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Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer to Make $186M from Verizon Deal
- douche 9y agoMan, I'd run a company into the ground for half of that
- jacquesm 9y agoYes, but then you have to look all those people you fired in the eye while you pocket your payday.
- georgiecasey 9y agoi think i can do it
- jacquesm 9y agoEver fired a person? Single breadwinner for a family of four with a mortgage and a dog? Slept well that night? Now multiply by a few thousand.
- obstinate 9y agoEveryone has a price. For that many millions, lots of people would do it, especially if the alternative was someone else getting the millions and everyone getting fired anyway.
- throwanem 9y ago"A million is a statistic."
- withdavidli 9y agoPeople have literally murdered for less, or risk their lives for less. US military enlisted gets around 30k per year +30k to 100k sign on bonus. Officer level around 60k/yr. mercenaries around 30k/month. Firefighters and police officers 50-100k year in most places in US. And many of them probably don't sleep well at night. Firing a person from a job is relative, the ones above would probably prefer it over the extremes of what their jobs asks of them.
- 27182818284 9y agoWell context matters. It is much harder for a boss to close down the local factory and fire employees whose kids grew up together than a boss to fire some folks they've known for less than five years and is an outsider too. I mean it isn't painless, nobody likes to fail and failing in newspapers around the world sucks more, but there are degrees of suckiness in life
- yomly 9y agoI imagine you are speaking from the interpersonal experience, which I know to be a terrible one. Once you're in "management" teams and entire divisions become numbers in your P&L, not humans. What's more, once you've done something enough times, you become desensitised to it anyway (in this case firing people).
- hangonhn 9y agoThe thing is that when it's that many, the CEO isn't the one doing it. Also, when you fire someone I hope it's not to be cruel but for the greater good of the company that pays the other breadwinners. I'm not saying it's easy and I get your point -- it is a really good point. Sometimes, though, to be a leader of many you have to adopt a utilitarian approach and aim for the greater good (yes there are a lot of slippery slopes). A girl who I once dated taught me a very good lesson: when you break up with someone, it frees them to find the right person for themselves. Sometimes that same approach can work when letting someone go from his/her job. I've seen too many people who aren't good at their job being kept around because the manager couldn't bear to not be "nice". It was bad for everyone, including the person who tries so hard. One of the best essays I've read on a related subject is this: https://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-people/ https://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice... A CEO or manager needs to aim to be good, not nice.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drivingmenuts 9y agoFor 186 million, I think I could manage a sneer or two, even.
- make3 9y agoclose an already dead for years crap company and make 93M$? come on man. these people will find new jobs, new employers understand they weren't individually fired for sucking if the whole company shut down
- tyingq 9y agoIn Yahoo's case, it seems like the die was already ̶s̶t̶r̶u̶c̶k̶ cast. Employees had strong signals that it was time to start looking. Firing people isn't fun, but it seemed clear that was coming.
- triangleman 9y agoThe die was cast. You can't strike a die unless you are a jeweler. You can also strike a coin if you are a mint (using a die) but that would be an unlikely idiom.
- tyingq 9y agoThanks. Not sure where/how that phrase stuck in my brain, but it's still there. Fixed.
- miraj 9y agodo you really think she even cares for those 'thousands' of poor souls?
- tyingq 9y agoI assume she's waiting on a call from Uber now. She has an established specialty of piloting ships already headed for the rocks. Edit: And she's probably a good candidate to purge the misogyny problem.
- gmarx 9y agoUber is heading for the rocks? What did I miss?
- coderholic 9y agoThere seems to be a new scandal every day currently, and has been for a few weeks now since the Susan Fowler story broke: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
- patrickaljord 9y agoIs anyone aware of these outside of the HN/SV tech bubble? When I mention them to non-tech people here in Paris I found absolutely no one aware of these daily scandals.
- coderholic 9y agoThe New York times article a few days ago was pretty bad, and I expect that made the scandals much more mainstream
- lwkl 9y agoMy aunt which comes out of the fashion world and is trading at the stock market told me that uber is dead. She mostly trades in fashion stocks and the obvious blue chips. So this is probably well known in the finance world.
- jimlawruk 9y agoIt would be more accurate to say rocks are being thrown.
- robschia 9y agousername checks out
- fusiongyro 9y agoShe deserves some compensation for managing to make Yahoo salable, which was mission impossible when she took the job. I'm not in a position to evaluate the actual sum.
- metaphorm 9y agowasn't Microsoft (and maybe some other bidders) considering buying Yahoo for like $40B at one point prior to Mayer's era?
- fusiongyro 9y agoIIRC that was many years prior, like before Bing.
