Saturday, August 11, 2012
Of Marissa Mayer and Yahoo and Google
Reading of Yahoo and the potential acquisitions that new CEO Marissa Mayer may make, I begin to hope that Yahoo may perk up and yodel again. Yahoo is one of my old favorites, and besides, I'd probably let my long-held Y-hosted site die an agonizing death instead of trying to move it, if Yahoo's hosting crumbled. Selfish of me, I know. But here's another thing or two that occurred to me, while reading all this stuff. Google didn't promote Mayer, said several articles. 'Why, why?' they asked. It took several more articles for a glimmer of an idea to seep into my brain. One article called Mayer the user-friendliest component of Google. Now, there's the crux of it, I'll bet. 'Don't be evil' was Google's old motto, but it seems to me, of late, that 'Do evil, but on the sly' might me their newest, truest. There was Google Buzz, Ad tracking, and Google Plus. And there was that accusation that Google was putting it's own product results closer to the top than competitors. Maybe Mayer objected to Google's new kick, of putting Google interests over user interests? Maybe Google wants Mayer elsewhere. Dunno, could be... If so, that's a plus for Yahoo.
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Here is another take on the tale based on what's written outside:
ReplyDelete1) MM used to make senior executives wait in a line outside her office for 5 minute meetings.
2) MM claimed 130 hour work weeks -- the only the math works for someone who is "fashionable", "hosts parties for the Obamas", "keeps herself in shape", etc., is by fudging the math [if you are the boss, you can call any slice of time as 'work' -- shower? thinking about work; sleep? dreaming about work]
3) She used her "130 hour work weeks" as a benchmark for her subordinates. Well, if you are the boss, you can orient your work the way you want it -- like a driver in the car who chides the passengers if they fall asleep, or doesn't acknowledge the effort it takes for the navigator to stay awake. Being in the driver seat is much easier than being in the passenger seat.
Such is a person is evil. She is very successful, so is Sarah Palin. She is very "tough", so is Sarah Palin. Just because she went to Stanford and votes democratic, doesn't change anything.
I misread the motto as "don't do evil" (a dating advice to someone higher up at Google)?
How Google tolerated such behavior for so long is a bit puzzling.
She and Sarah Palin will do fine for themselves. There's neither humility nor humanity in them, which is a good predictor of success.
Evil looks beautiful and charming, but don't do evil!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteBoth comments seem to have been left by someone with a political agenda, and looks as if it was the same commenter. Deleted first as SPAM, would do same w/second, but it does seem relevant to topic. Perhaps the anonymous poster does have some knowledge of the subject. I have very little, just trying to figure out if Yahoo will live or die...
ReplyDeleteSecond comment was in frustration that the first one didn't show up (hence the accusations directed at you -- I feel stupid, and apologize).
ReplyDeleteAbout the political agenda. Not much. I love open source, Google, and it would be a dream job of mine to ever get there [now that I know, with a condition that it should be in a nicer team]. There has been an aura of utopia built around Google, and I truly believed it. In fact, I was the first one that rejoiced that someone like MM will be leading Yahoo.
Then, I read an article on slashdot about long hours and a quote by MM about how she puts in 130 hours and lets her employee go home on Thursday night early in exchange for taking 1 am calls*. Seemed weird, what with 20% personal project time, and all perks like doctor/hair dresser/dentist/counselor on premises. What MM said didn't compute (and logic error is something that makes me go crazy, as the posts indicate). I did some searches on MM (I felt like a kid that realized for the first time there is no Santa Claus, and in fact, the Santa at the mall was caught inappropriately touching the kids).
Your blog post seemed weird. Your premise was that she is a saint, and GOOG must have done something horrible to drive her away (70M compensation).
[*] The 1 am calls and the team MM was leading is Google Finance -- it is probably in the bottom 5 percentile of Google's products, and gets clicks because it sits near News and Search (compare Yahoo finance for instance).
Not that it diminishes anything that Google does. It is just some impotent rage the type I felt when Elizabeth Warren could not be confirmed because some democrats were actively lobbying for the banks. With Google, I didn't think there was a need for power games (everyone made tonnes of money, good procedures, idealism, etc.), but the press coverage of MM spoiled it. I wish she stopped at 110 or 120 hours -- 130 made it a proverbial "buffer overflow".
