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Marissa Mayer Is Giving Yahoo Employees Her Annual Bonus To Make Up For Massive Hacks (theverge.com) 108

Following two separate security breaches revealed last year that compromised the personal information of more than 1.5 billion users, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced today via her Tumblr page that she will be redistributing her annual bonus and equity stock grant to Yahoo employees. The Verge reports: Relevant to Mayer's admission here, an independent committee Yahoo brought on to investigate the hacks found the company to be at fault for not sufficiently responding to the security incidents. "While significant additional security measures were implemented in response to those incidents, it appears certain senior executives did not properly comprehend or investigate, and therefore failed to act sufficiently upon, the full extent of knowledge known internally by the company's information security team," reads the committee's findings, which are contained in Yahoo's 10-K report for 2016. As a result of the hacks, Yahoo's top lawyer, Ron Bell, has been fired, Recode reported today. Mayer has accumulated about $162 million during the five years she's spent as the company's CEO in both salary and stock awards, according to CNN. She's also due about $55 million in severance if she decides to leave the company following its acquisition by Verizon. So it's safe to say her bonus would involve a hefty amount of money now going to Yahoo employees who have weathered the storm throughout Mayer's tumultuous tenure.
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Marissa Mayer Is Giving Yahoo Employees Her Annual Bonus To Make Up For Massive Hacks

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  • Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @09:47PM (#53959375)
    "she will be redistributing her annual bonus and equity stock grant to Yahoo employees."

    Not hard to do, if you already have more money than you could ever reasonably spend. At her level, money is not a means of exchange, it's just a tally on a scorecard.
    • Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Karlt1 ( 231423 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @09:52PM (#53959399)

      I agree but give credit where it's due. Do you see the Waltons giving bonuses to their employees?

      • by imgod2u ( 812837 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @10:02PM (#53959441) Homepage

        Walmart does give a lot of bonuses to employees at around the same level of skill as a typical Yahoo employee...

        And comparatively speaking, Walmart is doing great business wise so it's not like the CEO deserves a pay cut for some massive fuck up.

        • by Karlt1 ( 231423 )

          I never understood how a company that is the 5th most visited website in the world couldn't be doing better.

          • I'm with ya.

            Yahoo! started out as a search engine and instead of cultivating their core competency, decided to be a "portal," where a user could get the buffet for free (advertiser-supported).

            Meanwhile, Google stepped in and said, "fuck the portal," and nailed the search engine market.

            Here's the take according to guess who [huffingtonpost.com]?

            Google executive Marissa Mayer, the web giant's twentieth employee and first female engineer, pulled back the curtain Tuesday [Mar 27, 2012] evening to reveal why Google's stark white homepage looks the way it does.

            • by Monoman ( 8745 )

              IIRC Yahoo started out as a directory. Links were submitted for approval or added by Yahoo. Back before search engines were good (pre Alta Vista) Yahoo searches had good results because their database was curated by humans.

              • The directory eventually got too large and it became too hard to find anything in it. It might have worked while the amount of websites available was small but it collapsed afterwards. Mind you there were search engines before Altavista (e.g. Lycos) but yeah they kinda sucked.

        • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          walmart doesn't even offer health insurance to the vast majority of its workers. especially at retail, the MOST IMPORTANT part of the business.. the ONLY part that is face-to-face with customers. for the most part, they are all limited in hours, and are disciplined if they go over, to just below the threshold for being eligible. fuck walmart.

          their 'bonus' is usually a holiday ham or turkey, extending their "generous" discount to grocery for a month, instead of being only on general merchandise (aka the stuf

          • by lucm ( 889690 )

            actual bonuses? not for the rank-and-file. plenty in bentonville get them, though.

            Wrong. Most people at Walmart headquarters are paid below market for their skills and the perks are nowhere to be found. Being a cheapskate is a virtue in that organization; there's even a famous senior manager who uses cheap patio furniture provided by a vendor (as a sample) in his office.

            As for retail employees being paid low wages: that's how the market works, and that's how Walmart can sell stuff at rock bottom price. Anyone who applies for a job at Walmart and doesn't know this in advance is a fool.

            • Being a cheapskate is a virtue in that organization

              Sam Walton required Walmart employees who attended conferences or trade shows to return with at least three dozen free pens.

