I've been here for ages and it didn't occur to me to use the Web link to sneak past their sign up wall earlier today. I support no longer allowing submissions that require "one weird trick" just to read.
That's lame. If I had seen that post that one day I would have chimed in. Good to know their stance though.
Added:
Send us update emails when you come to decisions like these. It would help keep me and others informed. I don't regularly re-read the guidelines and sometimes I miss threads like those.
Yeah, it's really frustrating. This site is full of incredibly smart people who come up with clever solutions for all sorts of things. But we can't come up with a clever, non-invasive solution to something like this?
The fact that the web link is on the comments page makes it pretty difficult to find. Took me quite a bit of wondering what people were talking about until I finally found it one day.
Moving the web link to page where the main link is would be an obvious solution.
Flagging WSJ until they're shut out of HN will effect more change - they still gain SEO and popularity and social benefits from us using their contrived "trick" to leech off this community.
This isn't some kind of "contrived trick". The reason WSJ articles are available via Google search (which is what HN's "web" link does) is because Google won't index pages that can't be read by everyone clicking on a search engine result, and WSJ wants their articles to be searchable via Google.
You're being downvoted, but I heartily agree. I would have no trouble paying only for the "good" content, things I will like or know I want or feel a need to read. I really think some form of microtransactions are the way to go here. This is simply one article that is, to quote another comment, a "dead horse", and not something I'd be inclined to read. Had it been an article on, say, some breaking news, or interesting financial news even, I'd happily pay and continue reading. Blanket subscriptions are the new cable t.v. channel bundles. Even though you want 3, pay for 219. Perhaps they could offer both?
It might not be, but it's kinda lame to link to it here since many can't afford to pay for every single subscription site. Maybe if there was an option to pay per-article, but until then, it's simply unfeasible.
> She has defended her strategy by stressing that growth is the lifeblood of internet businesses.
Or, you know, utility.
It's funny how she defends all these acquisitions underneath some imaginary fable that growth == success. Google didn't reach where it is today because it grew fast -- it was able to grow because it has basic utility and was known as the best amongst the competitors.
The key question for Yahoo has always been, what is the core part of our business that users love us for? As she probably knew, fantasy sports is a big one, but unfortunately that's not going to be enough for a company as large as Yahoo. As a result, they bought up a bunch of startups to try and find more core-utility.
It's been fun to watch, but I'm with the crowd that says Yahoo can't really change and should just sell its core off. When the average consumer thinks internet, they're not thinking "oh thank god Yahoo is there", but without Google or Amazon -- two companies that can justify aggressive growth -- we'd be left with a shoddier internet and that's just the basic truth of it all.
Yahoo was sustainable and profitable. They weren't as big as Google or Amazon but they made a lot of money. But that wasn't good enough for the investors or the public, who want infinite growth.
The world isn't static, a "reliable" profit is worth less and less each year if a company isn't growing. Companies are valued based on their future earnings potential, growing companies will thus be valued much more highly. In Yahoo's case not only was there no growth, but their business was shrinking without a clear path to stopping that.
Because they're currently a public company, and without people interested in buying the stock, it's going to attract activist investors which often ends up as a big distraction without making any real changes.
So it sounds like the problem is systemic - this is why I'm never eager about companies going IPO...for every Google that ensures shareholders can't kill the company, there are hundreds that guarantee mid-term failure for short-term gain.
Because you know 5 years from now it will be worth $1m, and not a lot less after a series of growth-oriented misadventures that didn't pay off.
Also, you'll be getting steady income from dividends.
Also, in the bigger picture you're less likely to be dealing with a manic depressive cyclical market that gyrates wildly between extreme growth mania and extended depressive episodes.
What you don't get is a monkey-brain dopamine kick from telling yourself that you're an awesome person who beat the market.
It makes investing predictable and drama-free, and where's the entertainment in that?
People have thousands of stocks to choose from. If they want consistent low growth, they'll go with something far more predictable like a bond. Low demand for this stock makes it worth even less, which hurts investors even more and gets CEOs fired. This is why growth or consistent high profits that can pay for dividends is a goal of every company. Mediocre profits alone won't really do you much good if you're working for your investors at a major corp.
> OK, but unless that company is paying out a dividend, why would you invest in it?
I feel that's the core problem with the stock market. It was supposed to be about investing in a company in exchange for the share of the profits (dividents). Instead, people got greedy and now it's gambling; nobody cares about the company they invest in, everyone plays meta-games.