I have an interview with Google lined up, so I hope this level of criticism is tolerated there. I have a nasty attitude to complement my limited technical and thinking skills -- may be a case of preemptive "sour grapes"?
That said, when I pull an all-nighter and ask some junior persons to hang around, I am more than grateful if they are there for just a few hours. I cannot even imagine how mind numbing it would be for them to watch me type or rewrite code or documents or think aloud or go jump randomly from one page to another. For me, it is more thrill than a video game; for them it is as much thrill as watching someone playing a vvideo game. If, at the end of it, I claim that I am superior to them because of work ethic, I would have difficulty sleeping well at night.
Which may explain why she is able to put in 130 hours!
Of course, you can distill the whole part of the first post to "MM may not be a saint", or even generalize "no one is a saint". Rest all is noise, except for the Sarah Palin comparison.
ReplyDeleteThere is a hypocrisy when we put down Sarah Palin (she made tonnes of money peddling sound bytes, a super sales person!), while simultaneously sing gospels about MM (because she made 300M at Goog or negotiated a good deal with Yhoo? the angel investor who cut a check for 25k or 250k made 1B+)
Anecdotes about her ranking 14 offers on a spreadsheet [why so many offers simultaneously? can't one rule out some right away?], anecdotes about visionary leadership [what product?], mentoring [did anyone she mentored become better than her -- that is a tough standard but a fantastic metric], etc., indicate some embellishment.
Also, I fail to see much difference between GOP's solution for unemployment (just go get a job) and the gospel of MM (just figure out what is important in life and do it after you set aside 130 hours to work). In both cases, there is a sense that their success is just and fair, and if some have a tough time, they deserve it because they are lazy.
It may help them to come to terms with their cognitive dissonance (the paths of someone that joined Nortel in 1998 vs one who joined Goog in 1998 would have ended up very differently, and no one could have predicted in 1998 that the Goog/Nortel ratio would be so bad -- Nortel sky rocketed till 2000. What about a guy that joined NASA at that time?).
This sort of a post-facto fictitious linear relationships between success and talent/vision/hardwork essentially dehumanize people, and provide a way for the successful ones to explain away why others deserve what they get. The media tries to sex-up stories. There's nothing fairy tale like about MM; she joined a rising startup, got successful. Compare to Steve Jobs: founded AAPL, star rises, gets kicked out, starts NeXT, doesn't succeed (NeXT boxes were a thing of beauty but expensive), starts Pixar, succeeds, brings back NeXT to AAPL, and the story ties back very well (funny though his net worth was less than Steve Ballmer's). We don't see articles about how philanthropic Jobs was or how nice he was [he was neither!]. However, we are seeing articles about how MM is something like "looks like a model, speaks like a politician, and thinks like a super scientist", and "manages like a visionary, mentors like the greatest leaders" [her vision: sort applicants by GPA, since "good people are good at everything"].
Sadly, Google played up this image of "MM as a muse for everyone" for a long time.
Coming to the intent of this post, why not just delete all the responses, and add a small note that there are some things about MM that do not square well (you can do some searches -- and note how little of announcements from Goog... Wouldn't they announce best wishes and say something nice as a first major graduate of Goog culture?)
Please search for "The ones who walk away from Omelas" to get an idea of what angle I am looking at this.
