Yahoo's Marissa Mayer In Line For $55M Severance If Fired Within A Year Of Sale (nytimes.com) 181
whoever57 writes: A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday revealed that Yahoo's board has agreed to a $55 million severance package for Marissa Mayer if she loses her job within a year of a sale. That's a lot of money for a chief executive who hasn't been able to keep Yahoo's stock from falling. In 2015, the value of Yahoo's stock fell by 33%. Worth noting: most of the money from the severance package is composed of restricted stock units and options -- there's only $3 million in cold hard cash. Also, Yahoo revealed Mayer received a significant pay cut last year. Her "reported pay" was $36 million, but her "realized pay" is closer to $14 million.
Bah! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe golden parachutes should be based on performance (long-term, over the course of employment).
They shouldn't automatically get millions just for taking on a risky job.
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Informative)
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It's money laundering. "Undocumented" income suddenly finds itself on paper, squeaky clean. And no doubt it can be written off.
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bingo! The biggest tell to this is asking the shareholders what they think of this deal. I mean, there are in fact the owners of the company, right?
This is an organizational problem where boardmembers can decide the fate of one of their own, and they are completely shielded from the actual owners.
There is a case to be made about the balance of power between the business and the shareholders, and the board is meant to balance the concerns of the two.
But as of late, it has translated into excessive CEO pay an
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Shareholder vote primarily by buying and selling. And shareholders are asked constantly about what they think, namely when someone else offers to buy their shares at the current price. When Mayer was hired in 2012, the stock price didn't change much.
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Uh, no.
There has been a long effort by shareholders to discipline CEO pay. A quick search will reveal the thousands of stories of shareholders voting against any increases, and in fact the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed in part to address this very issue.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/shire-shareholders-rebel-over-ceo-payupdate-20160428-01096
But they don't sit on the board and don't get to make that decision.
Conversely, there are numerous stories of shareholders making o
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Shareholders votes on pay are only advisory, not binding. [renault.com]
He went on to detail the method of calculation of the Chairman and CEO’s remuneration.
The Committee consults with a specialist in remuneration and human capital, as well as executive compensation benchmarks. This consultation helps to ensure the appropriateness of the level of compensation set, particularly with regard to the remuneration of leaders of comparable groups.
The remuneration of the Chairman and CEO is then discussed and voted upon by the Board of Directors, in the absence of Mr Ghosn, to ensure full independence of the Board.
Since 2014, the “Say on Pay” reform requires the submission of an advisory opinion by shareholders on the remuneration of executive directors in respect of the preceding fiscal year. In according with the Board’s decision, the remuneration of the Chairman and CEO consists of a fixed and a variable portion.
The board of directors need not follow the advisory opinion of the shareholders. When you write "evolving regulations" and "may soon be required"", that's just a lame attempt to ignore the current reality, while tacitly conceding that European companies are not bound by such votes... My points still stands, The Frank-Dodd act doesn't apply to European companies, and the board of directors of European companies are free to ignore the solely advisory
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Well, the people who are actually putting up the money think differently. They were betting that they needed a big name for their company, someone who would appeal to the tastes of the Silicon Valley elites. To get that, they needed to pay top dollar. Was it a good choice? Who knows. When they hired Mayer, Yahoo was already in deep trouble, so maybe she did as best as anybody could have.
In different words, it's not your decision to mak
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RISK, what fucking risk. Being an over paid lame arse for a few years with a massive golden parachute at the end of it, WHAT FUCKING RISK?!?
Demoted as useless at Google, pretends otherwise but proves it at Yahoo, bringing nothing and just trying to the same old, same old, steal other people's idea and claim them as her own, which is why she wanted everyone in the office, to do exactly that. Perhaps she can get a job a Mars and she can be a spokesperson for https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com].
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Consider it a $55 million stupidity fine on the Yahoo board for being stupid enough to buy into a bunch of "A female CEO will fix everything!" SJW bullshit.
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/\ This /\
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I really, really dislike this fraud Mayer. She should be in prison for the embezzling and lack of fiduciary responsibility during her tenure as CEO. She has caused the loss of thousands of jobs. I used to talk about how bad this Mayer was before she took the helm and people poo-pooed me. I turned out I was 100% correct about this woman being a know-nothing fraud. She was also hated at Google just as much. She is a low life criminal as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Yahoo Board that rejected Microsoft's $43 billion takeover offer are the parties who committed breach of fiduciary duty. Everything that came after that has been a desperate attempt to stack sandbags in front of a tsunami.
sPh
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This is not how real life works.