- reducesuffering 9y ago4 years prior to Mayer becoming CEO.
- xapata 9y agoTurning down that deal was what got Yang booted. He hates Microsoft for historical reasons (as did we all) and refused to take what was an obviously great deal. Afterwards, Microsoft decided to compete and the offer was never available again.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- js2 9y agoNon-paywalled (take your pick): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/technology/marissa-mayer-will-make-186-million-on-yahoos-sale-to-verizon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/technology/marissa-mayer-... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/yahoo-marissa-mayer-payout-186-million https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/yahoo-mar...
- larrik 9y agoIsn't NY Times paywalled?
- gregschlom 9y agoYou get a certain number (9, I believe) of free articles per month
- brudgers 9y agoOften such limits are enforced by a cookie that the site stores on the user's computer. The site increments a counter in the cookie on each subsequent visit. If a user chooses to delete the cookies that a business is storing on their computer (say to reduce tracking across the internet), often the business will just send a new one and the count will start again.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rekshaw 9y agoI know the CEO vs Employee payout has been discussed time and time again, yet news like these really make my jaw drop. I guess its just as well so no one will feel bad not hiring her again for anything, ever.
- jacquesm 9y ago> I guess its just as well so no one will feel bad not hiring her again for anything, ever. Companies will line up to hire her again.
- wolco 9y agoI'm not sure there is a big market for the type of ceo that devalues and ultimately distroy a core brand but you never know.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoNo one has really succeeded at running Yahoo, since the 90s.
- sbarre 9y agoExactly.. No one was going to come to Yahoo and 'right the ship' or turn it back into a growing successful company.. The best they could do was give it a graceful exit..
- briandear 9y agoPerhaps she could go to Uber?
- rocky1138 9y agoLet's be fair: Mayer didn't have a real chance at fixing this company and to pin the blame on entirely on her for "destroying a core brand" is disingenuous at best and irrational at worst. I much prefer to go in with the mindset that she tried her best but the situation was unwinnable.
- abhv 9y agoDon't hate the player! Before a CEO takes a job, they negotiate well for the negative outcome (which usually ends their business career, and begins their political one).
- RodericDay 9y agoI'm okay hating both the players and the game.
- plafl 9y agoI hate some players make the rules
- metaphorm 9y agowith all due respect, this is horseshit. forgive my strong language but i think it's justified in this case. i don't mean this as a personal slight against you, but you just made a statement that is exemplary of the broken culture that leads to outcomes like this. we ought not to accept this as normal. just because it's what currently happens does not mean it is what ought to happen.
- nostrademons 9y agoI don't think he said anything about what ought to happen, except that the second half of "Don't hate the player" is "hate the game", which implies that he also thinks that this is a terrible system.
- metaphorm 9y agoyes, those are the literal words of the expression. the contextual meaning of the expression is that it is usually spoken by a winner of the game while gloating about their ill-gotten gains. it's a snarky insult mocking those who have not positioned themselves to score in an unjust system.
- deleted 9y ago
- Neliquat 9y agoGiving female tech CEOs a good name. /s
- jrs235 9y agoI know /s but.. obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/385/ https://xkcd.com/385/
- agjacobson 9y agoYep, men don't get called for routine thefts. And she is talented. Still a theft.
- sctb 9y agoWe don't need to replay this flamewar over and over. Please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Overtonwindow 9y agoI don't hate Mayer at all, I think she was given a sinking ship and she did the best she could with keeping it afloat. If Yahoo/Verizon wants to pay her all that money then that's between them, so be it. I'm surprised Yahoo went as long as it did...
- tlogan 9y agoI think this is a little excessive because the amount is 4% of the entire Verizon deal.
- aresant 9y agoIt's shocking to me that Yahoo is worth $48b today, they've been on an inevitable decline towards irrelevance since the mid 2000s. She took over Yahoo on July 16th, 2012 when Yahoo's stock price was ~$16. It's now trading at ~$48. That's about a 3x. Google over the same time period has done about a 2.8x. Microsoft over the same time period has done about a 2x. There are 100 HUGE reasons BESIDES Marissa that we can account for their shareholder success eg (1) they were trading at a lower PE than market competitors (2) they had a huge Alibaba share that was worth more than the entire Yahoo company when she took over (3) MSFT offered ~$45b in 2008 which means their ~$46b current enterprise value is a huge 9 year failure! BUT I think that Marissa played the critical role of "responsible adult" that gave the market a reason to let Yahoo survive as an independent. She had a huge brand name that she lent to Yahoo, and each of the 3 reasons I list above were to the board's detriment. If anybody should get the fuck you it should be the Yahoo leadership of the mid-2000s, and the board's leadership since then.
- 67726e 9y ago> they've been on an inevitable decline towards irrelevance since the mid 2000s. Get out of your bubble.
- ordinaryperson 9y agoMost of the value of the stock was based on their shares of Alibaba. The Yahoo component was largely worthless but the indirect shares of Alibaba are/were valuable.
- bkeroack 9y agoThe valuation is almost completely unrelated to "Yahoo" the core business. Yahoo the publicly traded company owns ~$40 billion worth of marketable securities (Alibaba and Yahoo Japan mainly). Imagine if you owned a convenience store that had a vault with $40 billion in gold bars inside. Your business would be worth $40 billion, despite being a convenience store.
- jonas21 9y ago> Imagine if you owned a convenience store that had a vault with $40 billion in gold bars inside. Your business would be worth $40 billion, despite being a convenience store. Not if you owed $12 billion in taxes on those gold bars.
- wand3r 9y agoSomeone made a compelling case a few months ago that Mayer executed perfectly for what she was brought in for. Activist investors brought her in after buying the stock super low and then liquidated at the perfect time after the stock rallyied. Regardless, objectively Yahoo failed and she bears a large share of the responsibility. Absurd reward for botching a lot of the sale, operations and core of that company. I think she tried hard but man I wish I got 9 figures for effort.
- binthere 9y agoStocks only went up because of Alibaba, Marissa didn't have anything to do with the price of the stock.
- run4yourlives2 9y agoShe's the CEO. You can explain it away but she is as subject to good fortune as much as she is bad. EDIT: Haters out in force I see. The share price was $16 when she started. It's now $48. It's irrelevant what she did or didn't do to get that. That's the fact, and that's what matters to her employers, the shareholders. Why shouldn't she be compensated for a 200% increase? The company's long term survival is a goal that may have never been shared by the actual owners.
- berberous 9y agoI don't think you understand how much the Alibaba shares that Yahoo held were worth (~$40 billion) and how little the rest of the business was worth (<$5 billion). This is not a normal situation, where your point would usually be correct. She had zero responsibility for running Alibaba. She ran a business that was worth less than $5 billion, but was compensated based on a stock price that primarily moved based on the run-up in the $40 billion worth of Alibaba stock Yahoo held (and such stock was acquired before she became CEO). Here's one of many Matt Levine pieces that explained the Yahoo/Alibaba situation, although it's now dated: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-01-28/yahoo-would-rather-not-pay-taxes-on-its-alibaba-shares https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-01-28/yahoo-wou...
- throwaway136 9y agoOf all the attempts trying to revive a genuinely dying tech company, I think share holders would have been better rewarded if they bring a WallStreet CEO, who slices/dices and sells it for best value. (Apple being everest size exception)
- run4yourlives2 9y agoShe increased Yahoo's value 200%. How is everyone missing this?
- scholia 9y agoBecause she didn't. Yahoo's value was the stakes it had in other companies (Alibaba and Yahoo Japan). Mayer had nothing at all to do with their increase in value, and therefore nothing at all to do with Yahoo's subseqent increase in value.
- briandear 9y agoYahoo's value increased 200% while she was there. Corelation doesn't equal causation.
- greenhatman 9y agoIs all the Marissa hate rooted in facts? Or do people not really think that far? Just because a company failed, doesn't mean the CEO ran it into the ground. Is it possible that the company just didn't have any chance and that she actually did pretty well?
- rewrew 9y agoDid you watch the decisions she made as they came down? It was bad call after bad call after bad call. Pretty much no one thinks she did even a mediocre job.
- reducesuffering 9y agoWhat were all these bad calls that weren't just due to hindsight?
- hodder 9y agoSo lets say that Marissa was handed a steaming bag (other than the BABA stake obviously) and that the stub was destined for failure either way (probably true). Why does she still deserve several hundred million from shareholders?
- strunz 9y agoBecause that's the contract she signed knowing that this was a possible outcome and could ruin her career.
- GVIrish 9y agoI think that is a criticism of the whole concept of golden parachutes in the C-suite. Mayer's compensation wasn't that unusual but it just seems silly to offer a huge amount of money in the event of failure. I mean, even high level employees joining a beleaguered companies don't get big payouts if they fail or the company goes under. Why should it be any different for the C-suite? You should only get a big payout for success.
- rb808 9y ago
- idlewords 9y agoHow badly do you have to fail in this industry to not get a payday?
- ganfortran 9y agoThat is a lot money for failures. What a nice world we live in!
