6 ms·

Marissa Mayer Has “Many Enemies”

98 points by nikunjk 13y ago

JulianMorrison 13y ago
I hadn't thought the original piece was a takedown - she came across as sharp-elbowed but effective. But well done this author for pointing out how it's basically a grumble piece by the stuffed suits she is deposing.
- pnathan 13y ago
  The piece set itself up as "nuance", but there were a lot of nasty little digs there about the geek who didn't bother fitting into the social club.
  - Svip 13y ago
    When was the last time you read something 'nuanced'?
  - JulianMorrison 13y ago
    Why would she bother? I guess, I didn't read those as digs. I don't especially bother to fit into social clubs either. It may be a blind spot.
    - noarchy 13y ago
      In some workplaces, not fitting into the social clubs makes you a poor "cultural fit". You have to go to the right meetups, drink the right beers with the right people, and so on. Contract extensions and promotions depend on it. Thank goodness it doesn't work that way everywhere.
- jfb 13y ago
  I liked this piece, too, but I thought the comparisons to Steve Jobs were misplaced and detracted from the overall argument. I do think that there's a lot to the argument that the tone of much of the criticism about her is a function of the fact that she's a woman who's also a technician.
  - wsc981 13y ago
    From what I've read, I had the impression that she has many Jobsian (for lack of a better word) qualities. Especially with regards to product design: apparently she was a perfectionist at Google, going so far as to even care about subtle color differences and the effect these had on people. As an engineer, I've always had more respect for managers with a technical background compared to managers with "just" an MBA, so in that regard I'm definitely interested in how Mayer's leadership will shape Yahoo - I think I would respect her as manager as I can only appreciate the opinions of people I respect in a work situation.
ww520 13y ago
I'm rooting for Mayer. Sounds like she's on the right track. She must have stepped on a lot of toes to get things done. Hope the Yahoo turnaround story is like the Apple turnaround story, and she will go down as a legend in the valley.
- throwawayyyz 13y ago
  She's doing great IMO. This time next year $YHOO will be trading at $50. This company is way undervalued with her at the helm.
kenko 13y ago
"There was one interesting thing I learned from Carlson’s article: Mayer was inspired in high school when she read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with a great teacher. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know it’s about a wary ingénue in the corridors of corporate and imperial power who encounters a grotesque, power-mad egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, who has set up a personality cult around himself despite having deserved nothing of what he’d come into in his career, until he is overthrown by the “brutes” he’d attempted to control and suppress. Remember that the next time you read a business-press takedown of Mayer." It is literally impossible to tell what this is supposed to mean. When we remember this, what are we supposed to make of the memory? Is Mayer Kurtz, here, and the business press the brutes? That would sort of make sense, but why would Auerbach say that? Is Mayer Marlow? That doesn't make much sense. Also, what's so all-fired great about being inspired (he doesn't by what, or to do what [1]) by Heart of Darkness? I respect David Auerbach a lot, but he seems pretty susceptible to Slate Disease. [1] Elsewhere I was told that she was inspired ... to decorate her classroom in a jungle theme. Whoop-de-do.
- mayank 13y ago
  He's trying to spin a character, which isn't very useful to someone looking for analysis.
  - kenko 13y ago
    Maybe so, but the characterization makes little sense. ETA: maybe the idea is supposed to be, since Mayer read this book, she would never succumb to similar sins: she's sure to be cognizant of what she's earned vs. what's simply come to her; she wont be delusional but will rather have a clear head on her shoulders; she won't just attempt to control and suppress her subordinates and won't even think of them as mere brutes. It would be beyond absurd to draw a conclusion like that based on a person's high-school enjoyment of a novel.
    - mayank 13y ago
      > Maybe so, but the characterization makes little sense. Sorry, I didn't make it clear that I share this sentiment.
btilly 13y ago
She's a woman. She's a CEO. She's guaranteed to have a target on her back. See http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-arc.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceo-archetyp... for a description of what is still reality in the working world. That said, people I personally know who have worked with her are luke-cold. But I'm sure that the same people would prefer her over the average Yahoo exec in a heartbeat. And I'm more optimistic about Yahoo's direction now than I was before she came in. Morale is up, traffic is up, motherhood has apparently not distracted her. (To be honest, I was one of the doubters when she came in. A qualified doubter, but a doubter.)