She signed a contract, this is in it. period. Are you really suggesting with a straight face that it would be ok for a company to unilaterally break a binding work contract cos she made people ACTUALLY GO TO WORK ??
This is exactly the kind of entitlement problem that faces the workforce today. Yours obviously, not hers. Me? i´d just want to know who she hired to negotiate her contract!
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About the same time getting 55 million dollars for tanking a company?
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About the same time getting 55 million dollars for tanking a company?
Golden parachutes for corporate executives has been the norm for decades. Working from home is not the norm for most Silicon Valley employees. I only had one job in the last 20+ years that allowed working from home.
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So because you didn't get it, fuck everyone else who did, right?
No, I asked when it became a right to work from home. If your employment contract allows you to work from home, take advantage of it. However, that's not the norm for most Silicon Valley workers.
Sounds like you're the one with sour grapes here.
I would love for the hipsters in my office to work from home so they can stop complaining about how bad their 30 minute commute from San Francisco to Palo Alto was. I commute from the opposite direction and it takes an hour on the express bus (or two hours on the local bus), but I don't go on a daily hissy fit about
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Sometimes I wanted to shove that ping pong paddle right up their entitled assholes.
Now there's a fine idea. Alas, my job doesn't have a ping pong table.
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Also 30 minutes from SF to Palo Alto isn't even possible outside of rush periods, it is about 35 miles.
It is when your job starts at 7:00AM in the morning.
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"7:00AM in the morning". Are there other 7:00AM's not-in-the-morning that we aren't aware of?
Palo Alto traffic is hell on earth after 8AM. Most SANE people try to get here earlier than that. I chose to start work at 7AM because the express bus gets me into and out of Palo Alto quickly by avoiding the rush hour traffic.
But anyway, if your job starts at 7am you are not a real tech employee, you are a tech SUPPORT employee.
That's funny. I need to tell the engineers from HP, Nest, SAP and vmWare on the express bus that get them to their sites at 6:30AM that joke. I'm sure they will get a good laugh.
Re: Bah! (Score:1)
Sounds like real leadership deserving of 55 million then.
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It doesn't matter if it's a "right". Sufficient demand is good enough. It's one of those things where organization might be needed. Unfortunately there wasn't enough in Yahoos case to reverse her decision. In short people can exercise their right to set their working conditions.
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In short people can exercise their right to set their working conditions.
They have the right to find another job. California is an at-will state after all.
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And they can "create" the right through organized action to make their present job better.
You typically do that while negotiating your contract before being hired. It's called a perk, not a right.
It has been to known to work before, and we all enjoy the benefits.
This has been brought up repeatedly on Slashdot over the years. I have never heard of anyone attempting to organize technical workers into a union. Probably because technical workers are white collar workers and not blue collar workers. Never mind that technical workers are like a herd of cats.
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Philosophizing on what is a "right" is a waste of time. I'm only saying that people create their own working conditions. Organization is just one of those ways. Both sides are asserting power, which is always in balance.
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Sorry broham - tech workers are NOT white collar.
They are when they wear a white polo shirt. ;)
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If we organize we can assert more than that.
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Not at all. You enjoy many of the benefits of organized job action. And there are many more.
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If "unpleasant and incompetent" earns you $55million just to go away, I'm gonna start shopping for a yacht.
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Wait, $1.05 just to be unpleasant and incompetent? Is that in cash or stock options?
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When did just not coming in on Fridays weekly become a thing? You don't know shit, my friend.
The same time that working through breaks and lunch and staying an extra hour every day became a thing..
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As someone with 11 years in the industry, working lunch, no breaks and staying extra hours is unfortunately the norm. At the end of the day, if the company isn't yours, then its up to you how much effort you want to put in. If you can live with that, then go for it. After all you are all big boys and gals.
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The same time that working through breaks and lunch and staying an extra hour every day became a thing.
As an IT support contractor I'm not allowed to work through breaks and lunch and stay an extra hour. I could get fired for doing that. It's been like that for 12+ years.
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You must hold a very junior position!
Nope. I'm a senior system administrator. Neither the government nor Fortunate 500 companies wants to pay overtime anymore.
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So do thousands of janitors. Sadly your experience is about as worthwhile as theirs.
If you want to make money in IT, cleaning up messes is part of the job.
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You might have trouble hounding her if she decides to hide in some 500 acre walled estate property in Marin County. With that 55 million dollar severance check, she can afford it.
