7 ms·

The risk of her reputation. Once you have money, reputation is of the things that keeps you going every day. Right now her reputation is golden.

by ry0ohki 14y ago

uptown 14y ago
And if she had stayed at Google, what would be the next step for her career-wise? She went from vice president of search products to overseeing location and local services. Now she's CEO. You don't think that'll motivate her?
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I think it not surprising that she left Google to be a CEO somewhere, it was just surprising that she picked Yahoo. Another one of those VP -> CEO jumps that was interesting to watch was Ed Zander (Sun Micro -> Motorola). What I was expecting was that she would leave and start some sort cross between 'solve a world issue' with 'easy accessibility' kinds of UI. At Google her strength was having a clear idea of how to speak to users through UX, The Yahoo gig can use that, certainly, but watching the succession of failures and missteps at Yahoo the issues aren't primarily UX or users, it seems like Yahoo is in a major identity crisis about what exactly it actually is. When one of their recruiters was trying to convince me to join the pitch was this: "Yahoo is the premier digital media company Yahoo! delivers amazing personalized digital content and experiences, across devices and around the globe, to vast audiences. We provide engaging and innovative canvases for advertisers to connect with their target audiences using our unique blend of Science + Art + Scale." To which my response was "Really?", if someone were to ask me what the "Premier digital media company" was I don't think I'd respond "Yahoo!" Hence my surprise.
  - barkingcat 14y ago
    I'd say the "premier digital media company" at the moment is Netflix. They have their problems and troubles, but they have enough brand recognition and enough good content (albeit produced by other people) to quality for that moniker.
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      Agreed. I would think you could make an argument for NetFlix (streaming/rentals), Apple (iTunes + players), or Amazon (streaming/rental/sales/player (book)) as being 'digital media' companies. It may be that I think 'education/entertainment' more than I think 'discovery' when I think digital media. If Yahoo claimed to be the digital media discovery company that might be the starting point for a bigger vision.
    - furiouslysleepy 14y ago
      What about YouTube? Or Zynga? Or Facebook for its photos? I think when people hear the phrase "digital media", they think of it has traditional-media-delivered-digitally. But I think the internet enables entirely new variations of traditional media, tailor-made for our hypersocial, crowdsourced, and attentionless internet society.
  - dillona 14y ago
    That's always been my problem with Yahoo. They are a company filled with brilliant engineers (who give us things like Hadoop), yet they only want to be a media company.
    - koide 14y ago
      And there's no problem with that, if they took their engineers and had them create new media distribution platforms or new efficient encodings or any other of the huge amount of highly technical things that can improve media distribution and consumption.
velodrome 14y ago
If she fails it will not hurt her reputation. Yahoo has already gone through so many CEOs. I think that if she can't turn around Yahoo, no one else will. After all, she is better qualified than the previous executives.
rhizome 14y ago
You overestimate the downside of a reputation hit. The business world loves failures, and in fact it promotes them as people experienced with problems.
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  One of the biggest things she's going to probably have to do is lay off thousands of people. The business world might love that, but the folks losing their jobs probably won't. Turnaround CEOs take a lot of flak.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhizome 14y ago
    Folks losing their jobs don't hire the CEOs. :/
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  Look at the previous CEOs of Yahoo. Even excluding Scott Thompson (who lied on his resume) NONE of them have even held executive positions, or done anything significant in the business world. It doesn't seem like people forgave them just because Yahoo is a horrible mess.
  - drumdance 14y ago
    You mean, since leaving Yahoo? In that case you're probably right. Carol Bartz did great things for Autodesk.
    - SatvikBeri 14y ago
      Yeah, since leaving. My point is that Yahoo is a career destroyer for its CEOs-none of them have held a significant position afterwards. Bartz even had a great track record before (and during!) her tenure at Yahoo, but that doesn't seem to have helped.
bhartzer 14y ago
She has a great reputation--and she certainly has a lot of work ahead of her. Wish her the best of luck.
eps 14y ago
Reputation is only a part of it. At her level there several other motivators at work - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs

The risk of her reputation. Once you have money, reputation is of the things that keeps you going every day. Right now her reputation is golden.

by ry0ohki 14y ago

The risk of her reputation. Once you have money, reputation is of the things that keeps you going every day. Right now her reputation is golden.

uptown 14y ago

And if she had stayed at Google, what would be the next step for her career-wise? She went from vice president of search products to overseeing location and local services. Now she's CEO. You don't think that'll motivate her?