- mayank 13y ago
  All she has to do is bring a little of Google (the corp, not the employees) into Yahoo and you should see earnings rise. Anything over is the cherry on the top. If Yahoo can't innovate, then it has a solid, profitable niche in Internet services that are reliable and don't change too much over the years (which has always been Yahoo's clientele.)
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>All she has to do is bring a little of Google... No thanks. The last thing we need is more tech giants selling their souls to the NSA.
    - mayank 13y ago
      A knee-jerk introduction of the "NSA" keyword to a thread with the "Google" keyword doesn't add much to any discussion.
    - karnajani 13y ago
      is there any reason to believe that Yahoo hasn't already shared information with federal agencies?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
Spooky23 13y ago
Good. If you're in the business of transforming and disrupting a business, having "friends" (who are really not friends, but people with shared interests) is a bad thing. A "friend" at that level is someone looking for a quid pro quo. (ie. "You protect me/my fiefdom, and I smile and say nice things.") If you're an exec and want to try to marginalize your boss in the press by complaining about her "princess" ways, recall that the sword cuts both ways -- in the old days, annoying a princess landed you in the dungeon or gallows.
jusben1369 13y ago
Well she's got everyone talking about Yahoo again and that's something no one else has been able to achieve for 5 + years (unless it was as a footnote to how not to do things) She's paid by stockholders to improve the value of the company. Not win popularity contests. So that's the way she will/should be judged.
- jneal 13y ago
  I totally agree. Yahoo has risen back into my mind and before her I was always like 'Meh, it's yahoo...' but now I actually think positively about Yahoo. Well, at least until I signed in the other day and found my account was removed for inactivity. They almost had me back...
  - johnward 13y ago
    " but now I actually think positively about Yahoo" I think that may be a bit of a stretch. Sure they are being brought up which is good since they haven't been relevant for years. They still have a long way before I could say I think positively about them as a company or their products.
- wwweston 13y ago
  > She's paid by stockholders to improve the value of the company. Not win popularity contests. I'm not sure these two things are exclusive.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Yahoo has been a butthurt-engine for over a decade, the complaints are best thought of as noise.
staunch 13y ago
Anyone know how many people (% of employees) that Steve Jobs fired when he returned as CEO? How did he get rid of the cruft of poor performers that had accumulated? Gradually? Or did he magically turn them around too? I'm curious because it seems like Mayer has already doomed herself by not raising the caliber of the average Yahoo employee. Nothing hurts morale and productivity like working with colleagues you don't respect, in my experience.
- nickconfer 13y ago
  Not sure how you can make this assertion. You don't know how many employees she's let go, how many Jobs let go, and there is no evidence that the new hires Yahoo has made are not high quality employees.
  - staunch 13y ago
    It doesn't seem like too much of a leap to suggest that Yahoo's average (NOT peak) employee quality has waned over the years. I know Steve Jobs believed Apple's had, which is why I'm curious how he solved the same problem so successfully.
shawndumas 13y ago
single page version: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/marissa_mayer_controversy_what_the_negative_coverage_gets_wrong.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/...
RyanZAG 13y ago
"If technical women can do the work of male businessmen, we might not need male businessmen anymore!" Oh come on, as if anybody actually thinks this. "Jim Heckman knows a lot about sports. He is, according to evidence, a macho blowhard. He wanted Yahoo to be “like a cable TV provider.” He is your worst nightmare as a boss." I don't know him, and I doubt he is perfect (or anyone is), but this feels like a hit article on everyone who has disagreed with Marissa about Yahoo's direction? This article feels incredibly biased and has gone a good way to making me doubt Marissa's direction for Yahoo if she needs articles like this one to defend her. Not that I have anything (or want anything) to do with Yahoo, so maybe I'm not the target market.