What's Yahoo?! (Score:3)
And therein lies the problem. Yahoo! isn't relevant any longer. I don't even know the last time I even thought of it.
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Worth noting: most of the money from the severance package is composed of restricted stock units and options -- there's only $3 million in cold hard cash.
$55M is more of an idea, a gesture. It is Yahoo! stock, I assume.
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And how does handing someone who's leaving the company huge sums of money benefit the shareholders?
Re:What's Yahoo?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Better mail than gmail and excellent newreader (Score:2)
I like yahoo mail tons better than Gmail. (I hqave a hard time making sense of google's threaded emails).
I also have not found an RSS newsreader I like better than my.yahoo. I've been using it since 1997.
That's a lot of money (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a lot of money, full stop. Nothing else needed to be said after that. Where can I get a job like that? I mean since the price of labor is going down and all... This is PROOF that ability and hard work has exactly jack shit to do with compensation or the Majick Fairytale Free Market.
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If you have to ask where to get that kind of job, you're certainly not in the market for such a job.
But you're right, "hard work" as most people understand it, isn't what gets you a big CEO job. It's results. Can you run a company? Can you run a large team of any kind?
Yes, one could argue that Merissa Mayer hasn't gotten results for Yahoo. But that would be overlooking the fact that she started with a dying company. No, it's not robust, but it does look like she'll be able to get someone to pay million
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Hard work plus being born on at least 2nd base.
Most likely attended private schooling with other ceos (I was reading a retrospective on a CEO who died a few years ago and it had 3 other CEO's who went to the same junior high school (middle school for most of you whipper snappers under 35) with him.
We don't have that many CEO's in the country. Yet multiple CEO's went to the same prestigious middle school
Likewise, the boards are stocked with people from old money and some celebrities (who might be new money
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Yes, one could argue that Merissa Mayer hasn't gotten results for Yahoo. But that would be overlooking the fact that she started with a dying company. No, it's not robust, but it does look like she'll be able to get someone to pay millions for the company, problems and all. Can you do that?
Precisely this. It mystifies me why people still don't understand how what you get paid is determined in a market environment. (This is not applicable in a unionized or government environment where all employees are assumed to be fungible in terms of skills and compensation is based on "how long have you been here?")
How much you get paid is not based on how hard your job is, or how good you are at it, but how scarce your skill set is, and how important that skill set is. To wit:
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I took GPs comment about a magic free market as I will explain.
There is not a "free market" by any stretch of the imagination. We have Fascism, not "Free Market". Businesses spend billions of dollars putting in politicians that pass laws benefiting them. "Regulator" positions and top level executives are a revolving door, ensuring that businesses control regulation in addition to politics. Corruption is rampant, and average people are shat upon.
Mayer's Golden Parachute for running a company downhill, an
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First, saying things like
We have Fascism
and
Socialism is inherently fascist
is a quick and easy way of letting people know that your understanding of the subject is either nonexistent or extremely idiosyncratic, so thank you for the warning.
Second, there is no maximum legal compensation, nor do minimum wage and hour type laws (or immigration laws) have any impact on executive compensation, so the market for executives is by any reasonable measure unfettered--which brings me back to my first point.
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Yeah, no. That's kind of the next step before Profit! I've never been fully clear what unique contributions these types make on their "way up" that in any way justifies their compensation. Especially the higher you go; was there really no other person who couldn't have accomplished the same thing for less - a lot less?
The actual numbers don't matter (Score:1)
She will still leave and have enough money to sit around and do nothing for the rest of her life. I'm not bitter about these CEOs, but this is a pattern that needs to be broken. If you underperform, you're gone--just like an underling would be gone. Walked to the door by security with your box of personal things.
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sit around and do nothing for the rest of her life.
But that's not likely. Many of these people have friends on other corporate boards who will find a place for them. The whole Yahoo failure will have a positive spin put on it and Mayer will find herself running another company.
If the demise of Yahoo was inevitable, she might do OK with a viable company. The only issue will be why this wasn't recognized in advance and the company dismantled while its parts were worth something. On the other hand, after the last economic downturn, that might have been a fire
Re:The actual numbers don't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Naw. Failed female CEOs run for Governor or Vice President.
Re:The actual numbers don't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Used to be only failed male CEOs could run for governor or president.
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Being able to live on the golden parachute for the rest of your life is a big part of the justification. The theory goes that you want CEOs who are willing to take risks, because companies that always try to play it safe tend to fail. If you're a CEO who takes a risk that doesn't work out, then you're going to find it hard to get another job, because people will point at your previous experience (this is where it starts to fall down - in all likelihood, a CEO who ran one company into the ground will immed
But.. (Score:4, Funny)
Does she have to train her replacement?
