Wow. I am speechless. There is probably no better person on earth to light a user- and product-focused fire under Yahoo. But the risk, the risk for her is just stunning. Huge props to her for making the leap from what must be a very comfortable Google and for the board for finding a stunning candidate to lead the revival of Yahoo.
(Edit: my definition of risk is lost time and missed opportunity. She's not going to suffer in compensation or reputation.)
Actually, there is no risk at all (if you know what's behind the covers).
She is stagnating at Google. She had high ranking high influence positions at Google but over the years has been relegated to a position that has little visibility and control, mostly due to her non execution. This is a great opportunity for her to make some serious cash and be the "top dog" in a kennel of average dogs, rather than the opposite at Google.
Also, even if she crashes and burns at Yahoo, she will get many more opportunities simply due to the brand recognition she has due to her tenure at Google.
I remember long ago hearing her push the notion that all design and interface decisions must be tested. I remember thinking that is just a recipe for non-execution with the goal of never being "wrong".
Could you explain more what you mean by non-execution? I don't travel in circles where I have context for something like that and it sounds interesting.
I had a CEO once who used to say "execute" a lot. I didn't really know what it meant either but it felt exciting when he said it. Sometimes I say it myself in the shower, when there's no-one within earshot.
True but you know Matt is anothger posibly trophy hire at soem stage he is acting way above his pay grade if my company asked me to represnt them to congress etc I would say "cool" but I want a board seat first :-)
Marissa was an early employee at Google, she was employee 20 there and Google's first female hire - she's worth ~$300 Million, I doubt she's doing this for the money.
well, it's more like, she has $300 Million now, but her compensation going forward now, win or lose, will probably dwarf that of staying put at Google and personal portfolio growth for the next few years. She's not doing it for the money, but her personal wealth only stands a huge boost.
I'm sorry but I find it so hilarious. I worked at Yahoo and Google both. I know both their cultures (and especially the culture at Yahoo after all the good engineers left). IMHO, she is status quo - no different than the horrible string of CEOs being hired by Yahoo. In fact, I will put a stake in the ground that she will not move the needle further than what Scott/Bartz did.
I just can't get over how hilarious this situation is.
The biggest factor is not Mayer herself, but again the "wrestling with a pig" factor mentioned in an excellent observation above. Yahoo! is not a sexy company.
Yes, I too am curious about your perspective. There are far too many posts claiming "Hey, I worked at X and Y!" without providing any sort of perspective whatsoever.
Backspace, you sound negative. Can you at least provide some information which makes you feel like she is not going to perform? Like her previous performance, because that would be an ok indicator in this case.
What risk? She's already achieved complete financial security from here time at Google. At Yahoo! she'll be taking the reins of a company that still attracts a massive userbase but is aching for someone with a fresh viewpoint on how to transform the company. Nothing buy potential IMO.
I'm not talking about money or reputation. The risk I see is time and opportunity. She could spend a maddening four years not moving the needle at Yahoo rather than another company or a startup of her own. Four years of punishing travel, endless meetings, unending Wall Street scrutiny. That risk.
Did you seriously just compare the CEO position at Yahoo to a _start-up_? To think the two are even in the same zip code, much less the same ballpark, is just, well it reflects a rather isolated viewpoint, put it that way. Yahoo is a $19B corporation.
Corrected. Poor phrasing on my part. I was suggesting a likely alternative for her would be starting a company, not that Yahoo is anything like a startup.
Wow, has HN been taken over by business types already?
Don't you think Mayer has enough capital, connections, reputation, experience, etc. that if she started a company to do what she wanted, how she wanted, it would be completely different from your average college-grad startup?
I mean, come on now. There's no comparing the two.
Oblig car metaphor: That's like saying hey, as an alternative to a free Lamborghini Aventador, you can have an old Pontiac Fiero chassis, and a Chevy 350 with a blown head gasket. If you're really lucky and amazing you might make something worth 1/10th what the Lamborghini is.
Car metaphors are tempting, but Yahoo vs. a startup is more like the difference between fixing up a rusty EOL aircraft carrier and building a sailboat.
I'm not sure the analogy stretches quite that far. Do you really care how many percent you own if you can drive it whenever you like and modify it however you please?
Not really a good metaphor. Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and many more entrepreneurs chose to start a second company rather than take a C level job somewhere else. A better analogy is whether to adapt an off the shelf piece of code to scratch your itch (often a reasonable choice) or to write your own from scratch, clean slate. The latter is much more risky, but that fits a certain personality.
Building a successful company is not a joke even if you have knowledge and connections. Users don't value what and whom you know.
At her level and for all she has done, getting to be the CEO of a billion dollar firm is actually a great deal.
Looking at it from other way around, Her career at Google might have probably come to a halt given the fact that Larry and Sergey are going to be there around for a long time to come. On the other hand, she could not be the CEO of a successful firm- Because such stints demand prior experience.
In short the change she got now is because, the company is currently a underdog. No big CEO who is already on a wave of success will take up that kind of a job. She needs the company because she gets to be the CEO and nobody else would offer her the same position.
Except as CEO she would probably make enough to buy a new Lamborghini every week. People rarely talk about opportunity costs but if you can make more than 10 million a year spending 5 years building a company from scratch to see a 30 million exit is a Failure. And doing better than that is ridiculously rare.
You would think that at Hacker News, car analogies would not be necessary, since I imagine there is a large proportion of users like myself who have no interest in cars, and have never owned nor intend to own one.
I have no idea how a Pontiac Fiero or a Chevy 350 compares to a Lamborghini Aventator without looking it up. All I know is that all three are probably luxury automobiles. I have even less of clue about what a head gasket might be.
On the other hand, if you tried to explain something to me by using a job at Google, Yahoo, and a start-up as analogies, it would definitely help make things more understandable.
Well, only the Lamborghini is a luxury car(unless you consider all cars a luxury but that would be a different discussion).
Otherwise, I fully agree with your point. I like cars and had no clue what, exactly, the Pontiac Fiero or the Chevy 350 were as I'm not American and those are American cars. Around here German(Mercedes, BMW, Audi, VW) and Japanese(Mazda, Subary, Toyota, ...) cars are much much more common.
Fiero: Pontiac's great experiment at making a European style sports car. A real _proper_ sports car: Mid-engined, rear wheel drive. Except, because most most of the parts were from other GM vehicles, it was mostly shite. Still - very popular with kit car/replicar builders because they made quite a few of them (~350,000) and they're cheap as donor cars.
Chevy 350: Basically a commodity engine. 5.7L pushrod V-8. Used in lots of GM vehicles from the late 60s through the early 90s. Camaros, Corvettes, Cadiallacs etc. Built tough, cheap, and there are a gazillion aftermarket parts available.
It's fairly unusual these days. Only thing you'll find with an engine that big is either a full-size SUV, a large truck, or a Corvette.
Plus, if you weren't here, you might not appreciate just how horrible the "EPA era" engines were. Much stricter emission controls + not having the technology to really meet it led to some really de-tuned engines. Wouldn't be unusual for a 5-6L engine in those days to only make 140-160HP stock.
I thought HN had a large preponderence of "engineers" (or at least they claim to be) I would have expected almost 100% of us sould have enough knowledge to understand the analogy.
Pontiac's and Chevy's are very American cars. Speaking as a European I can guess they're not as good as a Lamborghini but not with enough detail to make it a particularly useful comparison.
The flaw with this analogy isn't likening Yahoo! to a Lamborghini. It's saying that startups are all the same, regardless of who's starting them.
If Elon Musk and a new Stanford grad started brand new companies on the same day, would both companies be old busted cars with blown head gaskets?
Also, the metaphor is a bit flawed by likening the 17-year-old floundering company to a new sports car and a hypothetical new company as something that's already worthless because of wear and tear.
The appropriate analogy would not be a free Lamborghini, but the chance to drive one (with 2 bad tires) for a while. Or, go buy/build your own car and own it.
