4 ms·

I do as well. As outlined in The Halo Effect, people want very tidy, clean, and rational reasons why a company failed. Blame must be specifically laid somewhere

I do as well. As outlined in The Halo Effect, people want very tidy, clean, and rational reasons why a company failed. Blame must be specifically laid somewhere. However, there's a pretty good chance no one available could have saved the demise of Yahoo. Variance is a thing.

Gargoyle 10y ago
I don't really mind people failing. I do think there's something wrong with someone earning massive amounts of money to fail and then everyone saying, "Oh well, anyone would have failed in that role." Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?
- icelancer 10y ago
  >Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome? Because all big C-level positions work this way? Doesn't make it a good idea, or even rational. But humans are of the rationalizing type, not actual rational beings.
- akjainaj 10y ago
  I suppose, there's a huge responsibility coming with that role, and you also know your name will be stained forever. But it's something somebody has to do.
  - shitgoose 10y ago
    their names are never stained. she will resurface in some other high profile position in no time. these C*O's live in their own universe, where common sense and peasants' logic do not apply.
- adewinter 10y ago
  Because it wasn't the expected outcome. Or, at least, there was a chance that things could be saved. The high risk is even more reason to offer huge compensation. We can only see in retrospect that it was doomed to failure.
  - npizzolato 10y ago
    What risk? Yahoo failed, but Marissa Mayer made out with millions of dollars. Seems like a no-risk endeavor to me.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      The risk of her future income being depressed. The risk her compensation package mitigated by paying her millions even in the face of a perceived failure.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome? Because the people making executive compensation decisions are from a narrow elite class and are the people benefiting from executive compensation decisions.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Well-said. Major example: interlocking boards of directors. They clearly demonstrate cartel-like behavior where it's "us vs them" at one level protecting their personal profits and "them vs them" at another level competing for good positions, policy preferences, or market share. Unsurprisingly, it's one of ideal moves a capitalist can make in an environment like the U.S. given it gains the personal benefits of capitalism while minimizing the risk that real competition or cost minimization of labor would bring them. They must operate collectively to defeat what threatens their wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate Example with some specifics and nice illustrations: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/corporate_community.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/corporate_communi... EDIT: The answers all around yours are screenshot-worthy. Perfect example of what the elites bought with all those donations/visits to universities, textbooks, biased media, and so on. Many still believe they have to earn it in a way that's about merit as an employee of the company. Thousands of years of human history showed nepotism, classism, and other rigging were main ways people got ahead. Then it suddenly is out of the equation for many analyzing success of modern elites. ;)
- jonny_eh 10y ago
  The blame for compensation should be on the board, not the CEO.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  To attract someone who has a chance of fixing things rather than someone who is guaranteed to fail?
- prostoalex 10y ago
  The "failure" is subjective. What's objective is the stock price, which has grown from $15 to $41 under her management. As bulk of her compensation is locked in stock (negotiated at 2012 prices), it's increasingly hard for her to get compensated less while the stock has tripled in value.
  - shitgoose 10y ago
    all the stock growth is due to buybacks, so credit goes to Janet, not Marissa.
    - prostoalex 10y ago
      That may be, and you seem to have a better scoop on the internals. I was just pointing out that there are very few YHOO investors unhappy with the stock moves 2012-2017 (when benchmarked against S&P 500 or whatever else is commonly accepted metric) compared with, for example, Eric Jackson's war against Terry Semel's (and some directors') compensation package while the stock was in consistent decline https://www.law360.com/articles/26456/advisors-oust-yahoo-directors-over-ceo-pay https://www.law360.com/articles/26456/advisors-oust-yahoo-di...
narrator 10y ago
One reason I heard for the demise of Yahoo, from someone who worked there, was tech was totally anarchic. They didn't build up the vast amounts of shared software infrastructure that Google, Facebook and Amazon did. Apparently, each separate business unit did a lot of reinventing the wheel. That might have been something someone with a background in big company software architecture could have focused on, but that wasn't Marissa.
