8 ms·

aside: I like that "OP/ED" is presented very boldly at the start of the article. I wish other news sites were as clear. > The one thing she lacked is the sole

aside: I like that "OP/ED" is presented very boldly at the start of the article. I wish other news sites were as clear. > The one thing she lacked is the sole reason she’s now at Yahoo: Power. That damn well better be the reason. There really can't be any other reason at least as far as my feeble mind can fetch. If you're worth $300 million and you don't plan to take, say, a year or two off to play and connect with your soon-to-be-firstborn child? Not to sound mean but what could possibly motivate you to do otherwise, than lust for power? $300 million and you could be everything to your child but you insist on attempting to overwork? Jesus that just feels stark to me. ~~~ Wait a minute, didn't Yahoo pass on promoting Susan Decker because they demanded that they find someone who had been a CEO before? I guess they dropped that requirement. For the record, Decker resigned when Yahoo announced that Bartz was to be the new CEO. Not that Mayer is necessarily a bad pick, I'm not wise enough to say, I just find the whole Yahoo CEO parade these past four years to be a very odd affair.

theorique 14y ago
$300 million and you could be everything to your child but you insist on attempting to overwork? Jesus that just feels stark to me. Chacun a son gout. Mayer was famous for her over-the-top 100 hour weeks at Google - it's unlikely that would change with a change of scenery.
harshreality 14y ago
Do top executives come back from taking a year or two off? If she wants to be a top executive in 10 years, or wants to have had the experience of being a CEO so she can go do something else interesting, can she afford to take two years off now? The ones I can think of worked through their children's early years. Parents with time consuming stressful jobs usually make it work. Every parent has regrets, but there's a difference between having regrets and bungling raising a child. Which brings to mind [1]. I don't think Mayer will bungle it. [1] “If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
simplexion 14y ago
If I was worth $300 million, I would not be working and I would be spending annoying (to my daughter) amounts of time with my daughter. Fuck work! You only get 1 life.
- nimblegorilla 14y ago
  Spoken like someone who doesn't have $300 million. The type of personality that builds $300 million in equity generally doesn't slow down to enjoy the simpler things in life.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Hollywood stars do it all the time. It takes every bit as much drive to get where they are, too.
    - shin_lao 14y ago
      They don't have the same work schedule.
      - harshreality 14y ago
        Hollywood stars have insane schedules when they're on a project. Those projects have deadlines, and when inevitable problems arise, they're not often fixed by pushing studio deadlines back and telling everyone to go home at 5pm or 6pm or 8pm, they're fixed by shooting into the night and starting earlier in the morning. How do you think night scenes are filmed? During the day, in a building, with green screen and CGI? They have to film during much of the night. Even if a top star (like Tom Cruise or Christian Bale) can refuse to work more than 10 or 12 hours a day (I don't know whether even they set hours like that), they might be working one day and then the next day all night. That's not a family-friendly schedule. Shooting on location is like a multi-week or even multi-month business trip.
        Tycho 14y ago
sown 14y ago
> If you're worth $300 million and you don't plan to take, say, a year or two off to play and connect with your soon-to-be-firstborn child? If she were male, would you say the same thing?
- codex 14y ago
  No, probably not. And the reason is simply that, as a gross generalization, women are more into parenting than men are, and infants need more motherly attention than fatherly attention initially. Men cannot physically have a child, nor can they breast feed a child directly, and they are not necessarily guaranteed to be the father of any child presented to them. So it's not a stretch to imagine that a male CEO would let the natural motherly bond take hold with their spouse in the first few months.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Of course not. Of course not.
  - sown 14y ago
    Wow, I really made people mad.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  Personally, yes. Raising children is one of the most important things we do on this planet.
- parfe 14y ago
  HN is the whitest malest forum I'm a member of. Spend 30 seconds in the thread discussing a charity encouraging black girls to program[1] and it's blatantly apparent. At least 4chan is self-aware regarding the sexism and racism. Reddit tries to brush it off as jokes or isolated incidents. HN on the other hand, a [male dominated] forum of established [white] professionals and aspiring professionals, exists in a bubble of absolute denial of these horrible attitudes. The top voted comment about a new CEO literally questions her fitness as a mother. I challenge anyone to find any posts questioning any other CEO's parenting choices. (Bonus points if top voted for on a story). That shitty attitude doesn't exist for Gates, Jobs, Page, Brin, or Ellison. But a woman steps up and suddenly HN cares about her child and votes up a comment questioning how her decision affects her child and second guessing her motherly quality. 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4261619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4261619

