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Wow, people are still hiring Meg Whitman for CEO roles? Interesting.
by fastball 6y ago
Wow, people are still hiring Meg Whitman for CEO roles?
Interesting.
- cultus 6y agoIt seems sometimes you just need to hit a certain level of status and then you fail upward from there.
- jedberg 6y agoI've worked for and with Meg. She's brilliant. She's a very good manager when it comes to taking a successful business and making it a lot more successful. She's not so good at taking something that is new or failing and making it good. She definitely made eBay much bigger than it would have been without her, but it was already successful and growing when she joined. She ran HPE into the ground because it was already failing. She didn't succeed with Quibi because she doesn't know about how to find market fit.
- EugeneG 6y agoWhat makes her brilliant/a good manager? Just curious about what specific habits made her stand out to you/
- jedberg 6y agoShe was good at setting a vision, expressing that vision, and making sure it was being followed and getting her direct reports to move things in the direction she wanted. As far as brilliant, I'm referring to raw intelligence. You could tell her new information and she would instantly digest it and apply that to new areas. Also, if you were in a meeting with her once, she'd remember you and what you talked about. If you mentioned that you had kids for example, the next time she saw you months later she'd ask how your kids are, for example.
- fastball 6y agoYou can be brilliant and a good manager while still not being a good CEO. If you can only do well in a company that already has a bright future ahead of it (with or without you), are you a good CEO? Is finding and maintaining P/M fit not the primary role of a CEO?
- AceJohnny2 6y agoSounds like a great COO, someone who can drive and improve existing operations, but not someone who can come up with a vision or, as you said, finding a market.
- idlewords 6y agoLet's not forget the time she turned $180M into a smoking crater in the ground in pursuit of political office.
- drunkpotato 6y agoHah! I forgot all about that! Thanks for the reminder and the chuckle.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoTrickled down, didn't it?
- drunkpotato 6y agoI'm curious how you would distinguish that from her presence having zero effect, positive or negative, on a company. I don't see how you can possibly know that she made eBay much bigger than it would have been without her. It seems to me just as likely that it would have been the same, and that HPE and Quibi were both doomed no matter what. On what basis is she brilliant, a good manager, and makes a successful business more successful? The good CEOs I've worked under, had a clear vision for the company and were good at selling that vision both to investors (private and public/stock market) and to the rank and file during monthly or quarterly all-hands. Did she do that?
- jedberg 6y agoI'll agree it's hard to say one way or another since there is no opposite case to test against. But she was good at setting a vision, expressing that vision, and making sure it was being followed and getting her direct reports to move things in the direction she wanted. As far as brilliant, I'm referring to raw intelligence. You could tell her new information and she would instantly digest it and apply that to new areas. Also, if you were in a meeting with her once, she'd remember you and what you talked about. If you mentioned that you had kids for example, the next time she saw you months later she'd ask how your kids are, for example.
- drunkpotato 6y agoThank you for clarifying. I agree that makes it sound like she was a good manager. I'm curious, why did she take positions at companies unsuited to her strengths?
- mixmastamyk 6y agoLet me guess, the hundred-million dollar signing bonus and golden handcuffs. :D
- pm90 6y agoAmbition?
- deleted 6y ago
- tmsh 6y ago> She's a very good manager when it comes to taking a successful business and making it a lot more successful. Bit of a leap to conclude that right just based on eBay? eBay would've had astronomical growth under a dog as CEO. As you mentioned: > She definitely made eBay much bigger than it would have been without her, but it was already successful and growing when she joined. And that's her one success story. She's had plenty of other opportunities to demonstrate management competency. I think there's a cognitive fallacy where we assume someone is good because they were there and we lived through things with them. But as others have said, just look at her wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Whitman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Whitman I think we should challenge ourselves when defending people just because they were there and they didn't fail. I don't care how brilliant she was at delegating to managers across categories, etc., the world needs space for better leaders than e.g. those who support Prop 8 (were anti-gay marriage) etc. Like if you don't have empathy there, then it's unlikely you're going to be a better manager than, again, my dog. A manager needs to be a leader. Perhaps she can delegate and she has an MBA from HBS and she's well-connected in Silicon Valley (I remember her connections to Scott Cook at Intuit, etc. - so much bad shit happened under their watch though, poaching, etc.). But I don't think any of her behavior (unless you have concrete examples) makes her "brilliant" or a "good manager" - unless the standards are pretty out-of-date. We really should not be defending people who don't evolve (and who are financially very taken care of and have every opportunity to earn trust again, but don't). UPDATE. I see some examples now in the other comments. Personally I'm not convinced. But that's just me.
- quadrifoliate 6y ago> Like if you don't have empathy there, then it's unlikely you're going to be a better manager than, again, my dog... > ...much bad shit happened under their watch though, poaching, etc. If empathy is important to you, please consider not using the term "poaching". Employees are not animals that belong to an employer based on an imaginary hereditary right. They have the choice (and often exercise it) of employment at a new place based on the relative attractiveness of both opportunities.
- xmprt 6y ago
- mmahemoff 6y agoSteve Yegge's classic "eBay Patents 10-Click Checkout" [1] was published a few years after Meg's eBay tenure, and sums up the lousy UX they never tunnelled out of. Meanwhile, every history of Amazon points out how their third-party seller project stole eBay's opportunity by focusing on customers first and building a unified product hierarchy. eBay managed to hold on by being the first 2-sided marketplace to gain traction, enjoying a huge moat much like CraigsList. Over time, it squandered the opportunity. Meg may know how to keep a company in operation, but she's never shown she can lead a product from scratch. That's just a giant risk to take with $billions of funding at stake. 1. https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/ebay-patents-10-click-checkout.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/ebay-patents-10-cli...
- yumraj 6y agoSo, eBay grew, but it was already growing, and HPE failed but it was already failing. So, effectively, Meg's presence made no different. Doesn't sound like a good or effective CEO.
- rchaud 6y agoMeg Whitman is well-established in Silicon Valley and considered to be a a safe pair of hands, which is crucial to have when hunting for investor dollars.
- athesyn 6y agoSo, you just realized that companies play musical chairs with CEO?
- CyberDildonics 6y ago"She ran every company into the ground" "Yeah, but she has experience"
- jedberg 6y agoExcept her first go was eBay, in which she created multiple multi-billionaires. So arguably her first foray as CEO was an outlying success.
- cambalache 6y agoYou should do like the judges and recuse yourself from this topic, if all what you are writing is true
- saagarjha 6y agoThis isn't a courtroom.
- Thorentis 6y agoDiversity quotas.
- cultus 6y agoPlease take your misogyny elsewhere.