5 things you didn't know about Marissa Mayer:
After reading advice to Marissa Mayer I wanted to know more about her.
CNN has 11 fast facts about Marissa that I'll try not to repeat...
5. She doesn't believe in burnout. "I don't really believe in burnout. A lot of people work really hard for decades and decades, like Winston Churchill and Einstein... Burnout is about resentment. It's about knowing what matters to you so much that if you don't get it that you're resentful." Spoken as someone with a long career.
4. She believes in engineering corporate cultures. That's what she told Charlie Rose in 2009 on why she thought Yahoo had lost its place.
3. Google was surprised she left. And Google will miss her. At the time of her departure, she was supervising 25% of Google.
2. Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Dick Costolo are personal friends of Marissa. Marissa was an angel investor in @Jack's Square and several other companies.
1. She likes to dance. Check out this animated gif of Marissa Mayer for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee's campaign where she was featured alongside Brian Wilson and MC Hammer:
Yes, Ed Lee is 2 LEGIT 2 QUIT:
The following items didn't make the cut of my Top 5.
She likes cupcakes. Yes, cupcakes. (Who doesn't? I love cupcakes, too!)
There are many Yahoo assets Marissa's team will be working with.
The Atlantic adds, "We're pulling for you, Chief Mayer. Now do something radical."
Meanwhile, someone on Hacker News says, "She is not universally loved within Google (to put it mildly), is the fact that she isn't a particularly nice person or good leader. She might see herself as rational and efficient, but to a lot of people she comes across as rude, insecure, and worst of all: horribly inconsistent."
From which I divine this advice: Do not mess with her or she will pwn you.
That is really interesting question, what's yahoo real assets? She will need a platform to stand on.
During miraculous recovery of IBM, Lou Gerstner found that IBM still has very strong research organization and very strong connection to large enterprises.
Apple in 1997 still had the brand and the community of followers as well as Steve Jobs with his 10 years ahead vision.
It will be interesting to watch her finding Yahoo! real center of gravity.
Actually, this is a decent inventory of Yahoo's assets.
What's most important about Marissa is that she can recruit (and acquire) talent.
That's an excellent question, Sergey. What are Yahoo's assets?
Perhaps we need look no further than to the new CEO.
Careful now, you're referring to somebody's mother.
Actually, the real reason to be careful is that she's a superhuman:
As for maternity leave, Mayer, who recently joined the board of Walmart, expects it to be speedy. "I like to stay in the rhythm of things," she says, referring to the CEO job that she is starting tomorrow. "My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it."
She's going to work throughout her maternity leave?!
Who does that? A superhuman, that's who.
The more you know...
Possible #6? (I'm not sure how reliable this source is).
There's a thread on mixedmartialarts.com that's claiming Marissa Mayer is sexually promiscuous:
Word has it she's a total slizzut.
and
Id like to search her engine!
that doesnt make sense but you catch my drift...
I'm fairly certain that the second picture on mixedmartialarts.com is not of Marissa Mayer.
Which calls into question the truth of anything said by anyone on mixedmartialarts.com ...
I do believe Marissa Mayer collects glass, though:
Uh, who the hell cares if she has sex or not? Do people care if male CEOs have sex? No? So why do you care how much sex she has?
Lori, I don't have an account on mixedmartialarts.com, or I would have logged in to express that same sentiment to those young hooligans!
Um, things you may not have known... It's been a big day for her. Yahoo! Indeed. For every woman who dreaded the mommy track the minute she confessed to being pregnant, this one's for you. Cheers. We all wish you well.
http://www.firstpost.com/tech/yahoo-marissa-mayer-is-first-pregnant-fortune-500-ceo-379637.html
Wow. I can't even imagine how much emotion she must have gone through today.
So on October 7, less than a quarter after taking over as CEO of a public company, she's going to have her first child.
Marissa is superhuman. I can't even imagine.
Pregnancies are like lotteries. Some people have fantastically easy ones. Some don't. Doesn't make one more or less superhuman when you draw your lot. No sense in her not being able to do her job unless she says she can't.
My own mother worked up until the day she went into labor with me. :)
Actually, I have to say that parenthood makes you superhuman. Today as more couples are finding ways to share the joys and trauma of parenting, I think they're both learning what superhuman skills it requires. Pregnancy is just the first challenge. There are many more to come, many, I'm sure will come at the worst possible time for the day job. That's just how it goes. My guess is that she'll have her husband, extended family and a finely chosen support staff to make it all possible. Her effort will provide leadership not only for Yahoo but for the many who will take cues from her. It's pretty cool.
Still, first-ever pregnant CEO of a Fortune 500 tech company.
@Alexia at TechCrunch is calling this move the Hail Marissa play:
She’s now directly competing against former colleague Tim Armstrong, former ex-boyfriend Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg. She moves into an organization whose tech, products, and employees are mess, and the resources it does have to clean up this mess are exceptionally poorly allocated. And most importantly, none of us can really imagine the Yahoo era being anything but over.
And still I wonder: What's her vision for Yahoo! ?
More Lady Gaga and other celebrities?
Marissa will also have $10B or so cash on hand once they officially sell part of the stake in Alibaba. If she spends wisely that can go a long way towards getting the company on track. She needs to focus on what Yahoo needs to be rather than what Yahoo was. That was how Apple, IBM, and others were able to reinvent themselves.
With regards to working throughout her maternity leave: If it's her first child, she may find out that after the birth is harder than she imagines. New parents often have a bit of a rude awakening in that respect, whether they're the mother or the father. Also, uh, it's not maternity leave if she's working, is it?
I'd hate to work for a CEO who thought burn-out was a myth. People can only be pushed so far, for so long, before it catches up on them, whether they're being pushed from outside or from within themselves. *How* far varies from person to person, but if she thinks it doesn't exist, it just means she hasn't experienced it yet. Maybe she never will. Really it all comes down to the fact that it's not a good idea to work for anyone who doesn't recognize life-work balance.
It sounds like she comes with good (like being instrumental in Google's simple aesthetic) and bad, like anyone else. I hope she manages to turn things around for Y!
Nithin, it's a coincidence that most of the links are to BI. I was looking for backup for each of the five items. I have links to many more places in my advice to Marissa Mayer post.
"Burnout is about resentment" now has its own conversation.
Kyle, I wonder what Yahoo needs to be.
Stephen, you are correct that it's not leave if she keeps working. :)
I hope she manages to turn things around for Yahoo, too.
It occurred to me later that, well, on a CEO's salary she'll be able to afford to hire whatever help she might need if having a child turns out to be more work than she imagined. So I guess perhaps if it's a surprise it won't affect her too much. Most of us don't have that option. =)
I wonder as well, but it's not being a portal or being a search engine. Not that I would get rid of yahoo.com, but they've given away search to bing and are essentially an aggregator for news.
They could enhance their most valuable properties such as yahoo mail and yes people still use it. People need an incentive to use it and acquiring companies like Rapportive, which LinkedIn did, would give people a reason. These are just quick wins. Doing something with flickr is necessary as well.
Ultimately yahoo needs to be innovative and if they can't do it, they need to spend money on some early acquisitions and bring in the innovators. Bringing in Mayer means they want to be more than a holding company. They are non-existent in mobile and they're biggest mistake would be to merely try and compete with google. The business model needs to be more open than that. For example, we don't need another social network, but there is no reason that they could not integrate social elements via a Facebook signon into their plans.
Mobile is still a huge opportunity for Yahoo, and that comes across loud and clear in this set of advice for Marissa: http://pandawhale.com/convo/3539/advice-for-marissa-mayer
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