I think it's a great move, and Google is probably in favor of it.
Agreed. I understand there's a hacker mentality here, but who would really pass up the CEO at an established behemoth like Yahoo to take the reigns of an unproven (or found) startup?
Me. I'm not qualified to be the CEO of Yahoo, so I would only be setting myself up for failure if I took the job. But running a smaller company limits the amount of harm I can do to myself and others while I learn the ropes.
The only reason to expect Mayer to do well as the CEO of Yahoo would be if her work at Google were similar to that job in some respect. I'm not sure it is.
True, but Yahoo! has made so many mistakes that she would have to really to screw up (like lie on your resume) for it to hurt her reputation. So that time and opportunity cost is unlikely to ever be a waste. If she fails, well Yahoo! was already a failure, if she succeeds, she's a perceived as savior. Either way, she's a contenter for ceo of any other major internet company going forward.
I really don't understand why people are saying she won't get a reputation hit from this if she fails. Every other CEO trying to steer Yahoo right so far in recent history has a black eye and had to leave in relative disgrace. None of them had the superstar status that she has right now, but the fact is, none of them were allowed the conclusion "well, Yahoo was just too screwed up anyway". I'm not convinced that she'll be able to escape getting a black eye if she also fails. People are harsh on Yahoo CEOs. The deck is stacked against them in so many ways.
I think because people believe at this point it is taken that failing at Yahoo would hardly be surprising. For 2 reasons: 1) the company is in much worse shape (especially in reputation) than it was when previous CEOs failed to turned things around and 2) after a bunch of people try and fail the stigma of failing is likely to be reduced. Also here reputation is so positive that failing at a task many think is going to be hard not to fail at, won't likely turn those thinking well of her around.
Now she could fail in ways that are so bad that it does harm her reputation, certainly. I tend to agree with those that think as long as she doesn't fail for reasons that make her look really bad, her reputation won't suffer too much.
Also if Yahoo is marginally successful she may get an outsized boost - due to others failing to do even that.
Yahoo is one of those companies who has so many great properties that it will be easier than it seems to resurrect that company. They just needed a competent CEO.
Actually, your metaphor and the pattern of ruining hopefuls fits a pattern from Greek Mythology. (Other tough guys try to capture/defeat/kill a fearsome monster, but Hercules shows he's an uber-stud by finally doing it)
"someone with a fresh viewpoint on how to transform the company"
Prior to joining google in 1999 as employee number 20 "Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California" (wikipedia) for what appears to be only a few years. (She graduated high school in 1993, received a B.S. and and M.S. which must have taken at least 4 or 5 years afaik).
My guess is that she has a great deal of confidence, confidence built on the fact that she was an early google employee and she was able to ride the success of that opportunity. But her entire working career is basically google and I'm not sure she brings the depth of experience necessary to take on turning around the fortunes of Yahoo.
You may be right, but the "experienced" CEOs that preceded her have been a disaster. It is non-trivial to find someone with executive experience at this level; there just aren't that many companies that are this big in this industry (and hiring from outside the industry seems to have been a massive mistake in most of the instances where it has happened; somehow business people always think the business skills are the most important, and so they think a PepsiCo chief can run a tech company, but that never seems to pan out very well).
At the very least, Mayer has been part of a real leading tech organization that grew from nothing to everything in record time. That's experience that is also very difficult to replicate. And, the skills she's known for within Google are all product oriented, and that's where Yahoo has failed so miserably and Google has succeeded so fantastically.
and so they think a PepsiCo chief can run a tech company, but that never seems to pan out very well
For IBM, the decision to hire a non-technical and experienced CEO turned out OK. IBM turned around. But I'd agree that this is probably an exception to the rule.
I think the key here is fresh thinking and ability to get the political/operational/strategic stars aligned inside the organization to /cough/ execute. An experienced person may bring this to the table, and a lesser experienced person may bring this to the table. The key is whether it's brought to the table.
The other thing that I would be concerned about is her PR appeal. I have no idea who Google employee 19 or 21 is, and I have no idea what she actually did at Google, except that it sounded important. Yet I've heard of her, would probably recognize her in a news picture, and remember her name.
I've had the opportunity to work with people who were very good at personal public relations, and based on that experience, I'm skeptical. Constantly selling your public image means that you can't be wrong, which always results in revisionist history and oddball situations.
Hopefully I'm wrong -- Yahoo needs help, and she does have a good story.
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?
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
You overestimate the downside of a reputation hit. The business world loves failures, and in fact it promotes them as people experienced with problems.
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.
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.
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.
They haven't really had that many CEOs, and Mayer is young enough to weather anything that might happen. I can't imagine she isn't going into this without an upper hand, It's not like she was looking to jump ship (maybe she was) and Yahoo was the only company who would hire her.
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.
I hope she doesn't regret it. I just read this article by Anne-Marie Slaughter, titled "Why Women can't have it all" and describing her experience mixing a high-power job with raising children (even with a supportive husband):
Definitely unexpected that she would show up at Yahoo but not unexpected that she would leave Google. The re-org was kind of a slap in the face and everyone pretty much knew it. But taking this role was not what I would have expected. If Microsoft really is trying to sell its Bing unit she might be able to make a search company out of it again. Or at least a company with a native search product to power its other properties.
I don't think there's a lot of reputation risk for her, here... I'm pretty sure that if Yahoo continues it's current course, the majority reaction will be "Well, Yahoo was a sinking ship anyway, there's not a lot she could have done" but if Yahoo makes a comeback she'll be hailed as a miracle worker.
For proof of this, see Marc Andreessen's comments in TechCrunch[1]:
Andreessen also said he's "super-happy" for Mayer, because she's ready to step into a CEO role at a major tech company.
But can she actually turn Yahoo around? Andressen declined to offer any suggestions for areas that the company should pursue, and he also cautioned that it's hard to think of many Web companies that succeeded in turning themselves around.
"On the other hand, it's hard to overestimate how screwed Apple was in 1997," Andreessen said. "Tech comapnies can in fact be turned around. The problem is, there aren't a lot of Steve Jobs characters running around."
Basically, if she makes it, she's "a Steve Jobs character" and if not, well, it's hard to turn tech companies around.
Don't be so sure. Nokia was a sinking ship before Elop joined and now he's wearing most of the blame. Sure, he could have hitched Nokia's wagon to Android instead. But given that Google own competitor Motorola and are selling the killer Nexus 7 at no margin, they aren't exactly an ideal partner either.
All you need to do is look at how the tech press/community is ALREADY talking about this. See the quote from Andreessen[1] that I already talked about or, alternatively, another TechCrunch article that just got published:
What a time for Marissa Mayer to take control at Yahoo. She'll need all the smarts she can lay her hands on to revive an ailing Yahoo.[2]
It's already being set up so that the expectation is "she'll probably fail, because ANYONE will fail" but if she succeeds she's a miracle worker or "a Steve Jobs character".
Elop scrapped everything Nokia had dumped years of R&D into and turned the company into Microsoft's (Elop's former employer) puppet. Nokia could have made an instant comeback if they had just built a few semi-decent Android phones, but they are now locked in to Windows. Elop's case is atypical.
I think it's a risk too. She's shown that she can excel in a small company undergoing hyper growth.
In this case she's presenting herself as a turnaround expert. I'm surprised she didn't sign on with a pre-IPO darling like Twitter or Facebook long ago.
Respectfully what risk does she have? She has a tremendous history with Google, even if Yahoo tanks with her at the helm, she could probably continue in at least a Senior Vice President position with almost any other company of her choosing.
Not to mention she is more-then-likely financially taken-care of. At that point, 'risk' is almost negligible. It's all just 'more possibilities' for Mrs. Mayer.
Actually I don't think the risk is all that high. If the sinking ship still sinks, then oh well. But, however small the chance, she manages to turn things around...