The stock market has always had a high gambling component.
A lack of dividends is hardly the stock market's problem, though. Assuming that is actually a problem (I'm not sure it is), it would be a problem of company managers and investors not understanding fundamentals.
That leads back to the dividend question. As a shareholder, you only make money one of two ways: your stock goes up, or you get dividends. To be attractive, a company needs to be doing one or the other.
If you think the company will keep returning that profit, no more, no less, and it happens to be true, then you will most likely find market participants who are convinced that the company will return more than that in the future. Since their projection of future returns is much higher than yours, they will offer you enough to sell. The new owners won't be content with with the stable return because that's not what they paid big money for.
A company usually needs to be growing YOY in order to reliably return a 20% profit. Unless it's a protected monopolist, or a comfortably ensconced player in a stagnant market. (In which case it's ripe for competition.)
It is entirely possible to overprioritize growth. Doing so can lead to overreach, spiraling costs, bloat, and loss of focus. But at least some growth is often required just to maintain a stable return.
It also bears mentioning that ther are many possible factors driving growth, some of them endogenous and some of them exogenous, some of them cyclical and some of them secular. It's very hard to speak of the blanket term "growth" as being particularly meaningful, in and of itself. We need to be specific.
It's not too complicated: if you don't pay a reliable dividend you need to have growth to keep investors happy. Yahoo's profitable businesses have been shrinking and they have been unable to find new ones to replace them.
Sure, but looking at their historic revenue, you're going from ~1.8B between 2007 - 2009 down to ~1.1B 2011-present[1]. In fact, their latest quarter for Mar 2016 only netted them 1.08B.
This is a ton of money and I reckon they could last a long time on it, but I believe the investor-mindset is something like "if you're not growing, you're dying" and if you're dying, you should probably sell at your peak. Looking at Yahoo revenue, it's clear they're dying and as a result, I wouldn't paint this as just greedy investors being greedy.
As an occasional investor if a company isn't growing then I'd say we want it to make profits in the old fashioned manner of sales exceeding expenses. Yahoo was struggling a bit there. If you look at the earnings of the previous years there was quite a lot of funny stuff relating to Yahoo Japan rather than straightforward profits from happy customers.
It's an inherent risk of being publicly traded. Imagine a company with perfectly stable profits, unlikely to change in any direction. If some part of the market develops a collective delusion about that company being a prime growth candidate, then that part will buy out the realists. When that has happened the new owners will reshape the company into the growth-or-die-trying experiment they where expecting to buy.
She should've focused on growth adjacent to Yahoo's core strengths -- trying to acquire FanDuel in its earlier days, for instance. Maybe we could've seen Yahoo lead the daily fantasy sports industry.
As I understand it, she/they did try to make a play here, acquiring Jerry Shen and Bignoggins for fantasy innovation, including daily stuff.
Unfortunately, he was quickly fired from Yahoo! for sending out an inter-department email quoting N.W.A. (the rap group) with language one wouldn't consider work appropriate – particularly at a company that size.
One issue is that fan duel is basically illegal in the us, despite the legislation that seems to legalize it.. Now maybe as an overseas fan duel could work.
"An activist investor is an individual or group that purchases large numbers of a public company's shares and/or tries to obtain seats on the company's board with the goal of effecting a major change in the company."
When Meyer left google, I was of the opinion that it's a good move for her. She had strong signals that her rise at Google was limited. This is when Larry Page had taken over as CEO and created a new "inner circle" of 7 senior VP's and Marissa was not one of them.
I thought it was a good move for her because she gets to be a big fish in a smaller pond and gets her name out there as a CEO. Pretty much nobody would blame her if Yahoo ended up bankrupt anyway since nobody had high hopes. But at this point it feels like her brand is damaged along with Yahoo's because of the leaks of boardroom struggles more than just the failure to revive Yahoo's business.
If she had managed to turn the company around, she would have become a legendary tech CEO. Either way she has made a lot of money and stands to make even more no matter what happens. So, in the end, this was still a good move for her.
Indeed, she has greatly enriched herself while flailing:
> If Yahoo is sold and Ms. Mayer is terminated as a result, she stands to receive about $55 million. Since joining Yahoo, she has received $118.2 million in cash and equity compensation.
Amazing that someone who failed, gets such compensation. Top execs should be paid proportional to profit. Of course this would never happen, but one can dream.
