7 ms·

The cult of personality around Marissa is just confusing to me.

thenaturalist 8y ago
Wholeheartedly agree, and I think it comes down to "signalling by association". For sure she is a workaholic and that gets you far, but to me it seems like she is filling the gap of providing confirmation to insecure overachievers after she - being one herself - made mistakes and reflected on them. Mistakes that could have been avoided had you taken out the ego in the first place. In contrast to my hypothesis: If you like her, feel free to share your thoughts or prove me wrong. What is special about her?
- compiler-guy 8y ago
  Marissa is one of the smartest people I have ever been around. Most of my knowledge comes from running in neighboring circles at Stanford. The (then) girl just had an amazing ability to remember things, get things, and analyze them. She also has outstanding social intelligence, and a bit of a reality distortion field. Of course she chose the rocketship in 1999 while the rest of us fumbled around in the dot com bust. She always had the knack of picking the right place to be at the right time, and the talent (or ability to bs) that she could get noticed when she needed to. The yahoo thing was the worst misstep I've seen her take, but she got paid $200 million to take the risk, and I'm working for peanuts. So who is the smart one? Edited to add: There is exactly zero chance she remembers me. But everyone I hung around remembers her. She has a very strange ability to be remembered.
  - tardo99 8y ago
    I've known Marissa since Stanford too, and you're wrong. I'm not sure if you're lying or what, but you're wrong. Edit: Before you pile on, I'm rich too. Not as rich as her but rich enough not to take issue with her for that reason. The reason people remember Marissa is she was pretty. End of story.
    - compiler-guy 8y ago
      Apparently our experiences in her orbit were pretty different. That doesn't mean I'm lying, and I don't think you are either. I have no idea what your experience is, and I have absolutely no reason to lie. I doubt Marissa could pick me out of a police lineup if her life depended on it. But I watched her kick ass at Stanford--both socially and intellectually--and it takes more than a pretty face to do that.
      - tardo99 8y ago
        If you went to Stanford in that era, then you know that Symbolic Systems was basically "Computer Science Lite."
        compiler-guy 8y ago
        Which she crushed, and then she moved on and crushed the master's level courses. And then got a job at Google. Of all the dot-com companies hiring on campus at the time throwing million dollar opportunities at new graduates, she picks the unicorn. At some point it isn't luck anymore. Anyway, I'll agree to disagree here. The post I originally responded to was a question about what is so special about her. I only know what I saw when I could observe her. That my observations differ from yours is OK with me.
        tardo99 8y ago
        Fine. It's not luck after college. Then how do you explain her string of failures at Yahoo? It starts being luck again at age 35?
        compiler-guy 8y ago
        Life is complicated. Being very smart is no guarantee of success. I’ve never claimed that she was infallible or perfect. Even Gary Kasparov, Genoa Auriemma, and the Golden State Warriors fall off their perch eventually. It doesn’t mean they aren’t damn good at what they do.
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  She seems to care a lot about what school you went to and what gpa you got and idolize steve jobs at the same time.
- hlurhhh 8y ago
  I wrote this somewhere else in this thread, but I like her because she's one of the few (current) 'well known' women in tech that's successful and stylish. She's exactly the kind of representation I need and want.
  - JudasGoatse 8y ago
    She's not successful, she's wealthy. There's a difference. She got a lottery ticket at Google and cashed in, then proceeded to run Yahoo into the ground. She's widely considered a failure in tech and business circles, and for good reason (I was with her at Yahoo and can testify to her strategic incompetence). If Marissa is the role model you want - stylish but incompetent - then I feel bad for you. Much like Elizabeth Holmes (another destroyer of billions), Marissa should be considered an anti-hero for women in business.
    - creddit 8y ago
      DELETED: Unnecessary ad hominem.
    - hlurhhh 8y ago
      Don't feel bad for me, I'm twenty-something years old and having Marissa as my tech woman icon is just some fun. I'm sorry you don't like her, but the choices for role models as a woman in tech are limited. (And yeah I know about Hopper and Hamilton and Borg, the difference is that Mayer is a current kinda-household name and in Vogue, literally.) Also don't lump Marissa in with Elizabeth Holmes, Holmes could never be iconic with that hair.
      - JudasGoatse 8y ago
        Maybe you'd find more role models if you didn't segregate by gender (that's sexist, after all). If you can only look up to people who share your genitalia then I think that's pretty limiting.