- run4yourlives2 9y agoShe took the stock price from the mid teens to close to $50 today. I know we all expect a "Great" CEO to lead the company to world domination, but Yahoo was a sinking ship before she got there, and she was was able to turn that around enough to create an acquisition. By every measure that her employers where using to judge her performance, she was a tremendous success. Call me when you create a 200% increase in value over 5 or so years.
- hodder 9y agoYou may or may not be aware that the Yahoo component of Yahoo is worthless (actually worse less than nothing) while the stake in BABA exceeds the value of the whole thing. NOTE: she also had nothing to do with the decision to buy into BABA. She did however, buy Tumblr (huge failure), ruled against remote work, drove a mass exodus of engineering talent, oversaw Flickr's hideous decline, and sat in the leadership seat for multiple hacks. About the only thing she can claim is that she didn't commit fraud.
- scholia 9y agoShe also made all Yahoo's products dramatically worse -- at least, she ruined the ones I used via the web. That applies to Flickr, Email and Yahoo Finance in particular. The general approach appeared to be to make things look prettier while destroying their usability. If there was anything she actually improved, I missed it.
- briandear 9y agoI could have increased the value even more just by sitting in the chair and doing nothing. Her decisions resulted in less increase than there would have been had she just done nothing.
- brilliantcode 9y agoModern day feudalism except the shareholders collectively represents the master controlling the workers through the CEO. It makes sense why a massive payout would be valuable in contrast to the billions of dollars in unlimited upside rewards a share price uplift would bring. Marissa Mayer spends $1.1 billion and makes ~0.2 billion. It almost seems like her bonus is tied to how much she spent on acquisitions.
- serg_chernata 9y agoI don't get it. They could have taken 86 mill out of that and distributed it among their engineers and top performers. She would still walk away with 100 mill and lives of so many people would be significantly improved.
- demonshalo 9y ago> lives of so many people would be significantly improved. That's ~10k per employee after all the lay offs this year. Last year, it would have made ~8k per employee and even less the year before (only counting full-time workers which inflates these numbers). And it would be even less if you take into account employer taxes for all salary raises. I personally don't understand this "redistribute CEO income across all employees" mentality because in reality there are very rare occasions where distributing the income leads to any substantial raise in the living standards of the employees. I do believe that she should have done that as a leader, but in terms of what is just/fair/etc, I find the redistribution of CEO income argument to be rather fallacious in most cases! Note: I am not saying that there are no cases where your argument stands to reason but this is not one of them. https://www.statista.com/statistics/260291/number-of-full-time-yahoo-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/260291/number-of-full-ti... Edit: There is a post at the front page now about how 6 fig salaries are low income in SV. Adding a few thousands to that does not improve lives as much as you might think!
- serg_chernata 9y agoEven $8k per person would be a considerable increase to many. Especially those with kids. Are you saying it's not worth doing if it isn't a "significant enough" amount? What happens if the money is distributed according to effort and productivity? I didn't say that it "absolutely has to be evenly divided".
- demonshalo 9y agoThe argument that it is substantial once you account for employer and employee taxes is purely fictional. Remember that we are talking about a yearly salary so in terms of net income per household, it does not add much. The idea that redistribution of CEO pay will lead to SUBSTANTIAL (keyword here) improvements in the lives of employees is NOT ALWAYS true. Sometimes it is, and this is not one of those times. > What happens if the money is distributed according to effort and productivity? It is. Just not according to what YOU think is just or fair. And here is the kicker, what you think is fair is not in-line with what the board and shareholders think is fair. Do you think any employee @ yahoo has created more value than Marissa? if so who? She clearly didn't steal that money but instead created the opportunities under which such a deal was constructed that allowed her to capture that sum. From the outside, it is rather easy for you to make some fictional judgement. But it is important to understand that her pay, just like all other employees, is a function of how much value she can capture of the total productivity/profits she bring in.
- progx 9y agoThe most expensive weather app of all times.
- ianamartin 9y agoGood for her. She took a shit job at a company with no future and tried to turn it around. Of course she didn't succeed. No one could have. The company was a mess. She got hammered for years no matter what she did. The press and the bloggers all said she was doing a crap job. Good for her. She deserves every penny.
- briandear 9y agoLook at Yahoo!'s aquisions and someone tell me with a straight face that those decisions were the hallmark of a talented CEO.
- ianamartin 9y agoTell me with a straight face and a correctly spelled acquisition, that there was anything Mayer could have done. That company was a shitshow.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- agjacobson 9y agoOne of the worst thefts from common shareholders ever.
- agjacobson 9y agoOne of the worst thefts from common shareholders ever.