kmfrk 13y ago
If people say Mayer comes off as a bad person and CEO in the Carlson article, you can tell they didn't bother reading it to the end.
- sp332 13y ago
  This is mentioned in the article, and the author comments that most people will have made up their minds and stopped reading by the time Carlson's article stops being negative.
sp332 13y ago
The original title, which you can still see in the URL, is "marissa_mayer_controversy_what_the_negative_coverage_gets_wrong". I wonder why they changed it?
j_baker 13y ago
I'm kind of reminded of John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. Sure it was a great, forward-thinking thing for him to choose a woman, particularly when running against a black man. But that doesn't mean it was a good idea. Likewise, I expect that Mayer's detractors will be dismissed as "Silicon Valley Sexists"... for a while. Honestly, it seems like Yahoo is more interested in having big names than substance, and Mayer is certainly a marketable CEO. Does that mean she's a competent CEO? Time will tell.
- dylandrop 13y ago
  I think it's insulting at best to compare Mayer to Sarah Palin.
  - bishnu 13y ago
    Yet another example of gendered criticism of Mayer. How often do male CEOs get compared to inexperienced, hopeless Republican politicans? Just a coincidence I'm sure.
  - j_baker 13y ago
    Please. I hate nothing more than a male-dominated work environment. The point I'm trying to make is that there is more to choosing an executive than diversity. Diversity is necessary, but not sufficient. The reason I brought Sarah Palin up is to illustrate that sometimes the results of focusing on diversity above all else sometimes produces painful results. Beyond that, Yahoo has a history of making bad choices in terms of executive leadership. Perhaps they finally made a good choice this time, but I'm skeptical until I see proof otherwise. Honestly, I fully expect that Mayer will set equality back.
    - rsl7 13y ago
      > The point I'm trying to make is that there is more to choosing an executive than diversity Oh, thanks for the heads-up.
api 13y ago
"He wanted Yahoo to be “like a cable TV provider.”" So she's firing aggressive, narcissistic, horribly overpaid morons. Clap, clap, clap...
etherael 13y ago
> Mayer is portrayed as “robotic, stuck up, and absurd in her obsession with detail,” Normal people saying this about technical people is usually a good indicator that the technical person is doing just fine.
WalterBright 13y ago
I bought some Yahoo stock after reading about Mayer.
jingo 13y ago
"... who likes to code." What language does she prefer? Does she prefer complexity or simplicity? Is her code verbose or terse? So many questions. Does any of this matter? If you're into coding, then the answer is "Yes", in my opinion. In fact, when it comes to software, I really do not care about what the coder looks like, what clothes the coder wears, the coder's personality type, etc. In evaluating software, these things are all irrelevant to me. I only care about the coder's code sensibilities and tastes, and the quality of the code. Anyway, can we see any code samples to back up her statement? I will believe it when I see the evidence. No matter what he says or does in real life, and even if he wears cheap suits and ugly ties, I will always have an appreciation of one well-known, former CEO as a coder. Because lex is one of my favorite programs.
- slurry 13y ago
  The information you're curious about does not seem to be in the public record. It's not easy to convey things like that through journalists, especially business journalists. Some of it may not even exist: some of the best coders I've ever known don't really have a favorite language. Knew a math PhD from MIT who used to just churn out Perl and C++ all day happy as a clam. I asked him if he'd prefer Lisp or something but he didn't really care - all about the algorithms for him. Anyway, there are still good indications that Marissa Mayer has kept up both an academic interest in computer science and suspiciously coder-like habits well after her ascension to upper management. Mayer was still teaching CS classes at Stanford after becoming a Google executive.[0] She uses a terminal-based email client.[1] And uses plain text for all her personal organizing.[2] [0]http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/marissa_mayer http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/marissa_mayer [1]https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/327200020128489472 https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/327200020128489472 [2]http://lifehacker.com/265651/google-vp-organizes-her-life-in-txt http://lifehacker.com/265651/google-vp-organizes-her-life-in...
squozzer 13y ago
Blessed are those who have a smattering of enemies, for they shall them a (s)hero.