theorique 14y ago

$300 million and you could be everything to your child but you insist on attempting to overwork? Jesus that just feels stark to me. Chacun a son gout. Mayer was famous for her over-the-top 100 hour weeks at Google - it's unlikely that would change with a change of scenery.

harshreality 14y ago

Do top executives come back from taking a year or two off? If she wants to be a top executive in 10 years, or wants to have had the experience of being a CEO so she can go do something else interesting, can she afford to take two years off now? The ones I can think of worked through their children's early years. Parents with time consuming stressful jobs usually make it work. Every parent has regrets, but there's a difference between having regrets and bungling raising a child. Which brings to mind [1]. I don't think Mayer will bungle it. [1] “If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

simplexion 14y ago

If I was worth $300 million, I would not be working and I would be spending annoying (to my daughter) amounts of time with my daughter. Fuck work! You only get 1 life.

nimblegorilla 14y ago
Spoken like someone who doesn't have $300 million. The type of personality that builds $300 million in equity generally doesn't slow down to enjoy the simpler things in life.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Hollywood stars do it all the time. It takes every bit as much drive to get where they are, too.
  - shin_lao 14y ago
    They don't have the same work schedule.
    - harshreality 14y ago
      Hollywood stars have insane schedules when they're on a project. Those projects have deadlines, and when inevitable problems arise, they're not often fixed by pushing studio deadlines back and telling everyone to go home at 5pm or 6pm or 8pm, they're fixed by shooting into the night and starting earlier in the morning. How do you think night scenes are filmed? During the day, in a building, with green screen and CGI? They have to film during much of the night. Even if a top star (like Tom Cruise or Christian Bale) can refuse to work more than 10 or 12 hours a day (I don't know whether even they set hours like that), they might be working one day and then the next day all night. That's not a family-friendly schedule. Shooting on location is like a multi-week or even multi-month business trip.
      - Tycho 14y ago

sown 14y ago

> If you're worth $300 million and you don't plan to take, say, a year or two off to play and connect with your soon-to-be-firstborn child? If she were male, would you say the same thing?

codex 14y ago
No, probably not. And the reason is simply that, as a gross generalization, women are more into parenting than men are, and infants need more motherly attention than fatherly attention initially. Men cannot physically have a child, nor can they breast feed a child directly, and they are not necessarily guaranteed to be the father of any child presented to them. So it's not a stretch to imagine that a male CEO would let the natural motherly bond take hold with their spouse in the first few months.
tptacek 14y ago
Of course not. Of course not.
- sown 14y ago
  Wow, I really made people mad.
andrewflnr 14y ago
Personally, yes. Raising children is one of the most important things we do on this planet.
parfe 14y ago
HN is the whitest malest forum I'm a member of. Spend 30 seconds in the thread discussing a charity encouraging black girls to program[1] and it's blatantly apparent. At least 4chan is self-aware regarding the sexism and racism. Reddit tries to brush it off as jokes or isolated incidents. HN on the other hand, a [male dominated] forum of established [white] professionals and aspiring professionals, exists in a bubble of absolute denial of these horrible attitudes. The top voted comment about a new CEO literally questions her fitness as a mother. I challenge anyone to find any posts questioning any other CEO's parenting choices. (Bonus points if top voted for on a story). That shitty attitude doesn't exist for Gates, Jobs, Page, Brin, or Ellison. But a woman steps up and suddenly HN cares about her child and votes up a comment questioning how her decision affects her child and second guessing her motherly quality. 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4261619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4261619