- apercu 9y agoI am glad she got a golden parachute only because if she was male she would have gotten one. The larger issue is the one of CEO compensation in the first place.
- jedberg 9y agoYou know what? Good for her! She clearly didn't need the job after her Google success, which means she took the job for the fun and challenge. She knew that if she was successful, her reputation would skyrocket as one of the most successful turnaround CEOs ever, and she would probably be rewarded in the billions of dollars for it. She also knew that if she failed, her reputation would probably be shot, and she'd never get a chance to take a job that was challenging enough to pique her interest, so she negotiated a contract that made sure she was compensated for the risk to her reputation. She should be commended for her shrewd negotiation skills.
- yeukhon 9y agoI think every CEO coming onboard would demand to receive a big compensation package like hers. I believe this is a norm. At the CEO level, you are guaranteed to have a beefy base salary, with a large stock option, and a termination package (whether it is a forceful termination or not). If you are ever considered for a CEO position, you won't need to shy away from making demands because at that point you are guaranteed to have a CEO job at some other company if not this one, soon or later.
- MrFantastic 9y agoWho decides the CEO compensation? The Board of Directors. Who decided the Board of Directors compensation? The CEO. Follow the money.
- tuna-piano 9y agoWho chooses the board of directors? The shareholders. Who paid the $186M? The shareholders. Who negotiates the maximum compensation for themselves? You, me, Marissa Mayer and 7 billion other people. Who are you blaming here, and who made poor decisions (if anyone) in this whole epic tale?
- MrFantastic 9y agoIf enriching yourself is the goal they do a fantastic job of it. It's a plutocracy. Shareholders vote on the BOD candidates after they have been selected by the Board. Do you really think the Board will nominate someone is going to cut their compensation?
- throw2016 9y agoI am not sure about risk. Mayer had worked at one place before, Google and not as CEO so there was no CEO level reputation to risk. On the contrary this was an opportunity her to build her reputation as a CEO. If it was such a risk as some commentators say she could have chosen something else. There is an agency problem with management. CEO pay is not connected to performance and there is no way to effect accountability especially for mid and long term interests. When hundreds of jobs are removed to save 10-20 million a cacophony of commentators chime in with sincerity about 'shareholder interests' yet these 'interests' don't seem to care when hundreds of millions are lost to non performing CEOs who take the brand, value and long term prospects of the company down with them. Billions lost to fines for fraud, brand tarnished, management continues sticking on and yet not a peep from shareholders. It seems we make the rules and arguments up as we go along, as long as it benefits entrenched interests.
- smallgovt 9y agoThere's so much irrational hatred here it makes me wonder if having a real conversation is a hopeless endeavor, but here's to hoping... 'Good' CEO's deserve expensive exit packages EVEN if they fail. The expected value of a company under the leadership of a 'good' CEO and an 'average' CEO is substantial. In the absence of alternatives, the board of directors should be willing to compensate the good CEO up to the difference in these expected values. Let's call this difference EVdiff. The final negotiated contract value depends on the alternatives 'good' CEO and company have available to them. Because there are so few 'good CEO candidates, the two parties often arrive at a fair, final contract value (CV) that is a large fraction of EVdiff. Once the company and CEO have arrived at a contract value (CV), they must negotiate whether this compensation will be paid on a performance basis. The company's rational preference is to make compensation 100% performance based because it will lead to better performance. I.e. 'Good' CEO only gets paid if they succeed, and the amount they get paid in those success outcomes is CV divided by risk The 'good' CEO's rational preference is to get paid CV regardless of outcome because volatility is bad for the individual. The parties end up negotiating a fair outcome that falls somewhere in between. Because EVdiff is so large in public companies, this usually means a hefty payment even in the failure scenarios. However, what's critical to understand is that this is FAIR as long as the expected value of the contract (as a whole) is equal to or less than CV. Running a company is inherently risky. You can't judge the fairness of a CEO's exit package based on just the end result. Whether an exit package is 'fair' requires an understanding of the TOTAL expected value of the CEO's negotiated contract, and whether that TOTAL expected value was less than the added value that CEO brought to the table compared to their best alternative. Defined in that manner, was MM's exit package 'fair'? Nobody in the public has enough information to answer that. We need to know what her entire package looked like, what other candidates the CEO's were considering, what those candidates negotiated packages would have looked like, and how their performance would have differed. The last point (on performance) is the part that I am most skeptical of any public bystander being able to judge accurately. The vast majority of us (myself included) don't know what it takes to be a public CEO. Heck, I doubt most of us would even be able to accurately guess what their material day-to-day work looks like.