Yahoo’s False Prophet: How Marissa Mayer Failed to Turn the Company Around

[Tennis]

Out of all the crap she did I knew you'd focus on that (in)significant detail.

It was well publicized as well. Talk about undervaluing your child.

[Celista]

It was well publicized as well. Talk about undervaluing your child.

At least she built the nursery. She deserves more criticism for her policy on not allowing employees to work from home. Tech talent is already hard to come by, without perks like telecommuting which is basically an industry standard (especially for certain positions) she shot herself in the foot.

It's literally a free perk that improves QOL significantly, if people were abusing the perk then they should have addressed it differently (reprimanding/firing the individuals using it, etc).

Research I've seen on telecommuting indicates people are more productive when working from home, rather than less. There tend to be checks and balances in place to make sure people are on task (constant IM communication with supervisors for low-level positions, etc).

[Independent voter]

Who was the guy who bought all that Alibaba stock? They should've promoted him.

[Stacyrect]

Called it years ago. Mayer is a moron.

Really this is the fault of business culture, which utilizes a herd mentality and cult worship around particular individuals in leadership roles.

100% this, this, this

[Dug]

They should definitely not hire her for the CEO position at Pied Piper

[Cedon]

That's typical of American corporate culture though. CEOs are literally paid to fail while the people that do the actual work get crap for pay. I remember an article about Sun Microsystems having financial difficulties and one of the main issues was the company seemed to only exist to pay its upper-level executives. One thing in particular that stuck out in it was the fact that then-CEO Scott McNealy failed to meet any condition set by the board to earn a bonus. They still gave it to him anyways. So what's his incentive? And look at Sun now. Gone.

[Phookah]

You go back to 1998 when Yahoo! had the chance to buy Google for $1 million and declined, slap the CEO and say "We'll take it".

If that fails you go back to 2002 when Yahoo! had the chance to buy Google for $5 billion and declined, slap the new CEO and say "We'll take it".

That would have been terrible, then we just would have lost google

[Manabomb]

Another failed female CEO? Call me shocked!To be honest, you can count them on one hand..

Has very little to do with the fact she's female and more to do with the fact that she is a very dumb, short sighted and ignorant business woman without a damn clue.

Plus, it's fucking Yahoo. That company hasn't be relevant since their 90's jingle commercials. Yahoo is like the Internet explorer of email or search engines, except you don't have to use it to get to gmail or google.

Not to mention she's an American CEO, so she gets paid far more money than she's worth and is used to that sort of thing.

[Blur4stuff]

she made the mistake of trying to catch up to competitors in front of her instead of switching lanes

[Dug]

I don't know a single person that uses Yahoo. I'd honestly consider just closing the company and running with whatever profits ya could get ahold of.

However, they could add Adverts to Tumblr. They've got millions of users (mainly retarded teens) so all that money could easily pour into their wallet.

Close the damn search engine, it's a money drain.

That was one of the first things they did when they obtained Tumblr, incorporated adverts. Still doesn't seem to be making them money

[dextersmith]

1 Buy out Google and Fb

2 Brodown!

[Celista]

I dunno why people keep saying this, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting 5000 overqualified kids with IT/Tech skillsets at your front door eager to work for free.

Unless you mean, "absolute best, top tier tech talent" but then that's true for any field, so eh.

I mean, competitive best. Yahoo is already thought of as a sinking ship and likely has a hard time attracting talent for key positions.

[Deleted]

Honestly, I once liked Yahoo. I still have a mail on yahoo mail but they gradually got worse. The mail is working worse, now when you log it directs you to the news first, when you clean out trash or spam it gives you videos you might be interested in from news which have no connection to anything. It's quite annoying, now I'll probably abandon their services fully, only thing that makes me postpone it is that I have to move a few hundreads of mails to another mail.

Her failings are not gender-related, just her short sightedness per usual.

She never should have been promoted, people around her in the circle jerk at Yahoo referred to her as brilliant but that seems more like hype designed to drive up share prices than anything. She acts like a mediocre middle manager, no vision. And she does not care enough about her employees to be a true leader.

My worthless $0.02

Fully agreed with this. Unfortunately quite a few companies get these problems, the issue is realizing the problem exists and solving it, not waiting 3 years hoping stuff will improve.

[skannerz22]

the only reason i care yahoo exist is for email
it's the only thing they are good at

[Smauldy]

It's no skin off her back. Tens of millions paid per year in salary and a sweet golden parachute for getting fired. Reward for failure.

[Xenyatta]

To be honest, what is Yahoo's purpose? What does it serve that something else can't do better? News outlet? Search Engine? Email? Whenever I go to the yahoo page, it's a jumbled mess of shit I can't figure out what it's identity actually is. Honing in on that should have been her first step.