Re:But.. (Score:4, Insightful)
That shouldn't be too hard. It's not like CEO's really do anything.
Another Carly Fiorina in the making... (Score:2)
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Didn't she run against Jerry Brown for Governor at the same time Carly ran against Boxer?
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Didn't she run against Jerry Brown for Governor at the same time Carly ran against Boxer?
You're thinking of Meg Whitman, formerly of eBay and currently at HP.
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Shit. That was Meg Whitman. Never mind.
$55 million severance (Score:5, Funny)
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What's that in MALE failed CEO dollars? 71 mil?
Not quite. Since according to that bastion of conservative propaganda USA Today [usatoday.com], female CEO average pay in fiscal year 2015 was about 50% higher than male average CEO pay (18.8 vs 12.7 million), it looks like that would be something like 47.3 million male failed CEO dollars.
Should probably have gotten negative compentastion (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be adequate for all the damage she did. But CEOs these days cannot fail anymore, no matter how stupid and destructive. They just get a few ten millions less in compensation, but still get indecently rich.
Re:Should probably have gotten negative compentast (Score:5, Interesting)
But CEOs these days cannot fail anymore, no matter how stupid and destructive.
I got laid off along with 2,000+ employees from a Fortune 500 company several years ago. As for the CEO, he got 60% raise for having a lousy fiscal year. Rumor had it that he needed a new yacht to keep up with his peers, which is why these golden parachutes keep going up in value over the years.
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That sucks. My condolences.
Don't understand how they are still around (Score:2)
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The exodus has started from Yahoo Groups. They have not made their horrible interface worse in the past couple of weeks however there is every expectation that they will be discontinued or destroyed shortly.
I wonder what will happen to the email services they provide to ISPs like AT&T which already work poorly or not at all.
This is crazy (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of those things that in one hundred years time people will look at with a similar kind of horror that most of us feel about the matter-of-fact slavery state of affairs in 19th century America. The system is ridiculous - those who decide the CEO's compensation package are, by and large, the members of the board. And who are the members of the board? By and large, CEOs of other companies. Shareholders have something to say, of course, but unless you own a sizeable chunk of a company, you might just as well ignore the whole thing. At any rate, if your chunk is big enough, you will have a seat on the board.
Behold the robber barons of the 21st century.
Some horrifying Key Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
A TV pundit recently observed that each CEO of Yahoo has walked away with significant compensation after a short term, yet the stockholders have gotten nada in the form of dividends. And they may not get much when it's eventually sold off, or will get nothing if it goes bankrupt (which is less likely.)
Ironically, I rely on Yahoo's "Finance" section for much of my own stock-picking: its "Key Statistics" page is by far my favorite one-page stock statistic summary. Here are some highlights (read: lowlights) for YHOO itself [yahoo.com]:
Profit Margin (ttm): -87.74%
Return on Assets (ttm): -0.16%
Return on Equity (ttm): -12.82%
Trailing Annual Dividend Yield3: N/A
This paints a picture of a company that is losing money (negative profit margin), hasn't managed its assets well (negative return on assets and return on equity), and doesn't treat stockholders well (see ROA and ROE, together with no dividend.) Next, throw in a history of expensive golden parachutes to short-term CEOs and you've got a stock that no one (IMHO) should ever own.
Sadly, those of us who have part of our money in S&P 500 funds have a few bucks that get to go along on this horrifying ride.
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I always liked their sports app and sports news. Seems like they never really figured out how to make money in the web 2.0 world like the other bigs managed to do. They sure spent money like crazy tho. Alibaba was a good investment for them, all the rest seemed to fizzle.
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I don't understand how the board, or whoever decides on these ridiculous amounts of money to compensate worthless CEOs for their incompetence, how are they all not sued into oblivion yet? Don't all public companies have fiduciary duty (whatever that means) to do everything in the best interest of the shareholders? How's $36 million to walk away from your job after a year is in the best interest of shareholders, when the company is firmly in the red? Or all *EO's and the board are somehow shielded, because i
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Don't all public companies have fiduciary duty (whatever that means) to do everything in the best interest of the shareholders?
Therein lies the rub: it's hard to prosecute on "whatever that means." So, all that we investors can do is vote with our dollars. However, looking at YHOO's major owners [yahoo.com], the top ones seem to be S&P 500 funds, which presumably aren't any more activist than S&P itself. I guess that's anecdotal evidence that those of us who are (mostly) stock pickers have a good shot at doing better in that portion of our investments.