As someone who has been underwhelmed by Ms. Mayer since her early days at Google, I think this is just another desperate attempt to save the ailing Yahoo. It will fail, and she'll be out in less than a year.
She's a showboat, IMHO. This is based on personal observation and insider info. She's quick to yell about how great she is, but you don't see a lot of unbiased people talking about her contributions to technology or to Google. She has her own publicist; not from Google, mind you, this is the Marissa Mayer publicist. She apparently enjoyed keeping people lined up waiting for an appointment with her for hours. To summarize, there are a lot of signs of weak character, no signs of great leadership, and no signs of greatness at all. Yahoo's board wanted her, obviously, for the name Google. They will be disappointed.
This is typical Yahoo bullshit. They hire a CEO not for the primary reason of effectiveness or experience, but instead for their perception of effectiveness in the media. Is she an improvement over Bartz? No doubt, because the first time I saw Bartz discussing Yahoo's future several years ago, it was immediately clear to me that they weren't getting out of their tailspin.
Is Mayer a genius? I'm sure of it. But from all the things I've heard from Google employees and their dealings with her, I suspect that a lot of the hype she receives in the media is due to the lack of female role models in the Valley. She damned sure doesn't sound like a good leader. Biting off heads, interrupting people mid sentence, forgetting what happened in the last meeting....... this is the epitome of somebody who has bitten off more than they can chew. The sad part is that there are so, so many women in the Valley that deserve the attention she gets.
Eh, I like Marissa, and I've worked on projects (the 2010 websearch visual redesign, and doodles) for which she was the executive sponsor. No, she's not a nice person, and most likely she does not give a shit about you as a person. But she is very often right about her design opinions, and when she's not, she'll listen to data.
I don't think Yahoo particularly needs a nice person as CEO right now. Their culture is dysfunctional enough that they probably need a Steve Jobs type, someone with clear opinions who's willing to ruffle a lot of feathers (and make a bunch of people quit). Steve Jobs wasn't really a nice person either.
I've worked at both Yahoo and Google. I've never worked with Marissa directly but I think your opinion of her is pretty much correct.
The biggest risk I see is that there is a huge difference in her role. At Google she stood atop a pyramid of other geniuses, with similar backgrounds and values, and was a filter for their ideas. At Yahoo she's dealing with a culture where engineering is not the highest value, and she's going to have to get off the top perch and descend into the ranks, clearing out the enemies of progress which exist at every level.
I disagreed with nearly everything I ever heard Marissa say related to design, especially her over reliance on A/B testing to inform design. I think she is one of the main reasons Google products tend to feel like they are designed by engineers.
Their products are usable and uncluttered. I have reservations about the new unified look (too much padding in horizontal stripes one can't scroll, trying to displace browser chrome), but I've been very happy with the previous, “designed by engineers” Google aesthetic.
There are so many UX problems with the current crop of Google core products, it's hard for me to agree that "usable and uncluttered" can refer to anything but the Google of the past.
What's wrong with relying on A/B testing to inform design? In my opinion, except for the whole Google+ unifying process going on most Google products are highly usable.
Most observers seem to agree that Yahoo's problem is cultural in nature. It's not a Nokia-esque situation, where the company was heavily damaged by competitive forces before Elop even showed up.
A big part -- a necessary part -- of the way Jobs changed the culture at Apple was by bringing in a lot of people who had been loyal to him for years at Next and elsewhere. I can't think of any cases where an outsider has parachuted into a large company, by invitation or otherwise, and turned it around by himself/herself.
Can/will Mayer do that? If so, where will the required team of revolutionaries and revanchists come from? If she doesn't (or can't) raid Google, then where will she get the people she will need?
There're lots of good people at Yahoo. I've heard from other Google engineers who do a lot of interviewing that their recent impression of a lot of ex-Yahooers has been "Hire this person NOW. How could the company let someone like this go?"
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if one of Marissa's first moves is to fire all the middle management and then promote a bunch of longtime individual contributors into their place.
From the description, her behavior reminds me a lot of how Steve Jobs behaved. If you read the biography, Jobs would often contradict himself, he was extremely rude, he would cry at meetings, he would hear an idea and say it was shit, and then the next week propose the exact same idea as his own, etc.
I'm not saying she is at all comparable to Steve Jobs, but it sounds like they both know what they want, and don't spend a lot of time with what they think is wrong.
I've said this often, but Jobs was about 50% right and 50% wrong. When Jobs was wrong, it was usually a small strikeout, but when he was right, they were monster home runs, which is why people tolerated Jobs' behavior. Mayer needs to be right a lot more than she is wrong, so I guess we'll have to see how that pans out.
Not a good comparison. Meyer famously tested 41 shades of blue on Gmail. Optimising local maxima is hardly innovation. Jobs was more of the Henry Ford mindset that if he asked people what they wanted they'd ask for a faster horse.
I guess you didn't read very carefully because I didn't compare Meyer and Jobs except in the similarities of how their temperament were described. One was from an official biography, and one from from an anonymous forum comment, so I take the forum comment with a grain of salt. To be clear, I don't think they are at all comparable in terms of success or as a visionary.
But since you brought up the testing of 41 shades of blue, I guess you didn't hear this story about Steve Jobs obsessing over the yellow gradient on Google's icon on the iPhone.
I didn't say Jobs didn't obsess over details. Clearly he did. The difference is that he knew what he wanted up front rather than testing market reaction to make decisions. The latter is commonly perceived as the "Google Way" and it's more about meeting expectations than setting higher ones.
I was wondering if there are any public and published research reports/papers that were written by her? At least something from her time at Stanford? So far the only thing I could find were some Google patents where she appears as a co-inventor.
Edit: Oddly enough I can not reply to the comment below. My statement wasn't meant to be critical but more on the curious side. The "41 shades of blue" story sounded always intriguing, so I was wondering if there are any other traces of her research activities.
Even if she has, what of it? Academic success does not imply the ability to lead and vice verse. Steve jobs, bill gates, Zuckerberg all built businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars without any degree at all.
Yes. There's a big difference between a genius who's also a jackass, and someone who thinks they have to be a jackass to be a genius. Jobs was solidly in the first category.
I read the biography too and this seems only remotely similar. Anyway, if someone shares some of Steve Jobs' bad traits, that means nothing at all. It's not an indication of a good CEO.
CEOs in general tend to be hard to work with. There are also anecdotes about Gates being rude.
Further, I would say the people who want to judge a character by a few anecdotes are being lazy, small minded, and short sighted. Jobs, Gates, and Mayer are all different people with their own styles. I'm not sure if Mayer's style will be what Yahoo needs, but I wish her the best of luck.
A lot of people are assholes. That doesn't mean they are like Steve Jobs.
That description of her didn't include a single word saying anything positive about how she did her job. No description of Jobs of similar length, regardless of how much the writer hated him, would have failed to mention that Jobs also had many positive qualities.
In fairness, when Jobs was Meyer's age he was mostly regarded as a wild eyed dreamer who lost the computer wars. He was fortunate to get a second act at Apple (which looked very seriously at Be instead of Next).
Anybody read 'I'm feeling Lucky' by Douglas Edwards? He came across as a good judge of people to me, just based on my reading of the book. And he is not negative on many people in his book.
But he was critical of her, and there were lots of hints of bad blood between them in his book. Although he always remains very subtle in whatever he says.
Reading that comment, you share, reminded me of some sections of the book.
Interesting. So that reply was ages old, but in the event that you're dealing with a manager like that today - what is the best thing to do outside of leaving the organization?
If the organization is large enough, try to make an amicable break and move internally. This is the simplest way if you do not have a conscience about the company or your work (not always a bad thing to be conscience-less about these things). If you can't move internally, pursue two threads of action simultaneously:
(1) In most situations, you will have a smart, rational person you might be aware of in the layer that he/she reports into (though preferable, not necessarily her direct boss). Talk to them about what you see as problems.
