEO?

Spooky23 10y ago
He also didn't invest a lot of time and energy on self-promoting PR. You knew who he was, but nobody else did. Meyer did and has for years. She wants this attention as part of a broader personal branding effort. Everyone knows that Yahoo was a dead man walking, and the details of her tenure will be forgotten quickly -- but lots of people know who she is. Anyone who watches CNBC knows who she is, and many other people do as well with the corporate nursery stories, stories about her being a woman, etc. Good for her.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Wasn't Yahoo essentially unsellable when she took over? Tying the company's future to her personally may have been pretty much the only way they could disturb investor sentiment and inertia.
_yosefk 10y ago
Ballmer is white & male (well, like Semel, probably not white enough for white supremacists, but apparently white enough for the purposes of this discussion), MS market cap didn't shrink under his tenure, but he gets a lot of criticism for missing growth opportunities that others capitalized on. Why is he criticized more than Terry Semel? I dunno, probably 'cause nobody cares about Semel any more?
- ethbro 10y ago
  Because Yahoo pissed off fewer people than MS of that era? CEOs are proxies for their companies, for better and worse.
ebbv 10y ago
> It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years Why? That is $50mil/year which is an insane amount of money for any one person to receive. Yes you can point to tons of examples of people earning even more, but that's still way more money than most people will ever see in their lifetimes per year to fail. It's a total cop-out to say that "Well Yahoo was already failing when she came in and nobody could turn it around!" She was hired to turn it around. She did fail at the job she was hired to do. It doesn't matter if it was impossible, she took it on and she's getting tons of money despite failing. For me her compensation is one thing but the truly objectionable part is the $50mil golden parachute. And it's not just her, tons of execs that fail at their jobs get these golden parachutes and it's awful. She's just the latest high profile example. If I take a developer position at a company with terrible project/team management, terrible culture, nasty legacy codebase, etc. and I do a bad job I'm still going to get fired. I'm not going to get a massive golden parachute. I might get two weeks severance. I'm not going to get a full year's severance. Combine that cushy parachute with salary that is so out of sync with what the average person makes and yeah, people are going to go "What the fuck?" It shouldn't surprise you.
- superuser2 10y ago
  >She's just the latest high profile example. She's attracted an order of magnitude more vitriol than any of the other "tons of execs." It's her that HN chooses to complain about. It matters which instances you choose to be vocal about. And it's extremely suspicious, to say the least, that an industry which insists it has no sexism problem because men are just better at it, spends a great deal of time and energy attacking a woman who presides over a collapse but glosses over or barely acknowledges the men who have done the same.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    I'm not going to deny there's a rise in misogyny on the internet recently with the MRA b.s. but personally my objections to her pay are the same as every other executive. I can't speak to anyone else's motivations.
Chlorus 10y ago
Ah yes, pretty young women have it the worst in our society. Also 41 is young?
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
No, because nobody knows who Terry Semel is.
thehashrocket 10y ago
I think back to AT&T CEO John Walter who was barely at the job 11 months before he was forced out. He made a nice tidy sum of money plus a new house for his efforts. " Under the terms of his contract, Walter, 50, will receive separation payments totaling about $3.8 million, AT&T said. This is in addition to the $22 million provided to replace salary, pension and bonuses Walter forfeited when he left R.R. Donnelley & Co. last October after nine years as the publishing company's CEO." article: http://money.cnn.com/1997/07/16/companies/att/ http://money.cnn.com/1997/07/16/companies/att/ article 2: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/17/business/after-9-months-at-t-president-quits-under-pressure.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/17/business/after-9-months-at... EDIT: added another link.
- rhizome 10y ago
  This is in addition to the $22 million provided to replace salary, pension and bonuses Walter forfeited... Shouldn't investors at any company that does this be angry at having to reimburse executives for opportunity cost?
  - phamilton 10y ago
    It's not reimburse. It's just negotiation. Why leave something near guaranteed for something uncertain? Last time I changed jobs I negotiated hard using my current situation to leverage a decent signing bonus. This is no different.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Was your signing bonus a ~5x multiple of your annual salary? It just smells to me like the company is effectively paying for two employee positions, one at another company. Back of the napkin calc says John R. Walter's compensation + forfeited shares in 1997 added up to maybe $7MM (being generous, perhaps $10MM if he had stayed through vesting), so the reimbursement by AT&T was easily 2-3x the real-world numbers.
wehadfun 10y ago
Thats probably why.
FussyZeus 10y ago
Agreed, from everything else I've read Yahoo has serious internal issues that no CEO is going to be able to fix without a lot of help from those inside the company, and those inside the company seemed to be just riding the ship down to the ocean so they didn't need to jump.
gozur88 10y ago
>It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years. The spotlight has always been on her, and her failings are magnified beyond reason. Is it because she's young woman and pretty? I'm amazed people get so angry when others point out Mayer failed to turn Yahoo around. Is it because she's a young woman and pretty?

