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I'm really happy for her. Worst CEO has typically been a male dominated category. It's nice see some diversity in lacking empathy and having over inflated egos.
by jeffwask 4y ago
I'm really happy for her. Worst CEO has typically been a male dominated category. It's nice see some diversity in lacking empathy and having over inflated egos.
- nostromo 4y ago"East Timor's First Female Dictator Hailed As Step Forward For Women" - The Onion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtw3XJoJrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtw3XJoJrE
- guardiangod 4y agoHP "The Witch" Carly Fiorina is still the leader I'd say.
- pavlov 4y agoHP also had Léo Apotheker as CEO, so the competition is very tough at this company. A pet rock would have done a better job for cheaper than Apotheker.
- awill 4y agoCan confirm. I was at HP during Leo's tenure. I remember we bought Palm in July, 2010, but because the Palm Tablet (TouchPad) didn't immediately eclipse the iPad in sales, the whole thing was cancelled. How arrogant do you have to be to think you will overtake the iPad in sales over a single quarter.
- kyleee 4y agoThe whole touchpad thing is really baffling, I remember they fire-saled them and having one. It wasn’t half bad and deserved much better commitment from the execs. What a waste of engineering effort
- compsciphd 4y agoWebOS and the touchpad in particular were in many ways superior to android. However, HP didn't have the stomach for the fight. Heck, even MSFT didn't have the stomach for the fight At the end of the day, android was paid for by ads, so google could keep on pushing it in ways that everyone else couldn't, even without owning the hardware.
- ninjagoo 4y agoIt seems to be the general trend - HP, Google being the poster companies for this - post-founder companies seem to lose their soul altogether, if they had one to start with. I wonder if that is because the skills and values needed to climb the corporate ladder to Executive positions are fundamentally different from those of Founders that formed their ethos in the broader society, outside of the ladder-climbing environment. This hypothesis has interesting implications for founders that wish their companies to be reflective of their ethos over time. Suddenly the Japanese practice of adopting successors to leadership instead of hereditary succession makes a lot more sense - valuing temperament over bloodline. It also completely bypasses the issues with internal promotions in a hierarchical structure. Debian is interesting with their use of an alternate operating model and democratically elected leadership. Given how long-lasting companies can become destructive to the societies that they operate in, it seems to be that Society has a vested interest in solving this problem of companies losing their soul. Maybe there are corporate structures that can be designed to minimize these issues? Anyone aware of research or proposals in this area?
- jeffwask 4y agoThe key quote I see in a lot of these stories is "change the culture" and it seems the decision to change the culture from what got you there to something else is done entirely without understanding what the current culture actually is.
- ninjagoo 4y ago> The key quote I see in a lot of these stories is "change the culture" and it seems the decision to change the culture from what got you there to something else is done entirely without understanding what the current culture actually is. That's a great point. Might be splitting hairs a little bit here - but the question must be asked - if the ethos of the Successors are fundamentally different from those of the Founders, maybe the "change the culture" is deliberate, to align with the ethos of the Successors? There's an additional factor at play here: age. The Founders of the two companies - HP and Google - were in their 20s at the time of founding. The Successors were likely much older (40s? 50s?) when they took over - it takes time to climb to the Executive positions. How much of an impact that simple number (Age at Founding/Succession) would have had on what culture would be fostered. It would be really interesting to see a macro study on cultures at companies 1-5 years from Founding/Succession, grouped by age decade (20s, 30s, 40s) at founding/succession. Dell and Apple could be case studies onto themselves because their founders left and then came back at a different age.
- trynewideas 4y agoMarissa Mayer deserves a spot for stack-ranking Yahoo into the grave. An early pioneer of forcing remote workers into offices or exits. The Tumblr acquisition. "There will be no layoffs this week", then calling layoffs "remixes".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dilyevsky 4y agoThere was also Meg Whitman who ran multiple companies into the ground
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoThe Away CEO was apparently a contestant as well: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo... I'd be genuinely surprised if both sexes weren't equally represented in terms of sociopathy and narcissism if we ever got to an even 50/50 split.
- bloodyplonker22 4y agoIf you look at it percentage wise, it is probably not a 50/50 split if you know what I mean.