Be prepared to back up your claims with documented, solid evidence of the behavior. Keep emotional, hyperbolic, prejudicial expressions or assertions to yourself - they will only work against you in such situations.
Be as paranoid as you can be about who you can trust to back you up in your peer group in case there has to be a discussion. Knowing people who're discontent like you helps only if you know they won't stab you in the back.
Avoid ultimatums. Express faith in the system and the ability for the person to change. Express willingness to change yourself. In other words, come off as the bigger person right from the beginning and at all times.
(2) Have an exit strategy if the situation turns on you. This could include escalation to several layers (CEO/Board) above the layers you're dealing with and looking out for a new job.
"Be prepared to back up your claims with documented, solid evidence of the behavior. Keep emotional, hyperbolic, prejudicial expressions or assertions to yourself - they will only work against you in such situations. Avoid ultimatums. Express faith in the system and the ability for the person to change. Express willingness to change yourself. In other words, come off as the bigger person right from the beginning and at all times."
Based on past bitter experience I've boiled this down to, "Don't be easy to dismiss."
I think leaving is your only option, actually, outside of going to HR and asking to be moved to a different team... and I'd never go to HR to ask that.
I seriously hope that the Board of Directors has some idea of what they're doing, because their track record certainly doesn't look like it.
EDIT: To be clear, this wasn't meant as a slam on Marissa. What I meant was "It looks like the Board has created a toxic environment that no one could survive."
From http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/directors.cfm. Looks like they don't have many slouches. Heavy on financial services and broadcast. Perhaps light on internet entrepreneurs. Largely independent. A couple big shareholders.
Alfred Amoroso - Chairman, Yahoo! Inc.
John Hayes - Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, American Express Company
Sue James - Retired Partner, Ernst & Young LLP
David Kenny - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Weather Channel Companies
Peter Liguori - Former Chief Operating Officer, Discovery Communications, Inc. Former Chairman and President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company
Daniel Loeb - Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Third Point LLC
Thomas McInerney - Former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IAC/InterActiveCorp
Brad Smith - President and Chief Executive Officer, Intuit Inc.
Maynard Webb - Founder, Webb Investment Network, Chairman of the Board, LiveOps, Inc.
Harry Wilson - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, MAEVA Group, LLC
Michael Wolf - Chief Executive Officer and President, Activate Strategy, Inc.
I am very curious what goes in those Board of Directors meetings.
Does everyone just sit around asking eachother "What the fuck does this company do, and how are we still in business?"
Seriously, what does Yahoo do? I don't know, because I haven't been their website since the 1990's. They obviously don't make software or hardware products, because I don't own any and have never paid for any of their products. I have no use for whatever services they might offer because I've never heard of anyone praising or recommending their services. I honestly would like to know how Yahoo still exists.
I think Marissa Mayer has a much harder task in front of her than she might think. Yahoo really doesn't do anything, or have products. How is she going to improve that which does not exist?
Yahoo has some good niche products that are doing relatively well compared to the rest of the company (fantasy sports is one, Flickr is another). To survive they probably need to do more of those and figure out how to specialize and monetize the products that aren't stagnating.
Yep. I only go there for Flickr and March Madness. Flickr could use some innovation, but it does its core mission well enough. March Madness is a simple task done well.
Used to be on a couple of private mailing lists through their groups, but those have both moved to private google groups over the years.
You know what I'd honestly like to see them do? Compete with Google, head on. I think search and ads are both stagnant markets compared to what they should be. I would absolutely love to see her knock Google out of its complacency and get those worlds moving forward again.
She could pull the talent together to do it, I think, if she was bold enough.
The problem is I'm not sure she's bold enough. But Yahoo absolutely requires gigantic boldness. It's the main quality they need at the top, honestly.
Historical precedent: Stephen Elop was head of Business Division at MS before he became Nokia CEO and then Nokia fully fell in MS's lap.
Prediction: Sometime in near future some sort of very close partnership will happen between Google and Yahoo, subject to regulatory approval of course.
Edit: Fixed "MS CEO" to "Nokia CEO" typo. Thanks kreilly
Another prediction: such partnership won't help Google very much, but will hurt Microsoft a bit -- due to Yahoo shying away from Bing and possibly MS e-mail technology.
It may also well help developers -- Yahoo's YUI is a very handy and very relevant toolkit; with Marissa as the CEO, I sure hope Yahoo will embrace developers more and YUI will get some more love.
I was discussing the same topic with my coworkers when we heard the news. Yahoo's YUI could be the company's starting point at developing strong products and boosting Yahoo's relevance as a brand. It's a great library.
Yea, IMO Google should have persisted with the Google-Yahoo ad deal and let DOJ sue, then use the appeal to show the bad logic DOJ tried to use to stop the deal.
This might be a stupid question, but are there any amazing turnaround stories in the world of large tech companies? If not, is that due to the relative youth of the sector, or something fundamental? I can think of a ton of companies that have faltered, but really none that have made a dramatic turnaround.
Apple is a good example. Keep in mind that Apple was "turned around" by one of the founders. That's an example of re-aligning the company with it's original vision rather than altering the vision. I think the latter is much harder but I've never tried.
Don't feel stupid! It doesn't happen very often, really. Certainly the examples are few and far between. Turnarounds can happen, they just usually don't.
Bit borderline on being a 'tech' company by modern standards (though historically it's about as tech as it gets), General Electric under Jack Welch. He pulled off a Jobsian effort in the 80s. GE went from $27bn revenues to $130bn under his watch and a market cap of $14bn up to $410bn.
As I recall most of that was due to the US economy turning around and picking up defense contracts. I think it would be impossible to not make money in that situation.
I think there is a big difference between "impossible to not make money in that situation" and growing revenues by 100B under your leadership. A lot of companies in that era did not grow revenues by 100 billion dollars.
Intuit hit a period of relative stagnation that Brad Smith has been working to plow through for a while, a period of change marked by the acquisition of Mint and an expansion in the online product suite
SanDisk went in the relative dumper following the memory glut in ~2009 but seems to have been recovering under Mehrotra for about a year now
And a great turn around (and around) story is Seagate, who tanked, went private around 2000, came out and soared mid-2000 and is sort of tanking again even under chairman Stephen Luczo's leadership
Apple from the mid-1990's to present. CEO John Sculley had been instructed in 1993 to sell the company (unsuccessfully, to AT&T, IBM, etc.), before getting fired. He refers to the time as Apple's "near-death experience." In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to the company via NeXT and Microsoft invested a severely needed $150 million. Without those two events happening, it is highly possible that Apple would not still exist today (let alone being the most valued technology company in the world). That's about as radical of turnaround as possible.
Also, Michael Dell returning to his company has been a solid turn around in regards to profitability and improvement in product quality, both of which had languished under the former chief. It doesn't show in the stock valuation because of substantial PE compression, but Michael Dell has taken the company from losing money briefly and having some accounting scandals, to a solid level of profitability in the last few years.
Can someone explain how she is able to do this? Set aside the boldness of the move, but if anyone ever should be put on some kind of "garden leave" or some kind of non-compete it would be a person moving from a prominent position in Google to become CEO of Yahoo?
Anyway, that aside. One thing that I hope that comes from this, is bringing some of the same Google-quality-developer-friendly-ethos to Yahoo. Dispite consuming several Yahoo services, I'm always disappointed at how slow they release changes... and if there is one thing that Yahoo needs it's changes..
---------
[] June 16th, "Marrissa Meyer Makes Move to Yahoo",
[] June 20th, Yahoo switches from Bing to Google Search.
[] July 21th, Bing sees enormous drop in QPM.
Coup of the century? Who would of thought, should this actually happen, it would be the best possible outcome. Sacrificing the queen to totally dominate the search market even further.