I think in some ways it makes sense that she gets paid so much though.. A failing company probably needs to give a greater incentive for someone to want to be their CEO.
It'd probably be difficult for Mayer to get another CEO position in the future despite the fact that a turnaround at Yahoo would have been difficult for anyone. In a way she's being paid proportional to the risk associated with the job.
Looking at it from another way, CEO's can make a ton of money, regardless of what happens, including complete collapse of the company. While everyone else involved, loses tons of money, and their jobs. Maybe if there was more of an incentive, beyond guaranteed money. Like if after x amount of years, y goals have been met, then you get paid.
Past a certain point, money is not a big motivator for most people. There are a lot of people still working even though they have more money than they will ever use. And many who retire keep just as busy doing something different.
In her case, presumably she's ambitious and likes the work she does; the risk is that she loses opportunities to do the work.
This is a common occurrence long before Mayer became CEO. Thorsten Heinz of blackberry took away a chunk of money too after he failed. Many many examples of this in the industry.
And I think the whole Yahoo story vindicated Google's decision to limit her rise. Of course back then everyone was too busy shouting sexist (not completely without reason) at anyone that doubted her management chops or her ability to save Yahoo.
The flamewars of the future after Theranos and Yahoo will be endlessly entertaining.
It may be damaged, but she leaves with a CEO title and a lot of money and connections. It would be easy for her to become a VC, Angel or other time of advisor. (Especially since she can pony up her own money, and does have legitimate advice to give.)
I felt this way too but...this WSJ article is indirectly [1] confirming the success of Mayer's turnaround. Mobile is where the AD revenue is since there are very few iOS/Android AD blockers like uBlock Origin (and other desktop/laptop browser based blockers). Mavens IS MOBILE. This segment is growing crazy fast. If she were too grow 50-100% more, the turnaround would be official for Yahoo and at the current rate, it looks like 1-2 years more.
I think Starboard is doing a great PR campaign against Mayer. I had their narrative believed but...now I'm extremely doubtful about the nay-sayers. Since she's generating 1.5 billion through Mavens/mobile. Yahoo was non-exist in the mobile space. She's doing a great job. Activist shareholders are a plague in many (if not most) situations. It's why Dell took Dell private, to do a proper turnaround in the tech world.
With the explosion in smartphones and the web properties Yahoo had all along, it seems almost impossible to not make money off that. But no thanks to Yahoo, they didn't invent smartphones nor mobile ads after all.
(Also, of course, companies have large freedom what revenue they attribute where, shifting revenue from areas the market perceives as "stagnant" to those of "rapid growth" even if they have no actual presence. That's how IBM is the biggest cloud company in the world.)
Did you even look at the graph I cited? Creating 1.5 billion in revenue in the past 3 years...how has that stopped exactly?
If you're talking about the past 4 quarters in the chart, I'd encourage you to do what most analysts do and that is compare YoY growth (Q1 with Q1, etc). That growth is very solid which is why her Maven's growth is solid, not stopping as you state.
As per John Paczkowski's AllThingsD blog post dated April 8, 2011 [0], six of them were:
* Sundar Pichai, SVP of Chrome
* Vic Gundotra, SVP of social
* Andy Rubin, SVP of mobile
* Salar Kamangar, SVP of YouTube and video
* Alan Eustace, SVP of search
* Susan Wojcicki, SVP of ads.
Nicholas Carlson's article Sex and Politics at Google: It's a Game of Thrones in Mountain View [1] goes into details about the rivalry and jockeying within Google's top ranks.
That often happens with inner circles. The higher you climb, the fewer positions are available on the next rung up the ladder. And once you reach a certain rung, you are pretty much always fighting political battles just to stay where you are, let alone climb any higher.
I feel the same. I thought it was a good idea for her to take the job even if I had doubts about Yahoo's future. Assuming she wants to stay in the game, I think it likely she will have a long and successful technical management career.
Serious/meta - Can we please stop posting wsj with their paywall nonsense? We hear all the time about talking with our money to get rid of this sort of thing, but it's never actually done. As a community, we should actually do something instead of armchairing it.
(Yes, I know about the "web" button.)
To the downvoters: If there was a better place to post on this, I would. But since there isn't, this is my only option. Explanations for downvotes help the discussion. Downvotes by themselves just hides the discussion.
Geeze. Click the damn "web" button. There's so little quality news information left on the web the least you can do is spend five seconds to hack around the plebwall.