Spooky23 10y ago

He also didn't invest a lot of time and energy on self-promoting PR. You knew who he was, but nobody else did. Meyer did and has for years. She wants this attention as part of a broader personal branding effort. Everyone knows that Yahoo was a dead man walking, and the details of her tenure will be forgotten quickly -- but lots of people know who she is. Anyone who watches CNBC knows who she is, and many other people do as well with the corporate nursery stories, stories about her being a woman, etc. Good for her.

rhizome 10y ago
Wasn't Yahoo essentially unsellable when she took over? Tying the company's future to her personally may have been pretty much the only way they could disturb investor sentiment and inertia.

_yosefk 10y ago

Ballmer is white & male (well, like Semel, probably not white enough for white supremacists, but apparently white enough for the purposes of this discussion), MS market cap didn't shrink under his tenure, but he gets a lot of criticism for missing growth opportunities that others capitalized on. Why is he criticized more than Terry Semel? I dunno, probably 'cause nobody cares about Semel any more?

ethbro 10y ago
Because Yahoo pissed off fewer people than MS of that era? CEOs are proxies for their companies, for better and worse.

ebbv 10y ago

> It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years Why? That is $50mil/year which is an insane amount of money for any one person to receive. Yes you can point to tons of examples of people earning even more, but that's still way more money than most people will ever see in their lifetimes per year to fail. It's a total cop-out to say that "Well Yahoo was already failing when she came in and nobody could turn it around!" She was hired to turn it around. She did fail at the job she was hired to do. It doesn't matter if it was impossible, she took it on and she's getting tons of money despite failing. For me her compensation is one thing but the truly objectionable part is the $50mil golden parachute. And it's not just her, tons of execs that fail at their jobs get these golden parachutes and it's awful. She's just the latest high profile example. If I take a developer position at a company with terrible project/team management, terrible culture, nasty legacy codebase, etc. and I do a bad job I'm still going to get fired. I'm not going to get a massive golden parachute. I might get two weeks severance. I'm not going to get a full year's severance. Combine that cushy parachute with salary that is so out of sync with what the average person makes and yeah, people are going to go "What the fuck?" It shouldn't surprise you.

superuser2 10y ago
>She's just the latest high profile example. She's attracted an order of magnitude more vitriol than any of the other "tons of execs." It's her that HN chooses to complain about. It matters which instances you choose to be vocal about. And it's extremely suspicious, to say the least, that an industry which insists it has no sexism problem because men are just better at it, spends a great deal of time and energy attacking a woman who presides over a collapse but glosses over or barely acknowledges the men who have done the same.
- ebbv 10y ago
  I'm not going to deny there's a rise in misogyny on the internet recently with the MRA b.s. but personally my objections to her pay are the same as every other executive. I can't speak to anyone else's motivations.

Chlorus 10y ago

Ah yes, pretty young women have it the worst in our society. Also 41 is young?

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

No, because nobody knows who Terry Semel is.

thehashrocket 10y ago

I think back to AT&T CEO John Walter who was barely at the job 11 months before he was forced out. He made a nice tidy sum of money plus a new house for his efforts. " Under the terms of his contract, Walter, 50, will receive separation payments totaling about $3.8 million, AT&T said. This is in addition to the $22 million provided to replace salary, pension and bonuses Walter forfeited when he left R.R. Donnelley & Co. last October after nine years as the publishing company's CEO." article: http://money.cnn.com/1997/07/16/companies/att/ http://money.cnn.com/1997/07/16/companies/att/ article 2: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/17/business/after-9-months-at-t-president-quits-under-pressure.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/17/business/after-9-months-at... EDIT: added another link.

rhizome 10y ago
This is in addition to the $22 million provided to replace salary, pension and bonuses Walter forfeited... Shouldn't investors at any company that does this be angry at having to reimburse executives for opportunity cost?
- phamilton 10y ago
  It's not reimburse. It's just negotiation. Why leave something near guaranteed for something uncertain? Last time I changed jobs I negotiated hard using my current situation to leverage a decent signing bonus. This is no different.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Was your signing bonus a ~5x multiple of your annual salary? It just smells to me like the company is effectively paying for two employee positions, one at another company. Back of the napkin calc says John R. Walter's compensation + forfeited shares in 1997 added up to maybe $7MM (being generous, perhaps $10MM if he had stayed through vesting), so the reimbursement by AT&T was easily 2-3x the real-world numbers.

wehadfun 10y ago

Thats probably why.

FussyZeus 10y ago

Agreed, from everything else I've read Yahoo has serious internal issues that no CEO is going to be able to fix without a lot of help from those inside the company, and those inside the company seemed to be just riding the ship down to the ocean so they didn't need to jump.

gozur88 10y ago

>It makes me angry and sad to see all the sniping about her $200M (or thereabouts) earnings over 4 years. The spotlight has always been on her, and her failings are magnified beyond reason. Is it because she's young woman and pretty? I'm amazed people get so angry when others point out Mayer failed to turn Yahoo around. Is it because she's a young woman and pretty?