        hlurhhh 8y ago
paganel 8y ago
At one point she was seen from the outside as the 3rd most powerful/influential person at Google, after the two founders and even ahead of Schmidt, I remember articles praising her decision of leaving the Google front-page almost empty with only two buttons on it (I think this was around 2008-2010). Then she went to Yahoo and drove it into the ground and as such I'm surprised that people still take her business-related pieces of advice that seriously.
- codingdave 8y ago
  It is a question of perspective. She was the head of a sinking ship, yes. But did she cause the sinking, or did she recoup the most returns possible for the investors before it sank? I wasn't there. I don't know the inside story. I'm not going to take sides. But neither am I going to assume that she has poor business skills just because she headed up a shutdown effort.
  - tamizhar 8y ago
    > But did she cause the sinking A captain that demands changing colors of the sinking ship on a whim may not be the cause of the sinking but certainly isn't addressing the sinking. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-wh... For months, the team had settled on blue and gray. If users were going to read emails on their phones all day long, the thinking went, it was best to choose the most subtly contrasting hues. But now, Mayer explained, she wanted to change the colors to various shades of purple, which she believed better suited Yahoo’s brand. According to one senior executive, Sharma’s body language changed the moment Mayer issued her request. He looked deflated. Altering the color of such an intricate product would require that members of his team spend all night adjusting colors in thousands of places. He slumped off and prepared to tell his staff the bad news.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      I don’t know, but I can change the colors of all our products from one single place in the code. If you have to do it in multiple places something is probably wrong. Excecutives change their minds on a whim, you are much better off anticipating that.
hlurhhh 8y ago
I like her because she's one of the very very few 'famous' women in tech who's not Alexa or Siri (https://www.fastcompany.com/40547212/people-were-asked-to-name-women-tech-leaders-they-said-alexa-and-siri https://www.fastcompany.com/40547212/people-were-asked-to-na...). Running companies and being featured in Vogue? Iconic.
- tardo99 8y ago
  Do some reading for f*'s sake. Take a look at this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist) Marissa is a fake computer scientist. There are real female computer scientists out there, and very good ones at that.
  - amaranth 8y ago
    The woman with a masters in computer science is a fake computer scientist?
    - tardo99 8y ago
      Sigh. Regurgitating stuff you read is very different from being someone who actually knows how to build things. I don't think Marissa even pretends to know how to code at this point. I think in the past she did pretend to, which was sort of a problem.
      - hlurhhh 8y ago
        > I don't think Marissa even pretends to know how to code at this point. I think in the past she did pretend to, which was sort of a problem. I don't know what your problem is with her but holy shit I'm pretty sure she can code.
        sfblah 8y ago
        Prove it.
antt 8y ago
> The cult of personality ~~around Marissa~~ is just confusing ~~to me~~. Lest we forget Elizabeth Holmes, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and for those old enough to remember Bill Gates in the 90s. If you're lucky you die before you start making terrible decisions. A quote from Napoleon that he supposedly said while in exile "Had I been hit by a canon ball on my entry into Moscow I would have been remembered as the greatest statesman and general the world had ever seen".
- JudasGoatse 8y ago
  Elizabeth Holmes is the only appropriate comparison here. Those others were worshipped because they actually created value. Marissa never did that. In fact, like Holmes, she destroyed quite a bit of it.
  - antt 8y ago
    Hardly, they are worshiped because they have good spin doctors and are/were attention whores. Value creation is a dangerous proposition to measure people by, after all today's value is tomorrow stock market crash.
    - JudasGoatse 8y ago
      Really, are you arguing that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did nothing but spin? Their companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars decades later. If you think that's just an illusion then I hope you're smart enough to have someone else manage your money ... and possibly everything else in your life.
      - antt 8y ago
        Gates broke the law and nearly destroyed his company. Had he been less well politically connected the appeal would have gone another way and we would have had at least three Microsofts today. Like I said, 'value' is a dangerous proposition to measure anyone by.