I have experience with private investigative journalism and can personally speak on how bad it is. This is awful obfuscation of news.
There's little quality news because it's about what's interesting and what will make the most money. This is not what news is supposed to be about.
Example - after the Tribune posted an article about a lawsuit they filed for getting the Chicago mayor's email records, I called the reporter who wrote it about with my own research for the mayor's phone records. Wanted to see if he was interested in writing about my work. He said, with the most apathetic voice, that he didn't do any of the research and was "just doing a job". He forwarded me to the reporter who did the research, but he never called me back.
Later, called DNAInfo who eats this sort of thing up. They didn't want to touch it because my reasoning for requesting the records wasn't interesting enough.
It's frustrating, and it's even more frustrating seeing WSJ pull this shit without anybody speaking out.. Top-down reporting is bullshit.
I find myself frustrated almost any time I open a WSJ or other paywall article, and close them immediately. It hampers shared understanding and discussion. The 'web' workaround isn't viable for me either. I want to forward URLs to friends, and have open conversations, not conversations only with those savvy enough to work around the paywall. I think we should consider careful focused HN policy around paywall links.
The answer is that paywalls with workarounds are ok because banning them would deprive HN of many significant, high-quality stories. The decision is that way not because we or anyone else likes it, but because it's the lesser evil.
Re endless relitigation being off-topic: Of the 45 comments currently in this thread, only 13 are actually about the story. That's insane.
Surely as a site, there's something you guys can do. At least help dampen the negative effects these articles push. These things are incredibly bad for private journalists without connections to wsj (or similar) who still have quality stories. See my comment below.
I hate paywalls as much as the next guy but I've been asking myself this question of late. With newspapers closing down left right and center, with people constantly complain about to dwindling number of news sources, with users increasing unwilling to entertain web ads, how can we fund quality journalism?
I'm doing what many consider "high quality journalism" without any expectation of getting paid. I'm not the only one who does this (dozens!). Some of us just want to do good journalism because we're passionate about the subject we're working on. When the focus is on money, and we have little to no access to submit our work, then there's a major problem.
I don't know what the solution is, but there are smart people out there who can find it. For now, we can't even talk about the problem, so of course the problem is going to continue on..
I enjoyed the first couple of Yahoo/Meyer post-mortems, but at this point, it just seems like people are flogging a dead horse and taking potshots at Meyer while she's down.
She took on a hard job at a struggling company with minimal core competencies and a downward trajectory. Yes, she spent big and made a number of risky bets, which ultimately didn't pay off. Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets, but now that we know the outcome, everyone's suddenly an expert who knew better all along.
Yes, she wasn't able to save a sinking ship, and yes, we now know that she's no Steve Jobs. But that just makes her an average executive, in the same league as most SVPs/CEOs out there. It doesn't make her a failure or incompetent. Let's bury this dead horse already.
I think they would. If you can turn Yahoo around, you become legendary. CEOs are already risk takers, it makes sense.
Also it wasn't all that risky. Even though she failed she'll walk away with enough money for a lifetime (to add on top of the lifetime supply she already had).
>I don't think that most CEOs/VPs would take such a job in the first place though
You don't? A job with a huge potential payoff while making oodles of money in the meantime? Yeah, sounds awful. You fail that job and, worst case, your family is set up for 3+ generations.
>Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets
I'd like to know why you think that nobody wanted to call her out publicly. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to know your opinion in regards to why people kept quiet.
People kept quiet? I'm not a Mayer apologist (or even a "fan"), but she has been criticized for everything. From her looks (people said she is a dumb blonde who is going to wreck everything) to her decisions (everyone knew tumblr was a bad idea). I have even read about people saying that Google offloaded her to Yahoo in order to sink them. All of this right here on HN.
So no, they did not keep quiet. They've treated her worse than Jobs. Who by the way, conspired with others to pay tech workers less...
I think people kept quiet because most of what she did seemed reasonable at the time. When you're suddenly put in charge of a sinking ship, you need to make big risky bets in order to turn things around. When you're managing a company worth tens of billions of dollars, obsessing over a few ten million dollars seems penny wise and pound foolish. She didn't make any obvious mistakes, which is why there was no consensus that she was doing a bad job. But now that everyone knows the outcome, people seem to have known better all along.