98 points by nikunjk 13y ago

I hadn't thought the original piece was a takedown - she came across as sharp-elbowed but effective. But well done this author for pointing out how it's basically a grumble piece by the stuffed suits she is deposing.

pnathan 13y ago
The piece set itself up as "nuance", but there were a lot of nasty little digs there about the geek who didn't bother fitting into the social club.
- Svip 13y ago
  When was the last time you read something 'nuanced'?
- JulianMorrison 13y ago
  Why would she bother? I guess, I didn't read those as digs. I don't especially bother to fit into social clubs either. It may be a blind spot.
  - noarchy 13y ago
    In some workplaces, not fitting into the social clubs makes you a poor "cultural fit". You have to go to the right meetups, drink the right beers with the right people, and so on. Contract extensions and promotions depend on it. Thank goodness it doesn't work that way everywhere.
jfb 13y ago
I liked this piece, too, but I thought the comparisons to Steve Jobs were misplaced and detracted from the overall argument. I do think that there's a lot to the argument that the tone of much of the criticism about her is a function of the fact that she's a woman who's also a technician.
- wsc981 13y ago
  From what I've read, I had the impression that she has many Jobsian (for lack of a better word) qualities. Especially with regards to product design: apparently she was a perfectionist at Google, going so far as to even care about subtle color differences and the effect these had on people. As an engineer, I've always had more respect for managers with a technical background compared to managers with "just" an MBA, so in that regard I'm definitely interested in how Mayer's leadership will shape Yahoo - I think I would respect her as manager as I can only appreciate the opinions of people I respect in a work situation.

ww520 13y ago

I'm rooting for Mayer. Sounds like she's on the right track. She must have stepped on a lot of toes to get things done. Hope the Yahoo turnaround story is like the Apple turnaround story, and she will go down as a legend in the valley.

throwawayyyz 13y ago
She's doing great IMO. This time next year $YHOO will be trading at $50. This company is way undervalued with her at the helm.

kenko 13y ago

"There was one interesting thing I learned from Carlson’s article: Mayer was inspired in high school when she read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with a great teacher. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know it’s about a wary ingénue in the corridors of corporate and imperial power who encounters a grotesque, power-mad egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, who has set up a personality cult around himself despite having deserved nothing of what he’d come into in his career, until he is overthrown by the “brutes” he’d attempted to control and suppress. Remember that the next time you read a business-press takedown of Mayer." It is literally impossible to tell what this is supposed to mean. When we remember this, what are we supposed to make of the memory? Is Mayer Kurtz, here, and the business press the brutes? That would sort of make sense, but why would Auerbach say that? Is Mayer Marlow? That doesn't make much sense. Also, what's so all-fired great about being inspired (he doesn't by what, or to do what [1]) by Heart of Darkness? I respect David Auerbach a lot, but he seems pretty susceptible to Slate Disease. [1] Elsewhere I was told that she was inspired ... to decorate her classroom in a jungle theme. Whoop-de-do.

mayank 13y ago
He's trying to spin a character, which isn't very useful to someone looking for analysis.
- kenko 13y ago
  Maybe so, but the characterization makes little sense. ETA: maybe the idea is supposed to be, since Mayer read this book, she would never succumb to similar sins: she's sure to be cognizant of what she's earned vs. what's simply come to her; she wont be delusional but will rather have a clear head on her shoulders; she won't just attempt to control and suppress her subordinates and won't even think of them as mere brutes. It would be beyond absurd to draw a conclusion like that based on a person's high-school enjoyment of a novel.
  - mayank 13y ago
    > Maybe so, but the characterization makes little sense. Sorry, I didn't make it clear that I share this sentiment.

btilly 13y ago

She's a woman. She's a CEO. She's guaranteed to have a target on her back. See http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-arc.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceo-archetyp... for a description of what is still reality in the working world. That said, people I personally know who have worked with her are luke-cold. But I'm sure that the same people would prefer her over the average Yahoo exec in a heartbeat. And I'm more optimistic about Yahoo's direction now than I was before she came in. Morale is up, traffic is up, motherhood has apparently not distracted her. (To be honest, I was one of the doubters when she came in. A qualified doubter, but a doubter.)

