4 ms·

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 Ya

by 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?

by nsxwolf 10y ago

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?