If I'm reading the subtext of your post correctly, you're insinuating that people didn't want to call her out publicly because they didn't want to seem sexist? If so, that certainly hasn't stopped people from taking potshots at her now.
> Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets
Plenty did, but it was not politically correct to attack her publicly, so these people's concerns were quickly dismissed as you know what (it begins with a s... ).
Yahoo has zillions of product. How about integration between these products ? there is none. That's how you start building a valuable ecosystem, that's what Google, Apple and Microsoft do ! You can't buy your way into success if there is no real global strategy to interconnect all the apps you bought.
There's a big difference between critiquing a business strategy and "attacking her".
When people do the latter to a prominent woman, I think it's reasonable to ask whether sexism is involved. We know from a variety of studies that people are more critical of women, and more personally critical. [1]
It's often unintentional; many people who are consciously not sexist demonstrate significant bias. So I don't think anybody needs to feel accused or defensive. But it's certainly something we as a society need to work on.
I'm afraid you can't have it both ways. In part of your comment, you say that attacking someone in a sexist way is quite easy to do because it's unintentional, it's done by people who are not sexist, and broadly applicable statistical heuristics should be used to determine the likelihood that a remark is sexist.
Elsewhere, you say there is a big difference between non-sexist and sexist criticism. A big difference should be observable and definable, thus easy to avoid committing.
My opinion is that there actually is a big difference and your heuristics are wrong. I would not accuse someone of a serious faux pas, which a reasonable thing to feel accused and defensive about, unless I could clearly explain the difference between it and a reasonable remark in a way that others could repeatedly point to when constructing their own remarks. In a statute or regulation, this kind of definition is referred to as a safe harbor.
I said there's a big difference between commenting on a strategy and attacking a person.
This is all in reference to spriggan3 changing the ground from her bets, which is what heimatau was talking about, to "attack[ing] her publicly".
It is possible to address both in sexist ways. But when somebody is attacking a prominent woman in ways that prominent men in similar situations get a lot less of, I'm much more inclined to read the personal attacks as sexist in motivation.
I definitely didn't say "there is a big difference between non-sexist and sexist criticism", and I don't believe that to be generally true. That's why hidden biases like sexism and racism are so pernicious. Is any individual Mayer comment sexist? Who knows. But when we look at statistical patterns in how women are treated, it's obvious that bias is in play, be that conscious but hidden or entirely unnoticed by the commenter.
Your focus on assuring safe harbor for dudes is telling. You don't talk at all about safety for the people actually being harmed by the sexism; they appear irrelevant to you as long as guys don't have to endure examination and possible criticism.
Trying to create a safe harbor for apparently sexist men is not "something else".
Sure, you don't have to list anti-sexist accomplishments. But if you want to be read as somebody who has a balanced approach to the topic, you have to demonstrate that balance.
Why do you think this? Based on the WSJ article [1] she created a mobile ad revenue (non-existent before Mayer) of 1.5 billion. Mavens is a huge success. She does need a little more time. I honestly thought Mavens was a wash until this article but she's followed through on what she said and it's working. A 4 billion dollar company that created a 1.5 billion market...I'd call that pretty awesome. She needs to do better though. Double that and the public should see the turnaround as well, which she's on track to do with 1-2 more years of aggressiveness.
Mavens isn't a new product, it's advertising sales in the only growing parts of the company (mobile/video). Meanwhile other revenues are collapsing and total revenue is sagging. Profits are in the shitter and they're trying to sell off all the pieces before it's too late. It's absolutely a sinking ship.
So yes, she cherry picked the hot areas and highlights how they are growing and ignores the fact that costs are also growing and profits are disappearing. Yay MaVeNS!
I'm not a fan of the public just repeating talking points. Namely, you are doing this as well because Mavens wasn't in existence pre-Mayer [1]. Maven IS a new product, you're very misinformed to think anything else.
Yahoo isn't a sinking ship, it's previous 'core' is. Hence why Mayer is shifting emphasis, focus, and ahem revenue. Banner ads wasn't going to keep Yahoo alive, Mavens can and will. Mayer was insightful enough to see this and pounced on it even though she believes in some areas she should've acted sooner (I think she's referring to her Maven's focus).
[1] http://marketrealist.com/2015/03/yahoo-coins-term-mavens-key...
tl;dr; "Yahoo coined the name MaVeNS, a broad acronym for mobile, video, native, and social. Prior to 2012, Yahoo had no native or social ads, and mobile and video were in the nascent stage. The four MaVeNS businesses didn’t contribute any revenue. And now, within less than two years, MaVeNS has contributed more than $1 billion of annual revenue."