Sure, there isn't really an enforceable non-compete in California, its one of the things that makes Silicon Valley, well Silicon Valley. Second there is a sort of hubris around 'the best revenge is beating them at their own game.' I know of at least two founder/co-founder pairs that split over different ideas about how the vision should go and rather than try to sue the other out of existence, the sense of invulnerability or desire for competition gives rise to a sort of 'bring it on if you got it' mentality.
Even if non-competes are enforceable, sometimes it will make more sense for a company to let an employee go straightaway anyway, rather than having them hang around twiddling their thumbs with no motivation.
True, Where California's statutes affect innovation is in the case where you're trying to raise money. In a state that enforces non-compete agreements you have a harder time if your new venture competes with the place you just left. That is because there is a risk that if you're successful you will be sued by your original employer and shut down. This is not true in California so it is nominally easier to raise funds.
How enforceable are they in other states? I know in the UK there have been a few test cases which seem to have resulted in the interpretation that you can only enforce one if it would otherwise be detrimental to the ex-employer (e.g. starting a new business or taking your contacts with you), otherwise people would find it difficult to move jobs within an industry because you'd almost always be going to a company who could be classed as a competitor.
Assuming that you work in California, no, the non-complete clause is rendered unenforceable. (Under Application Group, Inc. v. Hunter Group, Inc., California law trumps a choice of law clause with respect to a non-compete clause.) If you live in CA and commute to Nevada/Oregon/Arizona/some other state, then my understanding is that the law of the state where you actually work would apply.
Disclaimer: IANAL and this post does not constitute legal advice of any kind.
Doug Crockford gave a great keynote address at the HTML5 conf this year titled "What would Crockford do?" It was basically not about HTML5 and all about what he'd do if he were Yahoo CEO.
I saw the video. It seems a very silly thing to do -- ever since I first saw that video I've been trying to understand Crockford's angle, and I just cannot. However, feronull seems in favour of it, so I'd like to know why.
Forking a project isn't a healthy thing to do, unless there's something seriously wrong with the existing community (e.g. XFree86). As far as I can tell:
* The nodejs community is healthy and vibrant.
* There are no systemic problems with contribution.
* Isaac Schultner has his head on straight, has reasonable priorities, and is a pleasant character.
* Much, if not most, of node's development is happening outside Joyent anyway.
* Nothing is stopping Yahoo from contributing to the existing project.
Even if all of the above were false, why does Crockford think the remnants of Yahoo's engineering can do better? Joyent is filled with Sun's top talent, and the engineering division is run by an enlightened alpha engineer.
I cannot help but think this is a case of sour grapes by Crockford, because there just doesn't seem to be a good reason for his stance.
Edit: as an aside, his idea of rewriting everything in node is a bit ridiculous too. I've been a part of several projects to rewrite code, for smaller things than all of Yahoo's online assets, and it sure took longer than one year to do a good job even with excellent engineers. This is a long-term project, not something you do to fix the immediate bleeding. This, and forking node, are very strange things to focus on right now given Yahoo's difficulties.
Wow, I think that might be highest compliment I've ever been paid -- thank you! And though I am now clearly biased by your generous assessment of Joyent engineering and of me personally, I believe that your other comments are (of course?) spot-on. For whatever it's worth, we reached out to Crock to see if we could dissect whatever wasp had crawled into his underwear, but (no surprise) we were met with deafening silence. Even assuming that his was an entirely emotional response to some perceived slight in the distant past, we still have no idea what he's talking about. If anyone knows what he was referring to when he called our stewardship "amateurish", please, enlighten us!
I've always admired her, she seems to be very smart and has her finger on the pulse on what the Internet is all about, so if anyone can turn Yahoo around it's her.
I sincerely hope she has the intestinal fortitude to do WHATEVER it takes to revitalize Yahoo. The first thing I would do is get rid of the entire board of directors, they need a complete reboot as well.
Do you really believe that? I mean, of all the potential candidates out there, she has the best pedigree?
I think the negative commentary stems from there. You think this is a coup. To me, it's sort of a ho-hum, predictable hiring. Yahoo! needs an overhaul as a business, and to do so they hired someone with SV name power.
I 100% believe that she has the best pedigree of any person out there.
Think about it, who would you have as CEO of Yahoo? John Chambers? Larry Ellison? The CEO of Hulu? Mark Hurd? Jerry Yang? Tim Cook?
I think Mayer is better qualified than anyone else that is available because she is an expert on the space. When she joined Google, the mainstream Internet was less than 5 years old. Her entire career has been built on the Internet. If she went to any large company like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, EMC, you name it, I would think it wouldn't be a good fit, because she wouldn't be an expert on the space.
Mayer has been with Google since practically the beginning, and as an executive, she has participated in the decisions and actions required to create and maintain a world-class engineering organization. As well, being an early employee and not just surviving but thriving, I'd be willing to bet that Mayer has done more as an engineer than most engineers at Yahoo, except maybe Filo, so that gives her incredible technical legitimacy. So, yes, I believe she is extremely qualified to run a company like Yahoo.
You can't just stick a "turnaround expert" in the shoes of Yahoo CEO and expect a great result. You need someone that understands the space, and can make the tough and right decisions that can put Yahoo back on track. Everyone that they've chosen as CEO since Yang just felt like they were trying to salvage as much of Yahoo as possible, and sell it to some other company or PE fund, and give up. By choosing Mayer, it means they are serious about trying to put Yahoo back on the right path again, and not just selling it off. I'm pretty sure this will motivate the current troops at Yahoo.
The only other interesting choice for CEO might be Reed Hastings, but he's taken already. The Yahoo board could have elected to try to acquire Netflix and put Hastings as CEO of the combined company, which would have been interesting. I still prefer the choice of Mayer though, because it shows a lot of guts, both on the part of Yahoo and Mayer.
>"I think Mayer is better qualified than anyone else that is available because she is an expert on the space. When she joined Google, the mainstream Internet was less than 5 years old. "
You do know there's a world of business outside the Valley, right? I'm not implying that she wouldn't be a good fit and very capable at many jobs or positions. But Yahoo!'s days are becoming numbered. When I think about what she could have possibly experienced at Google versus what Yahoo! needs as a company (which is a corporate and strategic overhaul), I can't understand where she'd have obtained anything remotely like "turn-around" expertise. Yahoo! is going to require some outside-the-box thinking, and this hiring is about as inside-the-box as it could be (along with every other name you mentioned would have been).
But this is just one man's opinion. I hope she can pull it off; it'd be a great story.
>"You can't just stick a "turnaround expert" in the shoes of Yahoo CEO and expect a great result. You need someone that understands the space"
Why can't you? What exactly is Yahoo!'s "space"? Of all the poor decisions made by Yahoo! of late, why do you trust that this was suddenly a stroke of genius?
Thank you for the positive attitude. Most comments here are focused on how much of a challenge this is for her and why would she leave security for something that could possibly become bigger. Well, maybe she wants something bigger in life. Can that be possible?
Yes. But if an incoming CEO has a lot of political capital, they can try and demand that certain board members leave as a condition of taking the job. It's unusual, and takes an unusual person to pull it off, but it happens. (For example, this is what happened when Steve Jobs was made interim CEO of Apple.)
Mayer is a big coup for Yahoo, and the investors may back her if she wants to clean house with the board, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to happen; it's unclear if Mayer really sees the board as part of the problem, and as Mayer is coming from outside of the organization, she may lack the close ties to other Yahoo execs that would be necessary to pull such a move off.
This will be interesting. She has three big challenges - with little prior experience in each:
1. Running a public company is vastly different and considerably more complex than managing large teams. She has to build an executive team capable of executing on all fronts. This is beyond hiring the best engineers and product managers, it is about hiring a CFO, COO, GMs, VPs, etc. that can execute on the plan set out by the CEO.