- itqwertz 4y ago“Who is Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos)?” She is the definite leader in the category of callous CEOs.
- jeffwask 4y agoCEOs who are just flat out criminals have their own category.
- coldpie 4y ago[flagged]
- dudul 4y agoWhat other shape do you suggest for a vehicle meant to escape Earth's gravity and reach space? I know it's not your main point, but every time I hear the "oh look at these nerdy space men playing with their phallic toys!" comment I get curious about the alternative.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago> about the alternative A vulva, of course. https://whatisfeminism.today/spaceship/ https://whatisfeminism.today/spaceship/ https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/vulva-shaped-spaceship-campaign-petition_uk_6218d2bce4b0ef74d72ec361 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/vulva-shaped-spaceshi... https://www.dezeen.com/2022/03/03/vulva-spaceship-design-aims-to-counter-prevalence-of-phalluses https://www.dezeen.com/2022/03/03/vulva-spaceship-design-aim...
- yellowapple 4y agoThat actually could be viable. First stage could fully envelop the second stage and eject it at the top of its arc before gliding back down for recovery and reuse. A weird design, sure, but there have been weirder ones.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoYeah, though I'm pretty sure that this "design fiction" (1) has more of a cultural point than an aerodynamic one. but IMHO "lets make it it look _another sex organ_" doesn't really either break out of the existing cultural framing, or design primarily around the extreme engineering needs, which have to come before the cultural ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_fiction
- logifail 4y ago
- KKKKkkkk1 4y agoIn my book, the unsurpassed champion is Marissa Mayer. She was a product manager at early Google who dated Sergey and was promoted to VP. One of her accomplishments at Google was choosing the palette for the Google logo using a data-driven process. Based off of this success, she was made the CEO of Yahoo!, which she promptly proceeded to drive into the ground.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- BaseballPhysics 4y agoNow now, let's not understate the accomplishments of Elizabeth Holmes.
- quantified 4y agoAny league table of contenders would be a social third rail. Kind of an anti-"hot or not"/original Facebook focused on business aspects, profile pictures banned. Super bad idea, don't do it.
- BaseballPhysics 4y agoI honestly can't tell if you're serious or concern trolling...
- brewdad 4y agoWill she get to wear her black turtleneck in prison?
- layer8 4y agoOrange is the new black.
- peter422 4y agoYes when she took the job the stock was at $15 and sold it for $40. Granted much of the appreciation had nothing to do with Yahoo but I'm sure a worse executive would have messed up the Alibaba situation. She took a dying company, tried a couple of home run ideas which flopped and then effectively returned what value was left to the shareholders. There is no reason to think that Yahoo would have performed any better under another CEO.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y agoSpeaking about diversity. We need some diversity among men who collect garbage and plumbers. Why? Because diversity is good. /s
- Spivak 4y agoYou say that like it's not the goal. Yes, women are more vocal about male dominated careers that they're actively trying to enter but you're missing the forest. For adult women the damage of "has never even thought about a career as a plumber because that's a boy job" has already been done. You could probably name 20 careers that are like this for both men and women off the top of your head. That doesn't mean it's not the goal to change that.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago[flagged]
- condour75 4y agoAlso, not the point, but plumbing is very lucrative.
- Spooky23 4y ago“Women” is 50% of the population, not some hive mind. People who are pushing for better career paths for women are largely not pushing women (and others) towards careers in trades. I think that’s to the detriment of society in general.
- Spivak 4y agoAh yes, you can't possibly talk about the experiences of women because we're 50% of the population but "people" who are 100% of the population, that group is homogeneous. It can't be that I'm giving an explanation as to why you see women pushing for more representation in some fields but not others, it must be that I'm describing the personal lived experience of every single woman on the planet. Also we absolutely are a hive mind, Beyonce is the current queen who took over after Madonna.
- kerpotgh 4y agoNonsense, they’re exceptionally well represented here by Marisa Mayer, Mary Barra, Carly Fiorina, Elizabeth Holmes etc.
- tonymet 4y agoJoking aside, people will not take social justice seriously until the failures, responsibilities and setbacks are equally shared as well. If the movement only addresses the benefits and none of the responsibilities, it will not be durable.