I would not delete your responses because they disagreed with me. Truly, I had decided that the posts were about Palin instead of Mayer ~ it often does happen on blogs as we approach elections. I misunderstood your true interest in the topic. Well, it's true that I only know about Marissa Mayer through on-line articles ~ not knowledgeable about the subject at all. Yahoo has has done so many weird things in the last few years, vamping up profiles, then getting rid of profiles, then bringing them back as something else. They let us use the Yahoo interface to post on Twitter and Facebook briefly, and just about the time I started using it, they took that option away. I went through hell while they were upgrading from Yahoo Personal Mail to Yahoo Business Mail ~ couldn't access certain mail features or add a new email address for months on end (even though I had a paid account), and not a word of explanation from Yahoo (or at least, nothing that actually addressed my specific problem). Plus, I couldn't find a good way to contact customer service. So, my even knowing about MM was through searches on Yahoo, trying to find out what was going on with Yahoo. There was all this news about their new CEO, and how everyone was hopeful. Certainly I am hopeful ~ I've invested a lot of time in building a site on Yahoo, I don't want it to go the way of GeoCities. When I read that Y! had a new CEO, most articles on the woman seemed very positive, so I guess I accepted them at face value. There were a few negative ones on her. I started trying to figure out which were right, the positive or negative ones, and saw that people said she was an advocate for the user. First thing I notice, with her gone, is that Google has put an ad on the search page; albeit a quiet one. Still, it does seem that you are very knowledgeable about the subject, and I apologize for thinking your posts were political. I guess it's legitimate to compare/contrast two powerful women to each other. I'm afraid that my take on this is strictly from a user and amateur point of view: why, oh why, must these perpetual shake-ups way up high put such upheaval into my life ~ when all I want to do is keep a simple website and blog on line? So, truly, you are free to state a positive or negative opinion. I just misread your intent ~ thought that one was positive, one was negative, and both lead to Palin. Could be I didn't read between the lines and that some of your comments were meant to be ironic. Thanks for hanging around, and sorry I didn't get to the moderation right away ~ wasn't at my computer for a couple of days. You know, about the aura of utopia built around Google, that's true. I am suspicious of Google's motives these days, myself ~ have been ever since that Google Buzz business.
ReplyDeleteYou should be able to move the blog posts to another platform -- keep periodic backups and if the provider goes belly up, use the latest backup (though it may require contacting neighborhood moms to see if there is a grown up nerd still living in their basement).
ReplyDeleteOr, you can just copy the blog posts and comments to a single "living document" (watch out for buzzwords). At the end of it all, blogging is an avenue to vent, a channel to express some creative thoughts, and a means to build some memories (of course, it is also a 100% guaranteed way to pickup chicks/dudes, but don't tell my wife about that).
For me, this blog provided a place to "let some steam off". I don't know why I reacted so strongly to the news of MM and the 130 hours. May be I have become like one of the Fox viewers that need to get their fix of daily outrage. A more plausible explanation is that I can't pull myself to read ABCs of computing for the interview. A nice position came up suddenly and unexpectedly and I accepted it without hesitation -- I let them know that I have this interview, but would defer GOOG offer if (oh, it is a really big IF) I get it. I want to get through the GOOG interview desperately too, more for a sense of pride [after letting many people know that I want to get to GOOG], and it would also be a nice experience if it ends up as an engaging discussion with a smart person that likes what he/she does, and is grounded.
The worst case will be that the interview will be a horrible mismatch -- a p_ssing contest between a disgruntled underachiever* being interviewed by an intolerable overachiever.
[*] critics may disagree about me being an underachiever -- I can imagine them saying, "considering your single digit IQ, it is remarkable that you learned how to use a computer and can type a few words, so, you are definitely NOT an underachiever" :)
Oh, about the aura of utopia around Google... Isn't it so ironic that I was sneering at Mitt Romney's "corporations are people too" statement, while problem anthropomorphizing a "wonderful company" like Google.
Me got brass b@lls. Without giving away my identity, let me say that I raised this stuff on a phone interview.
ReplyDeleteI like the 'pissing contest' allusion. Completely unrelated, but when I used to get so irritated trying to write HTML and this blogger or that one insisted theirs was the 'right' and only way (yet each conflicted w/the other) I thought of it as the 'penis wars.' Well, I would that it were so easy to move sites and blogs. My Yahoo site is a static site, not a blog. Who knows how many pages in how many folders over a ten-year build? (SouthernMuse.com) I had to move it once years ago when Icom went defunct. It was a little bitty site, then--and I remember it as being no picnic to move it to Yahoo... Anyhow, interesting input. You obviously are NOT an underachiever, lol. Good luck w/the interview, hope you make it. When you do, think of us poor borderline computer-illiterate users out here, who barely know a browser from a modem, and just want to get on here and express...something. Like, we didn't have to work so dang hard to talk on a phone. Of course, I wasn't around when talking on a phone involved splicing the wires yourself or cranking a thingamajig and talking to an operator--and I suppose that's where we are with computing. One day, it will be old hat.
ReplyDelete