I think people knew the logo redesign was a joke immediately. It was obvious she was the wrong person to run such a large company and no-one liked the company to begin with. It's hard to blame people for having the advantage of hindsight when they were criticizing her at the time. Being an average executive at that level just doesn't cut it.
It's strange that Yahoo once had a very popular suite of multiplayer online Java games (mostly board games) and failed to use them to gain an early advantage on mobile apps.
127 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
Added:
Send us update emails when you come to decisions like these. It would help keep me and others informed. I don't regularly re-read the guidelines and sometimes I miss threads like those.
Moving the web link to page where the main link is would be an obvious solution.
I also support not submitting articles that require workarounds.
http://digiday.com/publishers/wall-street-journal-paywall-go...
here's the full text: https://archive.is/glTH3
Or, you know, utility.
It's funny how she defends all these acquisitions underneath some imaginary fable that growth == success. Google didn't reach where it is today because it grew fast -- it was able to grow because it has basic utility and was known as the best amongst the competitors.
The key question for Yahoo has always been, what is the core part of our business that users love us for? As she probably knew, fantasy sports is a big one, but unfortunately that's not going to be enough for a company as large as Yahoo. As a result, they bought up a bunch of startups to try and find more core-utility.
It's been fun to watch, but I'm with the crowd that says Yahoo can't really change and should just sell its core off. When the average consumer thinks internet, they're not thinking "oh thank god Yahoo is there", but without Google or Amazon -- two companies that can justify aggressive growth -- we'd be left with a shoddier internet and that's just the basic truth of it all.
Theoretically, a stock price reflects future earnings. If future earnings are constant, then the stock price doesn't move.
Why buy $1M in stock if you know 5 years from now it'll be worth $1M?
Also, you'll be getting steady income from dividends.
Also, in the bigger picture you're less likely to be dealing with a manic depressive cyclical market that gyrates wildly between extreme growth mania and extended depressive episodes.
What you don't get is a monkey-brain dopamine kick from telling yourself that you're an awesome person who beat the market.
It makes investing predictable and drama-free, and where's the entertainment in that?
I feel that's the core problem with the stock market. It was supposed to be about investing in a company in exchange for the share of the profits (dividents). Instead, people got greedy and now it's gambling; nobody cares about the company they invest in, everyone plays meta-games.
A lack of dividends is hardly the stock market's problem, though. Assuming that is actually a problem (I'm not sure it is), it would be a problem of company managers and investors not understanding fundamentals.
Once you look at the incentive structures that creates, the mania becomes disappointingly rational on the part of investors.
It is entirely possible to overprioritize growth. Doing so can lead to overreach, spiraling costs, bloat, and loss of focus. But at least some growth is often required just to maintain a stable return.
It also bears mentioning that ther are many possible factors driving growth, some of them endogenous and some of them exogenous, some of them cyclical and some of them secular. It's very hard to speak of the blanket term "growth" as being particularly meaningful, in and of itself. We need to be specific.
This is a ton of money and I reckon they could last a long time on it, but I believe the investor-mindset is something like "if you're not growing, you're dying" and if you're dying, you should probably sell at your peak. Looking at Yahoo revenue, it's clear they're dying and as a result, I wouldn't paint this as just greedy investors being greedy.
[1] - https://ycharts.com/companies/YHOO/revenues
Unfortunately, he was quickly fired from Yahoo! for sending out an inter-department email quoting N.W.A. (the rap group) with language one wouldn't consider work appropriate – particularly at a company that size.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey
"An activist investor is an individual or group that purchases large numbers of a public company's shares and/or tries to obtain seats on the company's board with the goal of effecting a major change in the company."
I thought it was a good move for her because she gets to be a big fish in a smaller pond and gets her name out there as a CEO. Pretty much nobody would blame her if Yahoo ended up bankrupt anyway since nobody had high hopes. But at this point it feels like her brand is damaged along with Yahoo's because of the leaks of boardroom struggles more than just the failure to revive Yahoo's business.
> If Yahoo is sold and Ms. Mayer is terminated as a result, she stands to receive about $55 million. Since joining Yahoo, she has received $118.2 million in cash and equity compensation.
