7 ms·

Because she's a female CEO and any news-provider's comment sections are absolute cesspools.

nobleach 9y ago
I'm not so sure it completely boils down to her gender. I mean, I'm sure that's an issue for some folks... but I can't say that explains 100% of the vitriol. She came onto my radar after killing the work from home policy that Yahoo had. Then she promptly built a nursery in her office. That was a douche move. Any CEO that plays the "us and them" policy with their workers vs execs rubs me the wrong way. I'm not at all bothered that she got 23 million as a "thank you". She had an extremely hard job. The pressures she dealt with are nothing I could understand. So by all means, reward her for it! But I'm still kinda chapped about the work from home thing.
- 1024core 9y ago
  > She came onto my radar after killing the work from home policy that Yahoo had. Google does not have a WFH policy. She killed the policy because internal audit showed that many people were just not working when they claimed to be; VPN and sign-in logs turned up many slackers. There were some who were allowed to WFH. So it wasn't a blanket "no one's allowed to WFH", but more a "justify your need to WFH and show that you're doing a good job". > Then she promptly built a nursery in her office. She did not take much of a maternity leave at all. She came back within 2 weeks of giving birth via a cesaerean(sp). She just converted a cube nearby to where she kept her kid.
  - exelius 9y ago
    Both fair points. Also remember that by the time she killed the WFH policy, Yahoo had been circling the drain for a long time. When your best folks can easily find new/better jobs, they do; and you're left with a company full of people who are having a hard time finding anything else. It's one thing to kill a successful WFH policy at a thriving company; it's another entirely to do it with a company that is having problems.
  - nobleach 9y ago
    >Google does not have a WFH policy. Google is also among the companies I wouldn't want to work for. It's just a deal breaker for me. Having a policy and then rescinding it would be another deal breaker. I get that there were slackers, but when it comes to developers, were team leads really not seeing this? They had to have an audit? How does this type of slacking even work? "Oh, I'm working on this thing that should have taken a few hours for the third day in a row". My point was that I don't think she afforded the "bring your infant to work" policy for developers. One main reason I might choose to work from home, is that I would be able to look after an infant while my significant other ran errands. All kudos to heading right back to work especially after that tough of a procedure. (although I'd argue SHE should have worked from home at that point)...
ng12 9y ago
Or it's the opposite and HN desperately wants female CEOs to succeed.
shakestheclown 9y ago
How many other female CEOs can you name? And how many of those are portrayed negatively even infrequently or regularly bashed in comments? Mary Barra made $22.6 million, more than all the male auto CEOs. I haven't really ever seen much bashing of her personally. Elizabeth Holmes was a media love story until it all came crashing down, although she was a founder/CEO. Agree about the cesspools though.
- BlackjackCF 9y ago
  Lisa Su of AMD is another female CEO I can think of. I don't think I've seen anyone bash her. I mean she is extraordinarily competent and has 3 degrees in EE to boot.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- compiler-guy 9y ago
  Ginny Rometty takes heat pretty regularly, but is basically successful.
- jansho 9y ago
  Jessica Alba to add another. It's so easy to not be taken seriously but her Honest company is now valued at $1 billion.
  - rasz 9y ago
    the "has agreed to pay out $1.55 million in a class action lawsuit settlement for lying to customers about a chemical they claimed was absent from their products" Honest company?
- bluedino 9y ago
  >> How many other female CEOs can you name? And how many of those are portrayed negatively even infrequently or regularly bashed in comments? Carly Fiorina, ex-HP CEO
- 9y ago
briandear 9y ago
Because she’s A female CEO? Any evidence? Lockheed, Duke Energy, IBM – all female CEOs and they don’t get near the scrutiny of Mayer – probably because they are competent and don’t engage in bombastic grandstanding. Mayer was a bad CEO – take Alibaba out of the equation and Yahoo became materially worse off expressly because of the decisions she made. Look at the ridiculous acquisitions, look at the brain drain. What the hell is Yahoo’s product? Email? They can’t even keep that secure – compromising a BILLION accounts. They were warned about MD5 in 2008. Yahoo’s Security team was treated like second class citizens – requests being denied because of cost too much or they were considered a low priority. Who set those priorities? Mayer. A a billion accounts got compromised as a result. There is a direct cause-effect. Complaining about her salary is completely valid – not because it was “high” but because she got such an incomprehensible salary for running the company into the ground. Nobody complains about Tim Cook’s salary because nobody cares – Apple is extremely profitable, which is the entire point of a CEO. Tim Cook is a liberal gay man – so if the idea that people are harder on Mayer is because of her sex – imagine how hard they should ostensibly be on Cook. Yet Cook is actually doing a good job. Nobody cares what someone has between their legs if the share price is good. Mayer is criticized because she was horrible, ineffective and engaged in substance-poor grandstanding and she got paid enormously for essentially crashing the ship into an iceberg before Verizon came along like the Carpathia. Sure, Yahoo was the Titanic before Mayer arrived, but she knew that and yet still went full-ahead sailing Yahoo into the ice field or irrelevancy.
- naturalgradient 9y ago
  What I am really looking forward to is to hear how Marissa Mayer will frame her time at Yahoo in hindsight. Will she show humility for failing at turning the company around? Will she claim success for a coincidental share price increase she had nothing to do with? Will she claim nobody could have done better? This will allow for a better judgment of character.
- rewrew 9y ago
  Thank you for laying it out so well. I am a female executive and I am so sick of everyone saying that she's only getting criticized because she's female. So what, we can't get criticized if we do a horrible job? If we treat our employees unfairly? If we don't do what's best for our companies? She was a bad CEO and she deserved to be fired long ago.