2. Managing a stagnating business requires different skills than a rapidly growing business. Google benefitted from exponential growth in usage, users, revenue. Yahoo is already over the hill. Most incoming CEOs do a top-down review of the business to understand assets and liabilities. They visit customers and large investors. In the end, they have to present a credible plan to the BOD for refocusing the business. Where should you invest or divest? Should you be aligned along product lines, geographically, or along customer segments?
3. Yahoo needs deep tech investments - to do so, it must attract and retain brilliant engineers. It is my understanding that Ms. Mayer's focus at google has been product and not technology. Without proper engineering, the best product ideas will fizzle. How will Ms. Mayer attract the best engineers to Yahoo? Without growth, it is hard to convince the best engineers to join your shop.
For upper level executives as soon as you resign you're escorted out the door by security and you're not allowed to touch anything. The level of access you had was so high that they don't want you learning anything more about the company's plans and want you out asap.
I've been around some companies where any IT worker who gives 2 week notice is escorted immediately out of the building. It is not unusual for 2 weeks to not be needed or wanted.
Or Yahoo 360. What? It never launched?
Well, she could do it on Yahoo Mash. Huh? Got shut down?
Or she could post a link on Yahoo Buzz. What's that? Also dead?
Crud, maybe she could post it to facebook.
California is an "at will" state so she's under no obligation to give Google any notice if she intends to quit, just as Google doesn't have to give her any notice if they intend to get rid of her.
I find it so childish, when company escorts an executive out. If CEO have been looking for a job, then all needed files have been copied long time ago. CEO knows it. Company knows it. yet they cannot resist the stupid ritual. giggling.
It's not childish, it's just being responsible. This is generally done for any employee with access to highly sensitive data. They're not going to do any more work for you; why take any risk that they'll do anything damaging after the moment when they tell you they're leaving?
Also, once they've resigned, they're no longer an employee, so for a lot of companies (Google included) they may not be allowed in the sensitive office areas, anyway.
It seems a lot like closing the barn door after the horses have left. If they were going to do anything damaging, why wouldn't they do it after they've decided they're leaving but before they tell you they're leaving? After all, they control when they tell you.
I think that particular practice is security theater - it's so the employer can say "We take all possible precautions", regardless of whether the possible precautions are effective.
There's been a real state change. The individual has gone from an employee - with contractual obligations to the employer in terms of intellectual property, etc. - to a non-employee who may not have those same obligations. There are also issues of liability and safety - as a non-employee, they may no longer be covered by your insurance, depending on the type of workplace.
Is it mostly for form? Probably, but there's a reason it's considered the right process. It's not done for "theater", it's done because sometimes these things end up in court later on.
Usually when you resign, there's an "effective MM/DD/YYYY" clause in your resignation letter. Until that date, you're still an employee, and still bound by any contractual obligations as such.
There's no particular reason for that effective date to be "now" vs. "two weeks from now". I've certainly had coworkers that announced their intention to resign 2 weeks or a month before their actual departure (actually, the one time I've quit a job, I think I stayed for a couple weeks afterwards wrapping up my project & transferring knowledge). The difference is only that in one case, the employee is intending to resign but you don't know about it, but in the other, the employee is intending to resign but you do know about it.
If you've read the news reports, this was an immediate resignation. At least in California, there's no obligation to give notice on a resignation. It's a courtesy, but in the case of some senior positions, or when you're going to a competitor, a company isn't going to want you to work two more weeks anyway.
Right, but now we've circled back to the original point, which is that when you do give notice, it makes no sense for the company to insist that you leave immediately and escort you out, as you were in control of when you gave notice. If you wanted to do any damage, you would've just done it and then gave notice.
So what, you just let them hang around the office for while? Maybe poach a few employees? It might not prevent any damage that's already occurred, but there's no reason to allow more damage.
Work out an end-date with them that will allow for a comfortable transition & knowledge transfer. Perhaps that's "immediately" if someone else can take over their job, or if they're not interested in staying and helping you. Perhaps it's "2 weeks from now." But generally assume good faith, because if they wanted to screw you, they would've already done so.
Asking a non-employee to leave the premises of a business isn't treating them like a "potential criminal". If you find a random visitor wandering around your office, you may ask them to leave. It's not a "shitty" thing to do as long as it's done politely.
Let's keep in mind this is also someone who is leaving voluntarily, not being laid off. They are picking their moment when they become a non-employee.
Is it possible that Yahoo is just too far gone to be helped? Her head must be filled with dozens of ideas for changing the corporate culture there, but would any of us honestly believe anything could save Yahoo at this point?
There's another way to look at it. With $1bn of net income in 2011, Yahoo! can clearly turn a profit.
Could any of us here on HN forge a great, long term business from a profit stream of hundreds of millions of dollars? I'm sure quite a few could, and Meyer surely stands a good chance.
Even if she has to turn the organization upside down, make major branding changes, or fire key staff, Yahoo! has the resources, at least, to change for the better. It has just lacked the willpower, till now hopefully.
It can always be saved. They have a reasonably competent group of employees, a nice patent portfolio (recently cross-licensed with FB), and a recognizable brand that is still in heavy (albeit declining) use today. Even the more geeky crowd is becoming bearish on Google, so I think it's the perfect opportunity to reinvent the brand. What it should/could become is anybody's guess, but it will have to be a big change to correct their current course. It's always possible.
Look at it from this angle: if she succeeds, she could be wildly successful (Steve Jobs return-style).
If she fails, could anyone fault her?
I see no outsized downsides for her here - she either succeeds or Yahoo continues to fail. For Yahoo, this is a high-profile CEO who, if the board gives enough maneuvering space, might prevent the free-fall and establish a stable flight.
That's might be really good news for Google users: I think products that she used to run, like local business reviews on Android maps have a new chance now.
I think Yahoo's problem is the fact that its search side of things has collapsed. Primarily it was this that made the company so big. Now that search has effectively collapsed they don't appear to have a core product.
This means the question "What does Yahoo! do?" can't really be answered.
If you ask that question of Google. You answer. Google is a search engine which also does...
If you ask that question of Amazon. Amazon is an online store which also does...
With Yahoo? Yahoo.. owns a bunch on interesting products? It has no core and without a big central product to build around it has been hard for successive CEO's to actually drive the company forward.
She did the right thing. I think she had peaked at Google.
She risks "failure" at Yahoo, but that's why this is the right move. What was she to do at Google -- just drift along as the cofounders continue to (rightly) control the company?
I've never been a huge fan nor a detractor of Mayer, but I'll be rooting for Yahoo now. It's about time for another epic comeback story in SV. Long odds, but that's why this is fun.
One thing I'm wondering as I read this is whether there has ever been a successful turnaround at a dot com company before. I can't think of any. If anybody can think of one, I'd be interested to hear it. I think Yahoo is still going to shrink a great deal, but that has little to do with their CEO. You can't expect one person to reinvent a company that does not have typical operations. By that I mean you can't improve processes or introduce vastly better products. Yahoo's only chance at growing is to expand into new product lines. That's why I don't necessarily think Mayer is a great match. I would be far more interested if a Tim Cook type had been chosen. Not because of the ties to Apple, but because of his expertise in operations and real business experience.
If I'm not mistaken she has been in charge of Google Local for a while. This is an awful, awful product. Buggy as hell, ugly, and absolutely no inspiration or cleverness anywhere to be found. If that product was truly her responsibility, God help Yahoo.
She was in charge of Geo, which is a broad product area that includes Maps, Earth, Local, Street View, Maps for Mobile, Zagat, etc. Local may suck, but most people think Maps is pretty good.
Maps was great when she took over. Local was very important because the push was to get all businesses using Google Local (this is why they promoted it to the top of all search results, etc, and why they tried to buy Yelp).
Despite the obvious value to them, the product was and remains very poor.
"women are more likely to occupy positions that are precarious and thus have a higher risk of failure - either because they are appointed to lead organizational units that are in crisis or because they are not given the resources and support needed for success"
It was quite clear that the only way she could move up and grow would be to either start a new company, and what would that be that after Google, or leading another huge company. Great choice, I am rooting for her, and for Yahoo.