mayank 13y ago
All she has to do is bring a little of Google (the corp, not the employees) into Yahoo and you should see earnings rise. Anything over is the cherry on the top. If Yahoo can't innovate, then it has a solid, profitable niche in Internet services that are reliable and don't change too much over the years (which has always been Yahoo's clientele.)
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  >>All she has to do is bring a little of Google... No thanks. The last thing we need is more tech giants selling their souls to the NSA.
  - mayank 13y ago
    A knee-jerk introduction of the "NSA" keyword to a thread with the "Google" keyword doesn't add much to any discussion.
  - karnajani 13y ago
    is there any reason to believe that Yahoo hasn't already shared information with federal agencies?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

Spooky23 13y ago

Good. If you're in the business of transforming and disrupting a business, having "friends" (who are really not friends, but people with shared interests) is a bad thing. A "friend" at that level is someone looking for a quid pro quo. (ie. "You protect me/my fiefdom, and I smile and say nice things.") If you're an exec and want to try to marginalize your boss in the press by complaining about her "princess" ways, recall that the sword cuts both ways -- in the old days, annoying a princess landed you in the dungeon or gallows.

jusben1369 13y ago

Well she's got everyone talking about Yahoo again and that's something no one else has been able to achieve for 5 + years (unless it was as a footnote to how not to do things) She's paid by stockholders to improve the value of the company. Not win popularity contests. So that's the way she will/should be judged.

jneal 13y ago
I totally agree. Yahoo has risen back into my mind and before her I was always like 'Meh, it's yahoo...' but now I actually think positively about Yahoo. Well, at least until I signed in the other day and found my account was removed for inactivity. They almost had me back...
- johnward 13y ago
  " but now I actually think positively about Yahoo" I think that may be a bit of a stretch. Sure they are being brought up which is good since they haven't been relevant for years. They still have a long way before I could say I think positively about them as a company or their products.
wwweston 13y ago
> She's paid by stockholders to improve the value of the company. Not win popularity contests. I'm not sure these two things are exclusive.
rhizome 13y ago
Yahoo has been a butthurt-engine for over a decade, the complaints are best thought of as noise.

staunch 13y ago

Anyone know how many people (% of employees) that Steve Jobs fired when he returned as CEO? How did he get rid of the cruft of poor performers that had accumulated? Gradually? Or did he magically turn them around too? I'm curious because it seems like Mayer has already doomed herself by not raising the caliber of the average Yahoo employee. Nothing hurts morale and productivity like working with colleagues you don't respect, in my experience.

nickconfer 13y ago
Not sure how you can make this assertion. You don't know how many employees she's let go, how many Jobs let go, and there is no evidence that the new hires Yahoo has made are not high quality employees.
- staunch 13y ago
  It doesn't seem like too much of a leap to suggest that Yahoo's average (NOT peak) employee quality has waned over the years. I know Steve Jobs believed Apple's had, which is why I'm curious how he solved the same problem so successfully.

shawndumas 13y ago

single page version: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/marissa_mayer_controversy_what_the_negative_coverage_gets_wrong.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/...

RyanZAG 13y ago

"If technical women can do the work of male businessmen, we might not need male businessmen anymore!" Oh come on, as if anybody actually thinks this. "Jim Heckman knows a lot about sports. He is, according to evidence, a macho blowhard. He wanted Yahoo to be “like a cable TV provider.” He is your worst nightmare as a boss." I don't know him, and I doubt he is perfect (or anyone is), but this feels like a hit article on everyone who has disagreed with Marissa about Yahoo's direction? This article feels incredibly biased and has gone a good way to making me doubt Marissa's direction for Yahoo if she needs articles like this one to defend her. Not that I have anything (or want anything) to do with Yahoo, so maybe I'm not the target market.