I'm not so sure it completely boils down to her gender. I mean, I'm sure that's an issue for some folks... but I can't say that explains 100% of the vitriol. She came onto my radar after killing the work from home policy that Yahoo had. Then she promptly built a nursery in her office. That was a douche move. Any CEO that plays the "us and them" policy with their workers vs execs rubs me the wrong way. I'm not at all bothered that she got 23 million as a "thank you". She had an extremely hard job. The pressures she dealt with are nothing I could understand. So by all means, reward her for it! But I'm still kinda chapped about the work from home thing.

1024core 9y ago
> She came onto my radar after killing the work from home policy that Yahoo had. Google does not have a WFH policy. She killed the policy because internal audit showed that many people were just not working when they claimed to be; VPN and sign-in logs turned up many slackers. There were some who were allowed to WFH. So it wasn't a blanket "no one's allowed to WFH", but more a "justify your need to WFH and show that you're doing a good job". > Then she promptly built a nursery in her office. She did not take much of a maternity leave at all. She came back within 2 weeks of giving birth via a cesaerean(sp). She just converted a cube nearby to where she kept her kid.
- exelius 9y ago
  Both fair points. Also remember that by the time she killed the WFH policy, Yahoo had been circling the drain for a long time. When your best folks can easily find new/better jobs, they do; and you're left with a company full of people who are having a hard time finding anything else. It's one thing to kill a successful WFH policy at a thriving company; it's another entirely to do it with a company that is having problems.
- nobleach 9y ago
  >Google does not have a WFH policy. Google is also among the companies I wouldn't want to work for. It's just a deal breaker for me. Having a policy and then rescinding it would be another deal breaker. I get that there were slackers, but when it comes to developers, were team leads really not seeing this? They had to have an audit? How does this type of slacking even work? "Oh, I'm working on this thing that should have taken a few hours for the third day in a row". My point was that I don't think she afforded the "bring your infant to work" policy for developers. One main reason I might choose to work from home, is that I would be able to look after an infant while my significant other ran errands. All kudos to heading right back to work especially after that tough of a procedure. (although I'd argue SHE should have worked from home at that point)...

ng12 9y ago

Or it's the opposite and HN desperately wants female CEOs to succeed.

shakestheclown 9y ago

How many other female CEOs can you name? And how many of those are portrayed negatively even infrequently or regularly bashed in comments? Mary Barra made $22.6 million, more than all the male auto CEOs. I haven't really ever seen much bashing of her personally. Elizabeth Holmes was a media love story until it all came crashing down, although she was a founder/CEO. Agree about the cesspools though.

BlackjackCF 9y ago
Lisa Su of AMD is another female CEO I can think of. I don't think I've seen anyone bash her. I mean she is extraordinarily competent and has 3 degrees in EE to boot.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
compiler-guy 9y ago
Ginny Rometty takes heat pretty regularly, but is basically successful.
jansho 9y ago
Jessica Alba to add another. It's so easy to not be taken seriously but her Honest company is now valued at $1 billion.
- rasz 9y ago
  the "has agreed to pay out $1.55 million in a class action lawsuit settlement for lying to customers about a chemical they claimed was absent from their products" Honest company?
bluedino 9y ago
>> How many other female CEOs can you name? And how many of those are portrayed negatively even infrequently or regularly bashed in comments? Carly Fiorina, ex-HP CEO
9y ago

briandear 9y ago

Because she’s A female CEO? Any evidence? Lockheed, Duke Energy, IBM – all female CEOs and they don’t get near the scrutiny of Mayer – probably because they are competent and don’t engage in bombastic grandstanding. Mayer was a bad CEO – take Alibaba out of the equation and Yahoo became materially worse off expressly because of the decisions she made. Look at the ridiculous acquisitions, look at the brain drain. What the hell is Yahoo’s product? Email? They can’t even keep that secure – compromising a BILLION accounts. They were warned about MD5 in 2008. Yahoo’s Security team was treated like second class citizens – requests being denied because of cost too much or they were considered a low priority. Who set those priorities? Mayer. A a billion accounts got compromised as a result. There is a direct cause-effect. Complaining about her salary is completely valid – not because it was “high” but because she got such an incomprehensible salary for running the company into the ground. Nobody complains about Tim Cook’s salary because nobody cares – Apple is extremely profitable, which is the entire point of a CEO. Tim Cook is a liberal gay man – so if the idea that people are harder on Mayer is because of her sex – imagine how hard they should ostensibly be on Cook. Yet Cook is actually doing a good job. Nobody cares what someone has between their legs if the share price is good. Mayer is criticized because she was horrible, ineffective and engaged in substance-poor grandstanding and she got paid enormously for essentially crashing the ship into an iceberg before Verizon came along like the Carpathia. Sure, Yahoo was the Titanic before Mayer arrived, but she knew that and yet still went full-ahead sailing Yahoo into the ice field or irrelevancy.

naturalgradient 9y ago
What I am really looking forward to is to hear how Marissa Mayer will frame her time at Yahoo in hindsight. Will she show humility for failing at turning the company around? Will she claim success for a coincidental share price increase she had nothing to do with? Will she claim nobody could have done better? This will allow for a better judgment of character.
rewrew 9y ago
Thank you for laying it out so well. I am a female executive and I am so sick of everyone saying that she's only getting criticized because she's female. So what, we can't get criticized if we do a horrible job? If we treat our employees unfairly? If we don't do what's best for our companies? She was a bad CEO and she deserved to be fired long ago.