- icelancer 10y ago
  Or it was too much inertia to overcome, which is probably a huge factor.
  - normaljoe 10y ago
    It was both and more. I started there back when Bartz was CEO. Bartz continued down the media company path that was already established. Thompson doubled down and cut huge amount of tech talent to focus on media. Like he literally almost completely killed labs the PhD wing that did research. There are other things that elaborate on that really hurt and created the outcome we see today. When MM started she had no idea of the technical debt she was going to inherit. Something to keep in mind is that Yahoo invented web at scale. It started on FreeBSD and had kernel contributors even when I started. I think they all work for Apple these days. To help handle scale Yahoo would create Yahoo versions of software via things like kernel extensions or software patches. Nobody was doing these things back in the late 90s, but it was needed. Back then nobody knew what we know now and they literally where making it up as they went along. The thing is when you are the first to the table it sometimes creates technical issues. Sometime before I started there was a decision to shift from BSD to Linux. That was probably a good decision, not because of the merits of FreeBSD, but because Linux was getting a lot more headway with extra contributors. When you have code that was dependent on kernel extensions and you change kernels you get some pain points. Some are manageable others are not. I don't think anybody knew how painful that transition would be, well maybe Filo did because he was crazy aware of everything. As a side note when I started Filo was maybe a L3 but I think a L4 because tech was just that that devalued. So if he did know he probably didn't have much say in the matter. Even as a major stock holder he is not the kind of guy that throws that around, I really think he cares more about the tech then his bank account. If I had his bank account I probably would be in the same place. Yahoo also made a somewhat fatal accounting issue prior to me getting there and probably early on. This was probably the right thing at that time, but it morphed into a bigger issue later down the road. They wanted to isolate "properties" or business units financially. To do that each property, such as news, sports or mail had their own hardware and justification for the hardware. This unfortunately creates a hoarding of assets since you never know when you can get more compute or storage. Keep in mind we are are talking pre-VM tech for you young folks and buying a server cost some big bucks. This created a culture or inertia that made to switch to VM very difficult. That wasn't the only thing. If the sports "product" is separate from the news "product" and assets, both physical and talent wise are isolated, then where is the incentive to share? This doesn't mean there was no sharing, there was, but it created a culture of do it your own way to get things done. When MM started she focused internally at first. If you where in the building you got that. If you where in IT then well you knew there was a laser on you. It was all about getting the simple things first, upgrade outdated laptops etc. Then it moved to getting infrastructure in place. She was trying to shift the culture from mediocrity for developers to a developer and product first standpoint. It then became about reducing technical debt and lifting the barriers between groups. That ship does not correct overnight. There was some point in this that she did have to embrace the media focus and did a few big deals to get media talent, just is just a guess, but the timing is right. Probably the final nail in the coffin was delivered unknowingly by co-founder Jerry Yang. With all best intentions Yang helped his friend Jack Ma with the Alibaba venture. Instead of a personal investment Yang opted for a joint venture where Alibaba got Yahoo China and some cash and Yahoo got some shares in Alibaba. Well as we all know Alibaba took off and the deal is just epic in terms of ROI. That created a big issue though. When MM took the reigns she would grow the stock price marginally which should have bought time, but Alibaba took over. The stock price became a proxy to Alibaba and the hedge funds took notice. Enter Jeffery Smith and his hedge fund. He did his job, as unpleasant as some of us might think, and went to work on maximizing return. Most of that return is in tax savings so he started working that angle which is ultimately why this sale is going to happen. When a company goes from $15 per share to $40 per share because of a holding, you are and investment company. There is nothing that can be done you are tied to the holding. When Yahoo hired MM they had fired 2 CEOs in the past year, had two interim CEOs, and was probably looking to just get somebody that had a chance of righting the ship.
dilemma 10y ago
>However, there's a pretty good chance no one available could have saved the demise of Yahoo. Case in point. A clean, tidy, rational reason why Yahoo failed: it was impossible to save. Blame the company itself.