              • by lucm ( 889690 )

                Being a cheapskate is a virtue in that organization

                Sam Walton required Walmart employees who attended conferences or trade shows to return with at least three dozen free pens.

                $150 billions, one free pen at a time.

          • by Duckman5 ( 665208 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @11:20PM (#53959779)

            actual bonuses? not for the rank-and-file. plenty in bentonville get them, though.

            I actually worked at Wal-Mart for 7 years and have several phone calls out to a few market managers because I wouldn't mind going back (at a much higher pay rate after I'm done with school). I'm in the pharmacy, mind you, but the seven years I spent there were as a tech. I can assure you that the rank and file get bonuses every single quarter. There's a big poster in the break room tracking progress. The bonus is given based on store performance in four categories (profit, inventory turns, total sales, and something else). If you're at a high performing store you can make an extra $2000 a year or so (sadly that's ~10% extra for a full time employee). Number-wise for someone like you who probably makes six figures it's probably not much, but to those people who are barely above minimum wage it's huge.

            • ~10% says it all - 10% of an insult is, actually a bigger insult.

              I refused an offer for a teaching assistant position that would have paid for my PhD, plus ~$22K/yr salary, had just completed a similar gig for a Masters' degree - 2 years of indentured servitude in exchange for a dubious piece of paper was enough, thank you.

              WalMart employees aren't even working toward something ostensibly valuable to their future life, they're just sharing rent in a cheap apartment, saving up to maybe buy a car someday.

              • by Duckman5 ( 665208 ) on Thursday March 02, 2017 @01:42AM (#53960209)
                You realize, though, that the crappy situation you're talking about is something endemic to the US economy and not just Wal-Mart. There's a reason that so many people are pushing to raise the minimum wage. Wal-Mart, right before I left, announced that there would be a $10/hr minimum for front-end workers which was a decent improvement from the previous status quo.
                That being said, Wal-Mart isn't that bad of a place to work, especially after you break through that living wage barrier and get up to store level management or higher (and they will promote almost anyone as long as they are reasonably competent and stick around long enough). They even offer health insurance to part-time employees (again, if you've been there long enough). From what I understand, it's not as awesome as when Sam was still alive, but it's still not bad.
                • Agreed, WalMart is just the poster child for the larger living wage problem. When I was in High School (80s), jobs like that (in my town) were 80% staffed by kids with no real income needs - just for pocket money, there would be the occasional older loser who just didn't care that they could only afford to live in a trailer park with 3 roommates in an 800 square foot tin can built 30 years ago, and once in a rare while - a true hardworking person in a tough situation who was just using the income to get by

                  • Agreed, WalMart is just the poster child for the larger living wage problem. When I was in High School (80s), jobs like that (in my town) were 80% staffed by kids with no real income needs - just for pocket money, there would be the occasional older loser who just didn't care that they could only afford to live in a trailer park with 3 roommates in an 800 square foot tin can built 30 years ago, and once in a rare while - a true hardworking person in a tough situation who was just using the income to get by until they got something better.

                    Today, there are so few better opportunities out there that the demographic of who's working near minimum wage jobs has become much more diverse, and people who really want out don't have nearly as much opportunity to get out. It's not impossible, but it's much much more challenging and competitive.

                    I'm glad we found a common ground. I see the same thing happening. Even in the 90's when I was in high school, I knew people who worked at K-Mart, Pizza Hut, grocery stores, and other low wage positions. Now those positions are increasingly staffed by older people. A knew quite a few people at Wal-Mart who were teachers trying to supplement income on the evenings and weekends. It's a sad commentary that the people who are educating my children are having to work 7 days a week just to make ends meet or provi

                    • I have special needs kids, they need aides to function in public school classrooms, so aides are provided. Not good aides, mind you, just warm bodies who help keep them from being "a problem in the (cough) learning (cough) environment." One of our kids' assigned aides worked stock at Target on the midnight to 7 shift before coming to be his aide through the school day.