kmfrk 13y ago

If people say Mayer comes off as a bad person and CEO in the Carlson article, you can tell they didn't bother reading it to the end.

sp332 13y ago
This is mentioned in the article, and the author comments that most people will have made up their minds and stopped reading by the time Carlson's article stops being negative.

sp332 13y ago

The original title, which you can still see in the URL, is "marissa_mayer_controversy_what_the_negative_coverage_gets_wrong". I wonder why they changed it?

j_baker 13y ago

I'm kind of reminded of John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. Sure it was a great, forward-thinking thing for him to choose a woman, particularly when running against a black man. But that doesn't mean it was a good idea. Likewise, I expect that Mayer's detractors will be dismissed as "Silicon Valley Sexists"... for a while. Honestly, it seems like Yahoo is more interested in having big names than substance, and Mayer is certainly a marketable CEO. Does that mean she's a competent CEO? Time will tell.

dylandrop 13y ago
I think it's insulting at best to compare Mayer to Sarah Palin.
- bishnu 13y ago
  Yet another example of gendered criticism of Mayer. How often do male CEOs get compared to inexperienced, hopeless Republican politicans? Just a coincidence I'm sure.
- j_baker 13y ago
  Please. I hate nothing more than a male-dominated work environment. The point I'm trying to make is that there is more to choosing an executive than diversity. Diversity is necessary, but not sufficient. The reason I brought Sarah Palin up is to illustrate that sometimes the results of focusing on diversity above all else sometimes produces painful results. Beyond that, Yahoo has a history of making bad choices in terms of executive leadership. Perhaps they finally made a good choice this time, but I'm skeptical until I see proof otherwise. Honestly, I fully expect that Mayer will set equality back.
  - rsl7 13y ago
    > The point I'm trying to make is that there is more to choosing an executive than diversity Oh, thanks for the heads-up.

api 13y ago

"He wanted Yahoo to be “like a cable TV provider.”" So she's firing aggressive, narcissistic, horribly overpaid morons. Clap, clap, clap...

etherael 13y ago

> Mayer is portrayed as “robotic, stuck up, and absurd in her obsession with detail,” Normal people saying this about technical people is usually a good indicator that the technical person is doing just fine.

WalterBright 13y ago

I bought some Yahoo stock after reading about Mayer.

jingo 13y ago

"... who likes to code." What language does she prefer? Does she prefer complexity or simplicity? Is her code verbose or terse? So many questions. Does any of this matter? If you're into coding, then the answer is "Yes", in my opinion. In fact, when it comes to software, I really do not care about what the coder looks like, what clothes the coder wears, the coder's personality type, etc. In evaluating software, these things are all irrelevant to me. I only care about the coder's code sensibilities and tastes, and the quality of the code. Anyway, can we see any code samples to back up her statement? I will believe it when I see the evidence. No matter what he says or does in real life, and even if he wears cheap suits and ugly ties, I will always have an appreciation of one well-known, former CEO as a coder. Because lex is one of my favorite programs.

slurry 13y ago
The information you're curious about does not seem to be in the public record. It's not easy to convey things like that through journalists, especially business journalists. Some of it may not even exist: some of the best coders I've ever known don't really have a favorite language. Knew a math PhD from MIT who used to just churn out Perl and C++ all day happy as a clam. I asked him if he'd prefer Lisp or something but he didn't really care - all about the algorithms for him. Anyway, there are still good indications that Marissa Mayer has kept up both an academic interest in computer science and suspiciously coder-like habits well after her ascension to upper management. Mayer was still teaching CS classes at Stanford after becoming a Google executive.[0] She uses a terminal-based email client.[1] And uses plain text for all her personal organizing.[2] [0]http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/marissa_mayer http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/marissa_mayer [1]https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/327200020128489472 https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/327200020128489472 [2]http://lifehacker.com/265651/google-vp-organizes-her-life-in-txt http://lifehacker.com/265651/google-vp-organizes-her-life-in...

squozzer 13y ago

Blessed are those who have a smattering of enemies, for they shall them a (s)hero.