Wholeheartedly agree, and I think it comes down to "signalling by association". For sure she is a workaholic and that gets you far, but to me it seems like she is filling the gap of providing confirmation to insecure overachievers after she - being one herself - made mistakes and reflected on them. Mistakes that could have been avoided had you taken out the ego in the first place. In contrast to my hypothesis: If you like her, feel free to share your thoughts or prove me wrong. What is special about her?

compiler-guy 8y ago
Marissa is one of the smartest people I have ever been around. Most of my knowledge comes from running in neighboring circles at Stanford. The (then) girl just had an amazing ability to remember things, get things, and analyze them. She also has outstanding social intelligence, and a bit of a reality distortion field. Of course she chose the rocketship in 1999 while the rest of us fumbled around in the dot com bust. She always had the knack of picking the right place to be at the right time, and the talent (or ability to bs) that she could get noticed when she needed to. The yahoo thing was the worst misstep I've seen her take, but she got paid $200 million to take the risk, and I'm working for peanuts. So who is the smart one? Edited to add: There is exactly zero chance she remembers me. But everyone I hung around remembers her. She has a very strange ability to be remembered.
- tardo99 8y ago
  I've known Marissa since Stanford too, and you're wrong. I'm not sure if you're lying or what, but you're wrong. Edit: Before you pile on, I'm rich too. Not as rich as her but rich enough not to take issue with her for that reason. The reason people remember Marissa is she was pretty. End of story.
  - compiler-guy 8y ago
    Apparently our experiences in her orbit were pretty different. That doesn't mean I'm lying, and I don't think you are either. I have no idea what your experience is, and I have absolutely no reason to lie. I doubt Marissa could pick me out of a police lineup if her life depended on it. But I watched her kick ass at Stanford--both socially and intellectually--and it takes more than a pretty face to do that.
    - tardo99 8y ago
      If you went to Stanford in that era, then you know that Symbolic Systems was basically "Computer Science Lite."
      - compiler-guy 8y ago
        Which she crushed, and then she moved on and crushed the master's level courses. And then got a job at Google. Of all the dot-com companies hiring on campus at the time throwing million dollar opportunities at new graduates, she picks the unicorn. At some point it isn't luck anymore. Anyway, I'll agree to disagree here. The post I originally responded to was a question about what is so special about her. I only know what I saw when I could observe her. That my observations differ from yours is OK with me.
        tardo99 8y ago
        Fine. It's not luck after college. Then how do you explain her string of failures at Yahoo? It starts being luck again at age 35?
        compiler-guy 8y ago
        Life is complicated. Being very smart is no guarantee of success. I’ve never claimed that she was infallible or perfect. Even Gary Kasparov, Genoa Auriemma, and the Golden State Warriors fall off their perch eventually. It doesn’t mean they aren’t damn good at what they do.
strikelaserclaw 8y ago
She seems to care a lot about what school you went to and what gpa you got and idolize steve jobs at the same time.
hlurhhh 8y ago
I wrote this somewhere else in this thread, but I like her because she's one of the few (current) 'well known' women in tech that's successful and stylish. She's exactly the kind of representation I need and want.
- JudasGoatse 8y ago
  She's not successful, she's wealthy. There's a difference. She got a lottery ticket at Google and cashed in, then proceeded to run Yahoo into the ground. She's widely considered a failure in tech and business circles, and for good reason (I was with her at Yahoo and can testify to her strategic incompetence). If Marissa is the role model you want - stylish but incompetent - then I feel bad for you. Much like Elizabeth Holmes (another destroyer of billions), Marissa should be considered an anti-hero for women in business.
  - creddit 8y ago
    DELETED: Unnecessary ad hominem.
  - hlurhhh 8y ago
    Don't feel bad for me, I'm twenty-something years old and having Marissa as my tech woman icon is just some fun. I'm sorry you don't like her, but the choices for role models as a woman in tech are limited. (And yeah I know about Hopper and Hamilton and Borg, the difference is that Mayer is a current kinda-household name and in Vogue, literally.) Also don't lump Marissa in with Elizabeth Holmes, Holmes could never be iconic with that hair.
    - JudasGoatse 8y ago
      Maybe you'd find more role models if you didn't segregate by gender (that's sexist, after all). If you can only look up to people who share your genitalia then I think that's pretty limiting.
      - hlurhhh 8y ago

paganel 8y ago

At one point she was seen from the outside as the 3rd most powerful/influential person at Google, after the two founders and even ahead of Schmidt, I remember articles praising her decision of leaving the Google front-page almost empty with only two buttons on it (I think this was around 2008-2010). Then she went to Yahoo and drove it into the ground and as such I'm surprised that people still take her business-related pieces of advice that seriously.