It'd probably be difficult for Mayer to get another CEO position in the future despite the fact that a turnaround at Yahoo would have been difficult for anyone. In a way she's being paid proportional to the risk associated with the job.
In her case, presumably she's ambitious and likes the work she does; the risk is that she loses opportunities to do the work.
Yahoo's Marissa Mayer could get $55M in severance pay
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-0429-tn-mar...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600137
The flamewars of the future after Theranos and Yahoo will be endlessly entertaining.
She doesn't need a brand anymore.
I think Starboard is doing a great PR campaign against Mayer. I had their narrative believed but...now I'm extremely doubtful about the nay-sayers. Since she's generating 1.5 billion through Mavens/mobile. Yahoo was non-exist in the mobile space. She's doing a great job. Activist shareholders are a plague in many (if not most) situations. It's why Dell took Dell private, to do a proper turnaround in the tech world.
[1] https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BX746_YAHOO__9...
With the explosion in smartphones and the web properties Yahoo had all along, it seems almost impossible to not make money off that. But no thanks to Yahoo, they didn't invent smartphones nor mobile ads after all.
(Also, of course, companies have large freedom what revenue they attribute where, shifting revenue from areas the market perceives as "stagnant" to those of "rapid growth" even if they have no actual presence. That's how IBM is the biggest cloud company in the world.)
Did you even look at the graph I cited? Creating 1.5 billion in revenue in the past 3 years...how has that stopped exactly?
If you're talking about the past 4 quarters in the chart, I'd encourage you to do what most analysts do and that is compare YoY growth (Q1 with Q1, etc). That growth is very solid which is why her Maven's growth is solid, not stopping as you state.
Interesting, who was on the inner circle?
* Sundar Pichai, SVP of Chrome
* Vic Gundotra, SVP of social
* Andy Rubin, SVP of mobile
* Salar Kamangar, SVP of YouTube and video
* Alan Eustace, SVP of search
* Susan Wojcicki, SVP of ads.
Nicholas Carlson's article Sex and Politics at Google: It's a Game of Thrones in Mountain View [1] goes into details about the rivalry and jockeying within Google's top ranks.
[0] http://allthingsd.com/20110408/pageyank-as-a-new-svps-are-bo...
[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_a...
(Yes, I know about the "web" button.)
To the downvoters: If there was a better place to post on this, I would. But since there isn't, this is my only option. Explanations for downvotes help the discussion. Downvotes by themselves just hides the discussion.
Quality and original reporting is very nice, but the continuation of paywalls still pushes reporting towards profiting over news.
There's little quality news because it's about what's interesting and what will make the most money. This is not what news is supposed to be about.
Example - after the Tribune posted an article about a lawsuit they filed for getting the Chicago mayor's email records, I called the reporter who wrote it about with my own research for the mayor's phone records. Wanted to see if he was interested in writing about my work. He said, with the most apathetic voice, that he didn't do any of the research and was "just doing a job". He forwarded me to the reporter who did the research, but he never called me back.
Later, called DNAInfo who eats this sort of thing up. They didn't want to touch it because my reasoning for requesting the records wasn't interesting enough.
It's frustrating, and it's even more frustrating seeing WSJ pull this shit without anybody speaking out.. Top-down reporting is bullshit.
And these hacks are a reason why...
It's rule of the majority. If you don't like it...idk what to tell you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
... and endlessly relitigating it is off-topic:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
The answer is that paywalls with workarounds are ok because banning them would deprive HN of many significant, high-quality stories. The decision is that way not because we or anyone else likes it, but because it's the lesser evil.
Re endless relitigation being off-topic: Of the 45 comments currently in this thread, only 13 are actually about the story. That's insane.
I don't know what the solution is, but there are smart people out there who can find it. For now, we can't even talk about the problem, so of course the problem is going to continue on..
(The answer: maybe.)
Is Yahoo! acquiring YCombinator?
She took on a hard job at a struggling company with minimal core competencies and a downward trajectory. Yes, she spent big and made a number of risky bets, which ultimately didn't pay off. Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets, but now that we know the outcome, everyone's suddenly an expert who knew better all along.
Yes, she wasn't able to save a sinking ship, and yes, we now know that she's no Steve Jobs. But that just makes her an average executive, in the same league as most SVPs/CEOs out there. It doesn't make her a failure or incompetent. Let's bury this dead horse already.
Also it wasn't all that risky. Even though she failed she'll walk away with enough money for a lifetime (to add on top of the lifetime supply she already had).