This is just brilliant news for Yahoo. Much as they have become a figure of ridicule in Silicon Valley, I have hoped year after year to see a Yahoo resurgence. This is finally a real chance at a turnaround.
Of course now we have to see if potential acquirers (particularly those going up against Google) suddenly see Yahoo as a much better target if they can get Mayer in the deal. (MS, FB, I'm looking at you!)
This may be a silly question...but is Mayer now legally obligated to liquidate her Google stock position?
I would assume that owning a large amount of stock of one of your major competitors, as the CEO, could create some conflicts of interest for shareholders...no?
I am not insinuating that this is some sinister plot by Mayer to boost her Google stock holdings - I don't think there is anything she could do at Yahoo to do that, other than possibly shift their entire ad budget to Adwords...but even that.
Either way, I would love to know those sorts of 'quirky' implications on such a decision.
Especially given that the vast majority of her compensation is now in Yahoo stock.
I also wonder if it would be a 'legal' issue, or a moral issue.
Congrats goes out to Marissa Mayer. I don't know her reputation inside Google but from the interviews I've watched of her, she seems very articulate and focused. Hopefully she can help Yahoo with clearer focus and better execution.
Yahoo's roots were actually in a rejection of engineering.
For years their primary product was their human-curated directory of Web sites. It was popular because the quality of results returned by the algorithmic search engines of the time (HotBot, Lycos, AltaVista, etc. -- you young 'uns in the crowd may need to look them up) were so poor that you had better odds of finding what you were looking for in Yahoo's directory. The directory left out vast numbers of sites, of course -- that was the cost of trying to manually maintain an index of the Web as it exploded in size. Human curators couldn't keep up with that growth; only software could. But Yahoo bet that software would never be as good as humans at finding the site you were looking for.
Then Google came along and built software that could index the whole web and return relevant results from it, and that knocked the bottom right out of Yahoo's manual-curation approach.
I worked at Yahoo 2003-2005, and back then I used to tell everyone who would listen that a big part of the problem was that the engineering team at Yahoo believed that Yahoo was a technology company, while the product team treated it as a media company.
It was an ongoing tension while Yahoo was still desperately clinging to the fantasy of regaining the search leadership, or at least stopping Google in its tracks - search was to a large extent Yahoo engineering's claim to legitimacy for the idea of a tech focused Yahoo.
Without it, what was left were mainly support functions for a massive content operation, but with a team still to a large extent seeing itself as the core of the company.
Yahoo wasted tremendous amounts trying to do technology for the sake of being a tech company rather than to support revenues; a lot of little fiefdoms in engineering were allowed to exist seemingly because it looked internally like Yahoo was building an impressive technology base, while it often instead was creating tensions in the business and costing ridiculous amounts.
I guess Yahoo just became a tech company again not a media one. This is actually a brilliant move. YHOO's biggest challenge is retaining quality developers. Developers will feel way more inclined to either a) Stay or b) Think about joining than they were under the previous several leaders.
1. Cut. Cut as much as possible.
2. Refocus on mobile. May be partner with nokia or microsft or other falling company to provide default content to other platform
3. When yahoo is stable enough. Sell or merge the company.
I believe this change of guard might open a possibility of future Yahoo buy out by Google. I feel that it will be very hard for Yahoo to survive and future sale will be an option. In that case, Google might have an upper hand.
This is amazing news. I think Marissa Meyer is the first potential savior of Yahoo! I am excited about this, I think we'll start seeing a set of good things come out of this decision. Big loss for Google though.
This move would be similar to Sanjay Jha moving from Qualcomm COO to Motorola Mobility CEO. Look at what happened now. Sanjay Jha not only got a nice compensation package from Motorola Mobility but also a great deal from leaving the CEO at MM after Google acquisition and another reputation to boot as being the one who revive Motorola from zero to hero (being acquired)
Trying to think of explanations for this. First thing that comes to mind is a Dilbert cartoon where the new CEO takes over to run the company into the ground. While Yahoo's news, shopping, maps and search traffic is probably only a fraction of Google's it's still worth something. Why not install an insider at Yahoo and slowly help the traffic move over?
I've not dealt or indeed met her so I can't realy comment much beyond from what I have read that she certainly will not be any worse than what they have had before.
One tip I will give, whoever is CEO of Yahoo, vote the board out as they seem to make alot of bad mistakes and will only end up blaming you for them.
Turning around yahoo - a big corporation like that is like changing an old mans behaviour who has been set in his own ways. Mayer though showed success at google has less chances to succeed . Nevertheless considering her experience on search she wouldn't have made a better choice .
Brilliant move! So they finally managed pull out a rabbit out from their ass. Jokes apart, Marissa is an excellent product manager and a strategist, and with her kind of experience at Google from it's good old days till now - she's just the flu shot that Yahoo needs.
Her first priority should be to restore Flickr as a leader in photo and video sharing. With her "coolness" factor at the helm (even though personally I don't think she's that cool) this is possible, and the world would be a better place for it.
$100 says Yahoo is acquired by Google in the next three years. Any takers? I am imagining/hoping for a more successful version of the Stephen Elop leaves Microsoft, runs Nokia, forms a strong partnership with Microsoft. But this time, Yahoo is even more in the pits.
Google would only acquire Yahoo, should Yahoo be just about to disappear - if that's even possible - or if it was going down fast. Only than it would justify to take over the patents and staff at a fair price, without paying extra for the "junk" which is supposedly sinking.
However, on the other hand Facebook would do just fine if they acquire Yahoo.
As soon as Facebook's stocks get more stable and the fuss settles, I'm guessing Dec/2012 to Feb/2013, Facebook's shares will be going for a "very fair" USD15 ~ USD21.
But if they launch their mobile device in that period, then I guess their shares will rock on USD25 ~ USD31
Anyways, considering the mobile device is not arriving before Q2 2013, then without growth and new features and afraid of new comers, the board will realise than they need content and loads of patents if they are to take on Google's array of products. And Yahoo will fit Facebook just like a glove.
However, Microsoft fearing for it's lack of social presence and weak search-engine, will possibly start a bidding war.
Cutting the story short, I'd bet Facebook takes over if not completely, at least a good chunk of Yahoo, by the end of 2013.
While I don't care much for Yahoo or any brand, I love seeing someone who seems to have been over looked for a long time get a chance, albeit with a less than ideal situation but that's half the fun -- doing what others say can't be done.
Pregnancy doesn't really affect your ability to work (except for complications that require bedrest, and even then you work from home). A newborn does require care from the mother, but many women are able to return to work full time after 6 weeks (and some as early as 3 weeks). She'll probably be on leave for a few weeks after baby arrives, but I'm sure she'll be able to keep an eye on things even while she's gone (this is why the night nurse was invented).
A baby and a career are not mutually exclusive, I just wish people would stop assuming that they are.
Yahoo! needs to decide if they are a content company or a technology company. I'm not sure which is the right one, but I think Mayer has shown she can focus and can get other people to focus as well.
I wouldn't bother. They are so far behind both Bing and Google that trying to play catch up in the search game is simply a lost cause.
They have significant traffic and brand loyalty for certain services (finance, sports, etc). They need to focus on that, not chase a game they lost ages ago (search).
This. IMO Yahoo's days as a technology company have long since ended (if they ever really existed in the first place). They have never been a heavily algorithms-based company like Google is.
IMO Yahoo's best bet is to reinvent themselves as a world-class product company, and rent the relevant tech stack from someone who can actually do a good job of it.
Just because they've "lost" search doesn't mean they can't make money off of it. Opera "lost" the browser market a long time ago and is still making money.