Who could do better? (Score:2)
Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Interesting)
Has anyone done a careful study to determine if high CEO compensation results in better company performance? The issue of correlation will have to account for the desire of greedy candidates for a CEO job to get on board with a company that is or will generate a lot of cash and profit so as to make a multi-million dollar pay package look justified.
Anecdote: Many years ago*, I read a story about a small California oil company that had been driven into bankruptcy. The CEO had walked (or been canned) and a bankruptcy court judge assigned. As is customary, the judge appointed an interim manager to oversee the company through what was probably going to be a dissolution. But the company was such a basket case (and the potential pay so low), the only person he could find was a friend of his who was a janitor. The janitor proceeded to go through company records, find underperforming assets to sell, reorganize the core organization and bring the company out of the bankruptcy process as a profitable business. All for what was no more than a few times his janitor's salary.
*This predates the birth of the Internet by some years, so I'm having trouble searching for a story on-line. IIRC, it was written up in the WSJ.
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Someone did a study a year or two back and there was a correlation. High CEO pay correlated with low performance.
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There was a study, published in 2014 by the University of Utah, which found a negative correlation. Companies with highly paid execs did significantly worse than companies run by mere mortals. You should Google it; the details are interesting.
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She'll strut in with her bond hair
Like Sean Connery hair or Pierce Brosnan hair?
Trump Mayer? (Score:1)
Someone else also signed the contract (Score:2)
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Why is it being reported just now and not when she was hired? No, I think that this is a new benefit that has just been put in place, after she has failed to do anything to turn around Yahoo's business.
Demote her to janitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Make her earn her pay cleaning toilets. Eliminate her personal daycare and require her to report 7am every day.
She'll quit the next day.
Q.E.D.
Correlation of failure and females w/raspy voices (Score:2)
Elizabeth Holmes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Misleading article link Marissa Mayer in 90 second (Score:1)
Is anyone else a little annoyed by the Marissa Mayer in 90 second linked video. They seem to give her way more credit for innovation at google like maps. That's something they bought and while she headed the map team for a while there is sparse evidence that she is responsible for that innovation or really any other innovation.
Look she was lucky, she was employee number 20 at a very profitable company, who was a nice piece of ass, who banged one of the founders for a while. But after a while it was clear sh
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She's laughing all the way to the bank (Score:2)
I don't think that Mayer has done a very good job with Yahoo, but that said, Yahoo was probably screwed long before she got there.
What is admirable, is that she has managed to make (at least) 10's of millions a year, and have three kids at Yahoo, with their nanny and daycare room right next to her office, while looking good doing it.
Make fun of her all you want, but I bet she had a higher salary with better parental benefits and a severance packages than any of us have gotten.
Alternative Theory: Only way to get CEO applicant (Score:2)
Anyone looking at the Yahoo CEO position knows that sooner or later the major shareholders are going to demand something irrational or impossible. The only way they'd take to job if the were guaranteed to get paid for honestly trying to run the company up to the point that they were asked to produce a unicorn.
To Be Fair (Score:2)
Stop the planet, I want to get off (Score:1)
Look at me, I suck at my job. Pay me a shitload of money, because.
Disgusting bullshit.
Stock value has jumped since July 2012. (Score:3)
For all the people talking about how she's tanked the stock...She came in while the stock was at 15 and a half, and today the stock is at 36 and a half [yahoo.com]. OK, big surprise, she wasn't able to turn the company into the next Google. But the market cap has climbed from $14 Billion to $34 Billion under watch. I don't think you can call her an abject failure. An abject failure would be losing her shareholders value. Like maybe she sold Yahoo's investments that are the core of its modern business, in order to fund one of her relatively minor pet projects that didn't work out.
A CEO vs... (Score:3)
Factor out the Alibaba stake (Score:2)
Factor out the value of the Alibaba stake, which she had nothing to do with, and you get a much clearer picture of Marissa's Mayer's management talent. Honestly, her talents lend themselves better to some other room than the boardroom.
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> It does provide a nice example of the worst possible way to define a front page to a website.
Agreed. Guess it is the classic case of over-engineered. Jack of all trades, master of none.
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It is the company about nothing.
Wasn't there a TV series like that? Turned into a huge success?
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For taking a old & tired (in internet years) company and
helping drive it into the ground. And insignificance.
And being a woman helps 'cause you can do no wrong.
With a track record like that, I predict she'll run for President one day.