4 ms·

Marissa Mayer, thats what. [1] https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17264274/flickr-smugmug-yahoo-oath-verizon-deal-photo-sharing-service-mobile-instagram https://www.

by epa 5y ago

Marissa Mayer, thats what. [1] https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17264274/flickr-smugmug-yahoo-oath-verizon-deal-photo-sharing-service-mobile-instagram https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17264274/flickr-smugmug-yahoo-...

bborud 5y ago
You can blame Marissa Mayer for a lot of things. But Flickr was doomed the second they were acquired by Yahoo!.
- dpark 5y ago
  Mayer can’t be blamed for much at yahoo. She was brought in to save a sinking ship and it turned out to be unsalvageable. Steve Jobs couldn’t have turned that one around.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > Mayer can’t be blamed for much at yahoo. She was brought in to save a sinking ship and it turned out to be unsalvageable. Erm, why not? She got paid a ton and failed. She should be blamed. Yahoo absolutely could have been turned around. Yahoo Japan shows that. The problem, like so many CEOs, was lack of clear vision. When you are failing, you have to place the bet and drive it through. Sure, the probability is that you will lose but if you don't then losing becomes a certainty. The problem is that this is anathema to anybody who who was good at the middle management game. You get ahead as a middle manager not by placing big bets but by mostly avoiding failure.
    - dpark 5y ago
      > Erm, why not? She got paid a ton and failed. She should be blamed. Because it’s absurd to only blame the last person in a line of ceos who presided over more than a decade of decline. > Yahoo absolutely could have been turned around. Yahoo Japan shows that. Yahoo Japan was always special. It was not a wholly owned subsidiary and also did not experience the same decline. It wasn’t turned around. It didn’t need a turnaround.
  - bborud 5y ago
    I think the main problem was that Mayer never managed to answer one simple question: "what is Yahoo supposed to be good at?". I'm not sure the comparison to Jobs is fair since Marissa had very limited leadership experience and completely lacked Jobs' ability to drive product development (I've sat through her reviews and regardless of whatever myth has been created around her, I don't think she was a driver of progress so much as an annoying, unfocused, unpleasant micro-manager who limited everyone around her to her myopic vision. That attitude doesn't scale beyond a junior VP position). Jobs actually did the one thing Marissa couldn't: he was exceedingly clear on what Apple was going to do well. Right down to simplifying the product strategy so much even consumers understood it. But in all fairness, even with a clear vision, there were sharks in the water at all sides distracting the leadership from doing their job.
    - dpark 5y ago
      I think that’s fair. It’s the same struggle that Bartz had and Yang before her. As you said, there were sharks on all sides. Yahoo was no longer the leader in anything significant once Google showed up. Even in hindsight it’s hard to see a winning play for Mayer’s Yahoo. Even if Mayer had been visionary enough to build something like Chrome at Yahoo, Google would have beaten them to delivery or overwhelmed them shortly after. (Chrome might have been a compelling move for Bartz, who could have done it early enough to actually beat Google out the door.) Maybe if she’d seen Instagram coming she could have turned Flickr into that, but it’s not clear that would have changed the trajectory much, given that Instagram itself only sold for a billion in 2012 and Yahoo was trying to justify its continued existence while sitting on top of 30 billion of Alibaba. All this is to say that maybe Mayer is a terrible leader (I honestly don’t know), but I don’t see that she bears most of the blame for Yahoo collapsing.
      - bborud 5y ago
        I think a winning play would have had to be based on some of their existing strengths rather than start something entirely green-field. For instance, there was a surprising amount of good platform technology at Yahoo! that could have gone somewhere interesting with more juice behind it. (It was managed like a means to and end, not an end in itself. This is what set companies like Google apart from Yahoo, Lycos and all the early 2000s portal companies) I'm not sure products like Flickr was salvageable. I think I would have just starter over with more stringent technical goals to allow for more flexibility in enabling a product strategy that could remain flexible. (First, it has to be able to serve images properly - at the very least). A winning play would have needed at least 3 if not 4 years to bear fruit as well. Without opportunists trying to force their way into a controlling position. And that wasn't going to happen. The problem with Yang, Bartz and Semel was that none of them were the kind of people who "get it". They were not part of Internet or tech culture so they lacked all instinct. On top of that, Semel was a greedy asshole I have absolutely no sympathy for.