I'm not sure that's the analogy she would have used to wow the Board. Yahoo has a totally different audience that spends a lot of time on their site consuming content in a very different way than say Google or Bing. The opportunities for them to monetize them are very different but no less exciting. Yahoo has just struggled with a) determining which ones are strategic, b) enhancing those ones and c) creating a smoother experience between those. Sounds like a role for a very solid product manager to me.
This is definitely stunning news. Marissa of all the people. All I can say is - wow! Time will tell where this leads to, but hey if anyone has the charisma to pull off miracles Marissa is the one.
I'm not sure what Yahoo would look like in succeeding under Mayer as CEO, but I have to imagine it would be substantively different than what it looks like now.
I'm genuinely surprised that no-one's discussing the possible acquisition of yahoo by google as a result of this. Or is that naive? Or cynical? Or perhaps just dumb...
Seems unlikely to me. The Motorola acquisition took forever to get through the EU, and that's a different industry. The legal burden of acquiring a major direct competitor like yahoo would be more than the company was worth.
Yahoo is dying but it's not dead. All that remaining traffic has to go somewhere. Google has a clear incentive to take that traffic for themselves instead of letting fb or someone else have it.
I wonder if this was apart of the Kevin Rose acquisition, who seems to have somewhat of a holistic understanding of local. Google better find someone equally amazing to replace her though, and fast.
This will play out much like Armstrong at AOL. Lots of flailing around, another attempt at altering Yahoo's trajectory, and ultimately a further devalued company (not specifically because of anything Mayer will do, but because there's nothing that can stop Yahoo's erosion).
At some point the conclusion needs to be reached that the core of Yahoo is the problem. The products that generate the bulk of their sales are at best stagnant with no growth left, and at worst are slowly collapsing. Once that's properly digested, the company then needs to be blown apart and liquidated to the highest bidders.
Maybe there's a smaller core that could be focused on as a source of innovation and growth, but it's definitely not what makes up the bulk of Yahoo's $20 billion market value. If the goal is to generate shareholder value, Mayer should focus on getting her hands around an engine of growth that she can really add value to; a smaller Yahoo where she can drive a few growth products (assuming those can be found first). So much of what Yahoo does is maintaining a flat-lined late 1990s group of products.
I think the problem at Yahoo has traditionally been too much of a focus on superstar CEOs, and Mayer isn't much different. What Mayer really needs to do is remove some of the focus from her and put it onto the people on the front lines doing the work.
Armstrong is a sales guy. Marissa is a product person. Yahoo has the budget and bandwidth to incubate great products. I wouldn't count her out based on a sales guy trying to turn around an ad sales business.
Yahoo! and AOL are a classic examples of The Innovator's Dilemma. They can't separate themselves from the immediate needs of their customers to look at the patterns of what's next. They'll never take the leap of faith to do something completely new because they're not in a place where their culture and SOP allow it. The products that made them initially successful can't possibly carry them into the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
Good advice. So according to you nothing can be changed at Yahoo! no matter who comes in. Apple was in a similar situation not long ago and I am sure there were people like you commenting similarly. I am not saying Marissa is similar to Steve Jobs but at least she has the credibility and qualification to make things work. Why comment when you have nothing to add?
Steve Jobs executed the single greatest turnaround in corporate history, at the company he founded, from which he had been fired ten years before. Betting on a similar result (or even something 10-20% as good) is really no different than expecting to draw an inside straight at the poker table. Sure, it can happen, but it's very unlikely.
Note that Jobs didn't turn around Apple alone. He had built an entire separate company with a strong team and a strong technology. That was vital to the turnaround. In some ways, Apple didn't acquire Next; Next ate Apple from within. Aided, of course, by Jobs knowing the company and its markets inside and out.
And that wasn't enough; 3 years later they got their new OS out, but they were still a small player in their markets.
It was something like 4 years from takeover until they released the iPod, and circa 7 years before the stock really started to take off.
Even Yahoo can survive long enough for Mayer to find some new multi-billion idea, I'm not sure whether key shareholders or the board will give her enough rope to make significant changes.
Apple is a once in a century example, good luck with that.
And besides, I didn't suggest nothing can be changed at Yahoo. I didn't say that at all.
I said it should be blown apart, and the stagnant 1990s products should go. Mayer should put her talents to work on a smaller core where growth can be achieved with new products.
Yahoo Finance? Yahoo Sports? Search? Yahoo Mail? 1998 era portals? There's no growth there. She might be able to revitalize energy into Flickr and adjust it to a smart phone world, that'd be one existing major product worth giving some attention to (for example).
Unless Mayer has something equivalent to the game changing PageRank approach to search, there's absolutely nothing she can do to improve Yahoo's search product. So what can she do with the existing product core exactly? Not much, stagnation is inherent to most of the product segments in question.
The real simple angle is: ok, what's the gorilla / whirlwind product that's going to revitalize Yahoo? Search? Not a chance. The content niche products like sports or finance? Nope. Web mail? Comeon. Classifieds & jobs? Nope, small potatoes. So what is it? To really grow a $20 billion company, you need to find billions in new profit. Mayer will only find that with new products. Unless you think she can take 1/4 of the search market back from Google or take a huge chunk of the rest of the web email market.
Yahoo needs a blue ocean change.
All the stagnant parts should be sold off for a huge amount of cash. And she should more or less start over and attack something new where Yahoo can own its segment and build a gorilla product with huge growth potential (instead of being 2nd or 3rd (etc) place in everything).
They've only stayed somewhat relevant the past decade due to partnerships and these legacy sorts of services. I agree 100% with this. But what are they to do? They aren't Amazon. Try and buy Netflix and battle it out with all the other digital entertainment services?
They're going to have to literally reinvent themselves. Not in the B.S. wishy-washy way they've proclaimed numerous times. But in the balls out risky reinvention where if you fail, the company potentially gets sold for peanuts. They're not going to get anywhere playing it safe at this point.
The smart phone market is still relatively wide open for new, not-yet-thought-of services. Yahoo could throw their focus strongly that direction and try to matter there, betting on the future.
Buying Netflix wouldn't be a terrible idea, they're cheap these days relatively speaking. They could bring a lot of cash to bear behind Netflix, which could be put to use beefing up their streaming selection.
There are a few potential acquisitions they could do to get pointed in the right direction in terms of products relevant to the future. Yelp and Foursquare for example. They need to be able to properly handle services they acquire however, and perhaps Mayer can do a better job of that than their previous leadership. They'd need to do something more like what Google did with YouTube.
Short of making a dramatic change, it's merely a game of milking old assets for cash and slowly fading away.
There was a time, not that long ago, where Yahoo! was in a bad situation. Their search engine was terrible, portals were dying and they were losing mindshare like you read about. The thing is, at the same time they were doing REALLY interesting R&D work (Yahoo! Pipes, YUI, etc).
The impression I get is that in the last few years between the cuts, layoffs and good people just leaving they have virtually no talent left to resussitate the company.
Am I wrong in thinking this? Where is all of this awesome new stuff going to come from?
Well that would certainly cover the 'risk everything to turn it around' idea posited above. I don't think anyone thinks FB didn't overpay for Instagram, it seemed like a desperate move, but then again they were flush with cash and it might be a great value compared to building their own.
Apple derives more than 80% of their revenue (and probably 90%+ of their market cap) from product categories that didn't even exist in 1999.
Yahoo needs to reinvent itself. They have a $19 billion market cap, billions in revenue, a brand with household name recognition all over the World and tens of thousands of employees to do it. It can certainly be done. I don't know that Mayer will do it or that it will ever be done with Yahoo - but to look at their current sources of income and define that as their future is shortsighted. Unfortunately, thats exactly how their investors look at it and it's a big part of the reason why they are in this mess in the first place.
When does Yahoo's contract with Microsoft for the search engine expire? 2014? I think she will quickly switch to Google search engine after that. And there goes half of Bing's market share.
(Edit: my definition of risk is lost time and missed opportunity. She's not going to suffer in compensation or reputation.)