                      So, when our kids had good aides, teachers who cared, etc. they made great progress in school - learned, advanced, became less dependent on

                    • Have you ever thought to ask those teachers how much they make, and what their expenses are? I'll bet they overextended themselves, like many of us. And if they truly are underpaid, that's purely a local problem that needs to be handled in your school board meetings. In my district, for what is at most 10 months of work the average teacher earns about what I do (plus superior benefits), and I have 20 years of experience in my field. But no one wants to have their OWN property taxes raised. They want the
                    • Have you ever thought to ask those teachers how much they make, and what their expenses are?

                      No, I've never done that because that would be rude. It's not my place to judge them. Of the one with whom I had a personal relationship, I know he had a child with greater-than-average medical needs. The others seemed to signal that they were just trying to make some extra money.
                      I don't know where you live, but in my state, the average teacher salary is ~$50,000/year (source [fldoe.org]). I wouldn't exactly call that rolling in dough, especially when you consider that many have a master's degree and also have their ow

              • Because a graduate student working as a TA is totally the same thing as someone who might not even have a GED stocking shelves.

                #whiteprivilege

                • I got that TA position while attending Uni on a scholarship - not too much privilege required to get there, other than the fact that my parents were self-sufficient so I didn't have to go out to work to keep a roof over their heads.

                  So, the big contrast TA vs WallyWorld Minion is that I was on the "ain't gonna be doing this forever" track, whereas you need to win a minor lottery to take a step up the WallyWorld ladder. I got to choose when I stepped off the subsistence income merry-go-round and into decentl

          • This is part of the problem with the cost of health care in America. Employer provided health care. This all got started at the end of WW2, with so many men coming back from WW2, employers were hiring by the truckloads. To "entice" workers, they started to provide health care coverage. Go forward 70 years and look what happened. Now, you ask about 99% of the people, what it costs to go to the doctor, and most of them will say "my copay is". No, that wasn't the question...how much does it cost to go to th
      • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        I agree but give credit where it's due. Do you see the Waltons giving bonuses to their employees?

        They give bonuses every year. They even have monthly incentive bonuses, track bonuses, scan bonuses(people who clear checkouts fast), sign-up bonuses for their credit card(pay for each app, and a monthly bonus for the most signups), employee with highest customer approval call-ins, and so on. I'm constantly amused at the number of people that think walmart is some evil sweat shop and the people there get paid nothing. When in most places they're paid above min. wage by $2-5/hr. It is a bottom level job,

        • Bonuses aren't really bonuses if they're incentives for doing more work.

          And $2-$5 above minimum wage is pretty much nothing, which is why only teenagers, illegal immigrants,and total fuck-ups work for such a rate.

          • by geek ( 5680 )

            Bonuses aren't really bonuses if they're incentives for doing more work.

            Spoken like someone who's never had a bonus. Do you even know wtf a bonus is for? Hint, it's not altruism.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            Bonuses aren't really bonuses if they're incentives for doing more work.

            That's the exact idea behind a bonus. It's not because of altruism. The only case where this is different is if your company is a co-op or has profit sharing. The company I work for has profit sharing, which means I usually get a nice check for $10k-$15k/year. A friend of mine works for a co-op business(related to farming where this is common), and if there's more money being made everyone gets a cut and the rest goes into the "rainy day" fund for when times are bad.

            And $2-$5 above minimum wage is pretty much nothing, which is why only teenagers, illegal immigrants,and total fuck-ups work for such a rate.

            Then you should really turn around an

      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        "Do you see the Waltons giving bonuses to their employees?"

        John-boy has employees?

        Seriously, Mayer has taken a going business and run it into the ground (which is merely saying she couldn't overcome the inertia). Walmart continues to grow, even in the face of Amazon, where few other retailers have had success. Isn't it better for them to spread the benefit wider through growth and more employees, rather than deeper with fewer? In any case, they do pay bonuses [walmart.com], in addition to employing about 1000x more peo
      • by Kartu ( 1490911 )

        The fact that she actually receives bonuses for running a company from fail to epic fail deserves some credit too..

      • Do you see the Waltons giving bonuses to their employees? agreed. she needs to get on with her life. the employees could care less about her but, sure, they'll take the money, she will enjoy the tax deduction that she can reinvest back into yahoo.
      • The Walmart CEO makes significantly less than Mayer, only a few dollars an employee. They could not even buy a meal with the money if Walmart distributed their CEO's cash. Meanwhile, it is a very significant raise for every single employee if Mayer does so.