You don't? A job with a huge potential payoff while making oodles of money in the meantime? Yeah, sounds awful. You fail that job and, worst case, your family is set up for 3+ generations.
I'd like to know why you think that nobody wanted to call her out publicly. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to know your opinion in regards to why people kept quiet.
So no, they did not keep quiet. They've treated her worse than Jobs. Who by the way, conspired with others to pay tech workers less...
If I'm reading the subtext of your post correctly, you're insinuating that people didn't want to call her out publicly because they didn't want to seem sexist? If so, that certainly hasn't stopped people from taking potshots at her now.
Plenty did, but it was not politically correct to attack her publicly, so these people's concerns were quickly dismissed as you know what (it begins with a s... ).
Yahoo has zillions of product. How about integration between these products ? there is none. That's how you start building a valuable ecosystem, that's what Google, Apple and Microsoft do ! You can't buy your way into success if there is no real global strategy to interconnect all the apps you bought.
When people do the latter to a prominent woman, I think it's reasonable to ask whether sexism is involved. We know from a variety of studies that people are more critical of women, and more personally critical. [1]
It's often unintentional; many people who are consciously not sexist demonstrate significant bias. So I don't think anybody needs to feel accused or defensive. But it's certainly something we as a society need to work on.
[1] E.g.: http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias... and http://www.wsj.com/articles/gender-bias-at-work-turns-up-in-...
Elsewhere, you say there is a big difference between non-sexist and sexist criticism. A big difference should be observable and definable, thus easy to avoid committing.
My opinion is that there actually is a big difference and your heuristics are wrong. I would not accuse someone of a serious faux pas, which a reasonable thing to feel accused and defensive about, unless I could clearly explain the difference between it and a reasonable remark in a way that others could repeatedly point to when constructing their own remarks. In a statute or regulation, this kind of definition is referred to as a safe harbor.
This is all in reference to spriggan3 changing the ground from her bets, which is what heimatau was talking about, to "attack[ing] her publicly".
It is possible to address both in sexist ways. But when somebody is attacking a prominent woman in ways that prominent men in similar situations get a lot less of, I'm much more inclined to read the personal attacks as sexist in motivation.
I definitely didn't say "there is a big difference between non-sexist and sexist criticism", and I don't believe that to be generally true. That's why hidden biases like sexism and racism are so pernicious. Is any individual Mayer comment sexist? Who knows. But when we look at statistical patterns in how women are treated, it's obvious that bias is in play, be that conscious but hidden or entirely unnoticed by the commenter.
Your focus on assuring safe harbor for dudes is telling. You don't talk at all about safety for the people actually being harmed by the sexism; they appear irrelevant to you as long as guys don't have to endure examination and possible criticism.
Sure, you don't have to list anti-sexist accomplishments. But if you want to be read as somebody who has a balanced approach to the topic, you have to demonstrate that balance.
Why do you think this? Based on the WSJ article [1] she created a mobile ad revenue (non-existent before Mayer) of 1.5 billion. Mavens is a huge success. She does need a little more time. I honestly thought Mavens was a wash until this article but she's followed through on what she said and it's working. A 4 billion dollar company that created a 1.5 billion market...I'd call that pretty awesome. She needs to do better though. Double that and the public should see the turnaround as well, which she's on track to do with 1-2 more years of aggressiveness.
[1] https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BX746_YAHOO__9...
So yes, she cherry picked the hot areas and highlights how they are growing and ignores the fact that costs are also growing and profits are disappearing. Yay MaVeNS!
Yahoo isn't a sinking ship, it's previous 'core' is. Hence why Mayer is shifting emphasis, focus, and ahem revenue. Banner ads wasn't going to keep Yahoo alive, Mavens can and will. Mayer was insightful enough to see this and pounced on it even though she believes in some areas she should've acted sooner (I think she's referring to her Maven's focus).
[1] http://marketrealist.com/2015/03/yahoo-coins-term-mavens-key... tl;dr; "Yahoo coined the name MaVeNS, a broad acronym for mobile, video, native, and social. Prior to 2012, Yahoo had no native or social ads, and mobile and video were in the nascent stage. The four MaVeNS businesses didn’t contribute any revenue. And now, within less than two years, MaVeNS has contributed more than $1 billion of annual revenue."
Sorry - do you mean Mayer or Yahoo?
Mayer is a very competent woman, as anyone at Google would tell you.