codingdave 8y ago
It is a question of perspective. She was the head of a sinking ship, yes. But did she cause the sinking, or did she recoup the most returns possible for the investors before it sank? I wasn't there. I don't know the inside story. I'm not going to take sides. But neither am I going to assume that she has poor business skills just because she headed up a shutdown effort.
- tamizhar 8y ago
  > But did she cause the sinking A captain that demands changing colors of the sinking ship on a whim may not be the cause of the sinking but certainly isn't addressing the sinking. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-wh... For months, the team had settled on blue and gray. If users were going to read emails on their phones all day long, the thinking went, it was best to choose the most subtly contrasting hues. But now, Mayer explained, she wanted to change the colors to various shades of purple, which she believed better suited Yahoo’s brand. According to one senior executive, Sharma’s body language changed the moment Mayer issued her request. He looked deflated. Altering the color of such an intricate product would require that members of his team spend all night adjusting colors in thousands of places. He slumped off and prepared to tell his staff the bad news.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    I don’t know, but I can change the colors of all our products from one single place in the code. If you have to do it in multiple places something is probably wrong. Excecutives change their minds on a whim, you are much better off anticipating that.

hlurhhh 8y ago

I like her because she's one of the very very few 'famous' women in tech who's not Alexa or Siri (https://www.fastcompany.com/40547212/people-were-asked-to-name-women-tech-leaders-they-said-alexa-and-siri https://www.fastcompany.com/40547212/people-were-asked-to-na...). Running companies and being featured in Vogue? Iconic.

tardo99 8y ago
Do some reading for f*'s sake. Take a look at this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist) Marissa is a fake computer scientist. There are real female computer scientists out there, and very good ones at that.
- amaranth 8y ago
  The woman with a masters in computer science is a fake computer scientist?
  - tardo99 8y ago
    Sigh. Regurgitating stuff you read is very different from being someone who actually knows how to build things. I don't think Marissa even pretends to know how to code at this point. I think in the past she did pretend to, which was sort of a problem.
    - hlurhhh 8y ago
      > I don't think Marissa even pretends to know how to code at this point. I think in the past she did pretend to, which was sort of a problem. I don't know what your problem is with her but holy shit I'm pretty sure she can code.
      - sfblah 8y ago
        Prove it.

antt 8y ago

> The cult of personality ~~around Marissa~~ is just confusing ~~to me~~. Lest we forget Elizabeth Holmes, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and for those old enough to remember Bill Gates in the 90s. If you're lucky you die before you start making terrible decisions. A quote from Napoleon that he supposedly said while in exile "Had I been hit by a canon ball on my entry into Moscow I would have been remembered as the greatest statesman and general the world had ever seen".

JudasGoatse 8y ago
Elizabeth Holmes is the only appropriate comparison here. Those others were worshipped because they actually created value. Marissa never did that. In fact, like Holmes, she destroyed quite a bit of it.
- antt 8y ago
  Hardly, they are worshiped because they have good spin doctors and are/were attention whores. Value creation is a dangerous proposition to measure people by, after all today's value is tomorrow stock market crash.
  - JudasGoatse 8y ago
    Really, are you arguing that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did nothing but spin? Their companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars decades later. If you think that's just an illusion then I hope you're smart enough to have someone else manage your money ... and possibly everything else in your life.
    - antt 8y ago
      Gates broke the law and nearly destroyed his company. Had he been less well politically connected the appeal would have gone another way and we would have had at least three Microsofts today. Like I said, 'value' is a dangerous proposition to measure anyone by.