    • I thought it was a cruel joke since bonus' are usually tied to performance ergo she was really giving them nothing.
    • Like you would have given your bonus to employees in that situation. Or maybe you would have, but in that case you are quite a rare person.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    So Marissa Mayer screwed up, Yahoo employees screwed up, 1.5 billion users had their personal information compromised -- so give the EMPLOYEES a bonus?!?

    How about something for the 1.5 BILLION users whose information was compromised?

    • by lucm ( 889690 )

      How about something for the 1.5 BILLION users whose information was compromised?

      Here's something for those people: "fuck you".

      In a nutshell, that's what they get.

  • AKA, Yahoo customers.

    I'm a paying customer. Where's my remuneration for my problems?

  • Wrong recipients (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @10:13PM (#53959475) Journal

    Maybe she could give her bonus to the people whose accounts got hacked through Yahoo's gross incompetence.

    • Here tumblr note says:

      ...I have agreed to forgo my annual bonus...

      which sounds like it wasn't her idea. Perhaps she could be persuaded to cough up something to the account holders?

      • by geek ( 5680 )

        There is no way it was her idea. She's being pressured by the board and likely Verizon also to start trying to save Yahoo's image. She's as phony as they come.

    • by Monoman ( 8745 )

      Maybe they should also include the salary of the guy who got fired for it all... Ron Bell, Yahoo's "top lawyer". It really looks to me like Yahoo's senior management team got some crap legal advice about their "risk exposure" ... aka how much it was going to cost them if they did the right thing vs say nothing.

  • DId I read that right ? That's just fucking stupid.

    A programmer (for example) with more that 15 years of active experience that spent countless hours learning new stuff, and improving himself, making $200k a year (if he's lucky), cannot even 'accumulate' 1 million in five years... how the fuck are these CEOs making this much money ?

    $55 million in severance ?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      These are CEOs of non mom-and-pop companies. She's underpaid by comparison.

    • by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      Incompetence pays the most in the USA.

    • by geek ( 5680 )

      Not only that but Yahoo was offered nearly 50 billion as a buyout before she came on board. They are now selling for 4 billion. Not even a tenth of the previous value.

      10 years from now I'll be telling my son life isn't fair, here's the proof.

      • The offers are not comparable. The $50B offer included the Alibaba shares. The current deal doesn't.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by lucm ( 889690 )

        Feminazis keep saying that it's not her fault, that she was set for failure, that is was a glass cliff. But she did everything wrong; antagonize business partners, antagonize paying customers, shutdown profitable units to subsidize pet projects, let tech leads go and replace them by overpaid googlers. Again and again people came up with suggestions, solutions, plans; but she turned them down and kept driving this profitable company into the ground.

        Those millions she walk away with are not about her expertis

    • Welcome to capitalism: monarchy rebranded.

  • She needs to take her and ALL executives bonuses and start with the lowest paid employees and go up from there.
    Start with saying sorry for being a worthless CEO that is killing the company.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @11:43PM (#53959865)

    How is she getting a bonus? If it's scheduled then it's not a bonus, it's a wage. If it's not scheduled then WTF has she done to deserve a bonus?

  • The arrogance on display by top-level executives is astounding. Mayer is going to voluntarily give up her bonus, what a sacrifice! Of course, she didn't intentionally screw up [recode.net], so it's not her fault. The fact that any other employee who screwed up his/her area of responsibility would be (and was) sent packing? Doesn't matter, the elite are not to be held accountable.

    What is it about bonuses, anyway? They are handed out to top-level execs like candy - even in the case of the worst business failures, the bonu

  • "As a result of the hacks, Yahoo's top lawyer, Ron Bell, has been fired"

    This is probably all we need to know.

  • Someone probably hacked into her email and released a statement in her name to embarrass her.
  • The Associated Press is reporting that the Yahoo Board decided not to pay Marissa Mayer her annual cash bonus. Her message was sent out after that point requesting that the money, that she now isn't receiving, be distributed to Yahoo employees. The board has not yet decided to honor her request. Mayer did offer to also relinquish her stock award, which the board apparently accepted. So she has that going for her.

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