Gargoyle 10y ago

I don't really mind people failing. I do think there's something wrong with someone earning massive amounts of money to fail and then everyone saying, "Oh well, anyone would have failed in that role." Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome?

icelancer 10y ago
>Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome? Because all big C-level positions work this way? Doesn't make it a good idea, or even rational. But humans are of the rationalizing type, not actual rational beings.
akjainaj 10y ago
I suppose, there's a huge responsibility coming with that role, and you also know your name will be stained forever. But it's something somebody has to do.
- shitgoose 10y ago
  their names are never stained. she will resurface in some other high profile position in no time. these C*O's live in their own universe, where common sense and peasants' logic do not apply.
adewinter 10y ago
Because it wasn't the expected outcome. Or, at least, there was a chance that things could be saved. The high risk is even more reason to offer huge compensation. We can only see in retrospect that it was doomed to failure.
- npizzolato 10y ago
  What risk? Yahoo failed, but Marissa Mayer made out with millions of dollars. Seems like a no-risk endeavor to me.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    The risk of her future income being depressed. The risk her compensation package mitigated by paying her millions even in the face of a perceived failure.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Why pay someone huge sums of money if failure is the expected outcome? Because the people making executive compensation decisions are from a narrow elite class and are the people benefiting from executive compensation decisions.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Well-said. Major example: interlocking boards of directors. They clearly demonstrate cartel-like behavior where it's "us vs them" at one level protecting their personal profits and "them vs them" at another level competing for good positions, policy preferences, or market share. Unsurprisingly, it's one of ideal moves a capitalist can make in an environment like the U.S. given it gains the personal benefits of capitalism while minimizing the risk that real competition or cost minimization of labor would bring them. They must operate collectively to defeat what threatens their wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate Example with some specifics and nice illustrations: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/corporate_community.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/corporate_communi... EDIT: The answers all around yours are screenshot-worthy. Perfect example of what the elites bought with all those donations/visits to universities, textbooks, biased media, and so on. Many still believe they have to earn it in a way that's about merit as an employee of the company. Thousands of years of human history showed nepotism, classism, and other rigging were main ways people got ahead. Then it suddenly is out of the equation for many analyzing success of modern elites. ;)
jonny_eh 10y ago
The blame for compensation should be on the board, not the CEO.
Eridrus 10y ago
To attract someone who has a chance of fixing things rather than someone who is guaranteed to fail?
prostoalex 10y ago
The "failure" is subjective. What's objective is the stock price, which has grown from $15 to $41 under her management. As bulk of her compensation is locked in stock (negotiated at 2012 prices), it's increasingly hard for her to get compensated less while the stock has tripled in value.
- shitgoose 10y ago
  all the stock growth is due to buybacks, so credit goes to Janet, not Marissa.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    That may be, and you seem to have a better scoop on the internals. I was just pointing out that there are very few YHOO investors unhappy with the stock moves 2012-2017 (when benchmarked against S&P 500 or whatever else is commonly accepted metric) compared with, for example, Eric Jackson's war against Terry Semel's (and some directors') compensation package while the stock was in consistent decline https://www.law360.com/articles/26456/advisors-oust-yahoo-directors-over-ceo-pay https://www.law360.com/articles/26456/advisors-oust-yahoo-di...

narrator 10y ago

One reason I heard for the demise of Yahoo, from someone who worked there, was tech was totally anarchic. They didn't build up the vast amounts of shared software infrastructure that Google, Facebook and Amazon did. Apparently, each separate business unit did a lot of reinventing the wheel. That might have been something someone with a background in big company software architecture could have focused on, but that wasn't Marissa.

icelancer 10y ago
Or it was too much inertia to overcome, which is probably a huge factor.
- normaljoe 10y ago
  It was both and more. I started there back when Bartz was CEO. Bartz continued down the media company path that was already established. Thompson doubled down and cut huge amount of tech talent to focus on media. Like he literally almost completely killed labs the PhD wing that did research. There are other things that elaborate on that really hurt and created the outcome we see today. When MM started she had no idea of the technical debt she was going to inherit. Something to keep in mind is that Yahoo invented web at scale. It started on FreeBSD and had kernel contributors even when I started. I think they all work for Apple these days. To help handle scale Yahoo would create Yahoo versions of software via things like kernel extensions or software patches. Nobody was doing these things back in the late 90s, but it was needed. Back then nobody knew what we know now and they literally where making it up as they went along. The thing is when you are the first to the table it sometimes creates technical issues. Sometime before I started there was a decision to shift from BSD to Linux. That was probably a good decision, not because of the merits of FreeBSD, but because Linux was getting a lot more headway with extra contributors. When you have code that was dependent on kernel extensions and you change kernels you get some pain points. Some are manageable others are not. I don't think anybody knew how painful that transition would be, well maybe Filo did because he was crazy aware of everything. As a side note when I started Filo was maybe a L3 but I think a L4 because tech was just that that devalued. So if he did know he probably didn't have much say in the matter. Even as a major stock holder he is not the kind of guy that throws that around, I really think he cares more about the tech then his bank account. If I had his bank account I probably would be in the same place. Yahoo also made a somewhat fatal accounting issue prior to me getting there and probably early on. This was probably the right thing at that time, but it morphed into a bigger issue later down the road. They wanted to isolate "properties" or business units financially. To do that each property, such as news, sports or mail had their own hardware and justification for the hardware. This unfortunately creates a hoarding of assets since you never know when you can get more compute or storage. Keep in mind we are are talking pre-VM tech for you young folks and buying a server cost some big bucks. This created a culture or inertia that made to switch to VM very difficult. That wasn't the only thing. If the sports "product" is separate from the news "product" and assets, both physical and talent wise are isolated, then where is the incentive to share? This doesn't mean there was no sharing, there was, but it created a culture of do it your own way to get things done. When MM started she focused internally at first. If you where in the building you got that. If you where in IT then well you knew there was a laser on you. It was all about getting the simple things first, upgrade outdated laptops etc. Then it moved to getting infrastructure in place. She was trying to shift the culture from mediocrity for developers to a developer and product first standpoint. It then became about reducing technical debt and lifting the barriers between groups. That ship does not correct overnight. There was some point in this that she did have to embrace the media focus and did a few big deals to get media talent, just is just a guess, but the timing is right. Probably the final nail in the coffin was delivered unknowingly by co-founder Jerry Yang. With all best intentions Yang helped his friend Jack Ma with the Alibaba venture. Instead of a personal investment Yang opted for a joint venture where Alibaba got Yahoo China and some cash and Yahoo got some shares in Alibaba. Well as we all know Alibaba took off and the deal is just epic in terms of ROI. That created a big issue though. When MM took the reigns she would grow the stock price marginally which should have bought time, but Alibaba took over. The stock price became a proxy to Alibaba and the hedge funds took notice. Enter Jeffery Smith and his hedge fund. He did his job, as unpleasant as some of us might think, and went to work on maximizing return. Most of that return is in tax savings so he started working that angle which is ultimately why this sale is going to happen. When a company goes from $15 per share to $40 per share because of a holding, you are and investment company. There is nothing that can be done you are tied to the holding. When Yahoo hired MM they had fired 2 CEOs in the past year, had two interim CEOs, and was probably looking to just get somebody that had a chance of righting the ship.

dilemma 10y ago

>However, there's a pretty good chance no one available could have saved the demise of Yahoo. Case in point. A clean, tidy, rational reason why Yahoo failed: it was impossible to save. Blame the company itself.