by epa 5y ago

bborud 5y ago

You can blame Marissa Mayer for a lot of things. But Flickr was doomed the second they were acquired by Yahoo!.

dpark 5y ago
Mayer can’t be blamed for much at yahoo. She was brought in to save a sinking ship and it turned out to be unsalvageable. Steve Jobs couldn’t have turned that one around.
- bsder 5y ago
  > Mayer can’t be blamed for much at yahoo. She was brought in to save a sinking ship and it turned out to be unsalvageable. Erm, why not? She got paid a ton and failed. She should be blamed. Yahoo absolutely could have been turned around. Yahoo Japan shows that. The problem, like so many CEOs, was lack of clear vision. When you are failing, you have to place the bet and drive it through. Sure, the probability is that you will lose but if you don't then losing becomes a certainty. The problem is that this is anathema to anybody who who was good at the middle management game. You get ahead as a middle manager not by placing big bets but by mostly avoiding failure.
  - dpark 5y ago
    > Erm, why not? She got paid a ton and failed. She should be blamed. Because it’s absurd to only blame the last person in a line of ceos who presided over more than a decade of decline. > Yahoo absolutely could have been turned around. Yahoo Japan shows that. Yahoo Japan was always special. It was not a wholly owned subsidiary and also did not experience the same decline. It wasn’t turned around. It didn’t need a turnaround.
- bborud 5y ago
  I think the main problem was that Mayer never managed to answer one simple question: "what is Yahoo supposed to be good at?". I'm not sure the comparison to Jobs is fair since Marissa had very limited leadership experience and completely lacked Jobs' ability to drive product development (I've sat through her reviews and regardless of whatever myth has been created around her, I don't think she was a driver of progress so much as an annoying, unfocused, unpleasant micro-manager who limited everyone around her to her myopic vision. That attitude doesn't scale beyond a junior VP position). Jobs actually did the one thing Marissa couldn't: he was exceedingly clear on what Apple was going to do well. Right down to simplifying the product strategy so much even consumers understood it. But in all fairness, even with a clear vision, there were sharks in the water at all sides distracting the leadership from doing their job.
  - dpark 5y ago
    I think that’s fair. It’s the same struggle that Bartz had and Yang before her. As you said, there were sharks on all sides. Yahoo was no longer the leader in anything significant once Google showed up. Even in hindsight it’s hard to see a winning play for Mayer’s Yahoo. Even if Mayer had been visionary enough to build something like Chrome at Yahoo, Google would have beaten them to delivery or overwhelmed them shortly after. (Chrome might have been a compelling move for Bartz, who could have done it early enough to actually beat Google out the door.) Maybe if she’d seen Instagram coming she could have turned Flickr into that, but it’s not clear that would have changed the trajectory much, given that Instagram itself only sold for a billion in 2012 and Yahoo was trying to justify its continued existence while sitting on top of 30 billion of Alibaba. All this is to say that maybe Mayer is a terrible leader (I honestly don’t know), but I don’t see that she bears most of the blame for Yahoo collapsing.
    - bborud 5y ago
      I think a winning play would have had to be based on some of their existing strengths rather than start something entirely green-field. For instance, there was a surprising amount of good platform technology at Yahoo! that could have gone somewhere interesting with more juice behind it. (It was managed like a means to and end, not an end in itself. This is what set companies like Google apart from Yahoo, Lycos and all the early 2000s portal companies) I'm not sure products like Flickr was salvageable. I think I would have just starter over with more stringent technical goals to allow for more flexibility in enabling a product strategy that could remain flexible. (First, it has to be able to serve images properly - at the very least). A winning play would have needed at least 3 if not 4 years to bear fruit as well. Without opportunists trying to force their way into a controlling position. And that wasn't going to happen. The problem with Yang, Bartz and Semel was that none of them were the kind of people who "get it". They were not part of Internet or tech culture so they lacked all instinct. On top of that, Semel was a greedy asshole I have absolutely no sympathy for.