ChuckMcM 14y ago
I think it not surprising that she left Google to be a CEO somewhere, it was just surprising that she picked Yahoo. Another one of those VP -> CEO jumps that was interesting to watch was Ed Zander (Sun Micro -> Motorola). What I was expecting was that she would leave and start some sort cross between 'solve a world issue' with 'easy accessibility' kinds of UI. At Google her strength was having a clear idea of how to speak to users through UX, The Yahoo gig can use that, certainly, but watching the succession of failures and missteps at Yahoo the issues aren't primarily UX or users, it seems like Yahoo is in a major identity crisis about what exactly it actually is. When one of their recruiters was trying to convince me to join the pitch was this: "Yahoo is the premier digital media company Yahoo! delivers amazing personalized digital content and experiences, across devices and around the globe, to vast audiences. We provide engaging and innovative canvases for advertisers to connect with their target audiences using our unique blend of Science + Art + Scale." To which my response was "Really?", if someone were to ask me what the "Premier digital media company" was I don't think I'd respond "Yahoo!" Hence my surprise.
- barkingcat 14y ago
  I'd say the "premier digital media company" at the moment is Netflix. They have their problems and troubles, but they have enough brand recognition and enough good content (albeit produced by other people) to quality for that moniker.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Agreed. I would think you could make an argument for NetFlix (streaming/rentals), Apple (iTunes + players), or Amazon (streaming/rental/sales/player (book)) as being 'digital media' companies. It may be that I think 'education/entertainment' more than I think 'discovery' when I think digital media. If Yahoo claimed to be the digital media discovery company that might be the starting point for a bigger vision.
  - furiouslysleepy 14y ago
    What about YouTube? Or Zynga? Or Facebook for its photos? I think when people hear the phrase "digital media", they think of it has traditional-media-delivered-digitally. But I think the internet enables entirely new variations of traditional media, tailor-made for our hypersocial, crowdsourced, and attentionless internet society.
- dillona 14y ago
  That's always been my problem with Yahoo. They are a company filled with brilliant engineers (who give us things like Hadoop), yet they only want to be a media company.
  - koide 14y ago
    And there's no problem with that, if they took their engineers and had them create new media distribution platforms or new efficient encodings or any other of the huge amount of highly technical things that can improve media distribution and consumption.

velodrome 14y ago

If she fails it will not hurt her reputation. Yahoo has already gone through so many CEOs. I think that if she can't turn around Yahoo, no one else will. After all, she is better qualified than the previous executives.

rhizome 14y ago

You overestimate the downside of a reputation hit. The business world loves failures, and in fact it promotes them as people experienced with problems.

tomkarlo 14y ago
One of the biggest things she's going to probably have to do is lay off thousands of people. The business world might love that, but the folks losing their jobs probably won't. Turnaround CEOs take a lot of flak.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- rhizome 14y ago
  Folks losing their jobs don't hire the CEOs. :/
SatvikBeri 14y ago
Look at the previous CEOs of Yahoo. Even excluding Scott Thompson (who lied on his resume) NONE of them have even held executive positions, or done anything significant in the business world. It doesn't seem like people forgave them just because Yahoo is a horrible mess.
- drumdance 14y ago
  You mean, since leaving Yahoo? In that case you're probably right. Carol Bartz did great things for Autodesk.
  - SatvikBeri 14y ago
    Yeah, since leaving. My point is that Yahoo is a career destroyer for its CEOs-none of them have held a significant position afterwards. Bartz even had a great track record before (and during!) her tenure at Yahoo, but that doesn't seem to have helped.

bhartzer 14y ago

She has a great reputation--and she certainly has a lot of work ahead of her. Wish her the best of luck.

eps 14y ago

Reputation is only a part of it. At her level there several other motivators at work - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs