8 ms·

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. That increased her stature in my eyes, and those of quite a few other engineers. Ok, now that is amazing. T

> Also: she used to use pine(1) to read her emails. That increased her stature in my eyes, and those of quite a few other engineers. Ok, now that is amazing. That speaks more about her culture and background than a hundred random actions.

nsxwolf 10y ago
Oh wow! She used pine! Freakin' pine! She sent the company down the tubes, but... holy shit did she ever read her emails in a terminal! Also: Way to dogfood Yahoo Mail. Shows how much faith you have in your own products - as CEO no less.
- arenaninja 10y ago
  I mean, I get your point on pine, but I think the jury is still out on whether she was the cause for Yahoo's demise. I think the media definitely overhyped her, but Yahoo was in pretty dire straits when she took over in 2012
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    True, but, it seems that much like US presidents, CEOs want all the credit for good results and excuses for the bad ones.
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      It'd probably be a more accurate version of reality to accept that CEOs and Presidents have relatively little to do with either kind of results. That'd require that we give up the very human tendency to believe in Great People and force us to believe in Ordinary People involved with Great Things.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The buck stops in the C-suite. Verizon bought Yahoo for a tenth of what Microsoft offered eight short years ago. It's impossible to say this or that person was responsible for Yahoo's demise, but her job was to turn it around and in that she failed.
    - chris_va 10y ago
      That's not entirely accurate. Microsoft's offer included patents, Japan, and Alibaba. Today that is all worth more than $45B, so their current exit is technically better.
- throwaway_xx9 10y ago
  The posting from nsxworld is un-informed. One of the few good things that Mayer did as CEO was to ban Outlook and force Yahoos to fix ymail and dogfood it. I much prefer ymail today over gmail. Whether she used pine or not is a separate thing, but with her email volume likely would make sense. In every other way she was a failure though - from micromanaging hiring and approving each resume to "redesigning" the Yahoo logo instead of monetizing tumblr and the smaller controversial businesses she overpaid for.
- peeters 10y ago
  The dogfood argument is just such bullshit. Just because you make a product, doesn't mean you're the target audience for that product. It's great to dogfood where you can, but that should not get in the way of your productivity if it's not the right tool for the job (and is not meant to be). I'm reminded of the April Fool's joke a couple years ago where the lead of the Subversion project announced they were switching to git. It was actually a really mature response, I was really disappointed it was just a joke.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  Really. Is the bar so low on CEO performance that we credit them for removing turnstiles and changing the cafeteria menu?
collyw 10y ago
FFS. Judging people based on their email client?
- arcatek 10y ago
  People usually judge others based on what they can see ("you are what you eat", but not only). Why not based on what tool they use? It contributes to establish a persona.
  - smhost 10y ago
    It's like looking into a stranger's face and seeing yourself. "omg she's one of us."
  - pavlov 10y ago
    Steve Jobs famously used a Thinkpad after returning to Apple. A Time interview from August 1997 confirms that: http://allaboutstevejobs.com/sayings/stevejobsinterviews/time97.php http://allaboutstevejobs.com/sayings/stevejobsinterviews/tim...
    - jonnathanson 10y ago
      In that specific case, Jobs had just come back from NeXT, and Mac OS hadn't yet incorporated elements from NeXTSTEP. It sounds as though Jobs used some early precursor version of Keynote, which may have been more easily ported onto a Thinkpad than onto a Powerbook at the time. Also, in fairness, the circa 1997 Thinkpad was the best business machine on the market. Period. Macs had to catch up. The Macbook wasn't even a figment of anyone's imagination back then. The Powerbook 3400 (c. early 1997) was faster than the Thinkpad, but the productivity suite available at the time wasn't anything to write home about, let alone use for serious presentations. All that is to say, I'm not as shocked on reading this as I guess I should be. From everything I've heard, Jobs only took dogfooding so far. If he didn't believe an internal product was the best for a given purpose, he didn't dogfood it. (I would be curious to know if he used Mail, for instance...)
      - 10y ago

nsxwolf 10y ago

Oh wow! She used pine! Freakin' pine! She sent the company down the tubes, but... holy shit did she ever read her emails in a terminal! Also: Way to dogfood Yahoo Mail. Shows how much faith you have in your own products - as CEO no less.

arenaninja 10y ago
I mean, I get your point on pine, but I think the jury is still out on whether she was the cause for Yahoo's demise. I think the media definitely overhyped her, but Yahoo was in pretty dire straits when she took over in 2012
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  True, but, it seems that much like US presidents, CEOs want all the credit for good results and excuses for the bad ones.
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    It'd probably be a more accurate version of reality to accept that CEOs and Presidents have relatively little to do with either kind of results. That'd require that we give up the very human tendency to believe in Great People and force us to believe in Ordinary People involved with Great Things.
- gozur88 10y ago
  The buck stops in the C-suite. Verizon bought Yahoo for a tenth of what Microsoft offered eight short years ago. It's impossible to say this or that person was responsible for Yahoo's demise, but her job was to turn it around and in that she failed.
  - chris_va 10y ago
    That's not entirely accurate. Microsoft's offer included patents, Japan, and Alibaba. Today that is all worth more than $45B, so their current exit is technically better.
throwaway_xx9 10y ago
The posting from nsxworld is un-informed. One of the few good things that Mayer did as CEO was to ban Outlook and force Yahoos to fix ymail and dogfood it. I much prefer ymail today over gmail. Whether she used pine or not is a separate thing, but with her email volume likely would make sense. In every other way she was a failure though - from micromanaging hiring and approving each resume to "redesigning" the Yahoo logo instead of monetizing tumblr and the smaller controversial businesses she overpaid for.
peeters 10y ago
The dogfood argument is just such bullshit. Just because you make a product, doesn't mean you're the target audience for that product. It's great to dogfood where you can, but that should not get in the way of your productivity if it's not the right tool for the job (and is not meant to be). I'm reminded of the April Fool's joke a couple years ago where the lead of the Subversion project announced they were switching to git. It was actually a really mature response, I was really disappointed it was just a joke.
forgetsusername 10y ago
Really. Is the bar so low on CEO performance that we credit them for removing turnstiles and changing the cafeteria menu?

collyw 10y ago

FFS. Judging people based on their email client?

arcatek 10y ago
People usually judge others based on what they can see ("you are what you eat", but not only). Why not based on what tool they use? It contributes to establish a persona.
- smhost 10y ago
  It's like looking into a stranger's face and seeing yourself. "omg she's one of us."
- pavlov 10y ago
  Steve Jobs famously used a Thinkpad after returning to Apple. A Time interview from August 1997 confirms that: http://allaboutstevejobs.com/sayings/stevejobsinterviews/time97.php http://allaboutstevejobs.com/sayings/stevejobsinterviews/tim...
  - jonnathanson 10y ago
    In that specific case, Jobs had just come back from NeXT, and Mac OS hadn't yet incorporated elements from NeXTSTEP. It sounds as though Jobs used some early precursor version of Keynote, which may have been more easily ported onto a Thinkpad than onto a Powerbook at the time. Also, in fairness, the circa 1997 Thinkpad was the best business machine on the market. Period. Macs had to catch up. The Macbook wasn't even a figment of anyone's imagination back then. The Powerbook 3400 (c. early 1997) was faster than the Thinkpad, but the productivity suite available at the time wasn't anything to write home about, let alone use for serious presentations. All that is to say, I'm not as shocked on reading this as I guess I should be. From everything I've heard, Jobs only took dogfooding so far. If he didn't believe an internal product was the best for a given purpose, he didn't dogfood it. (I would be curious to know if he used Mail, for instance...)
    - 10y ago