Yahoo's Marissa Mayer could get $55M in severance pay

No writes "expert in converting investors money into my own" on their CV but it is the main skill of most CEOs these days.

(The racial/ethnic minority markets, especially older people, are also dramatically under-saturated, so there's a huge amount of growth opportunity there.)

And at some point slow-death while maximizing profits from each user actually is the right strategy for a business. I suspect Netflix DVD-by-mail business is largely operating on that model now.

Tumblr was an acquisition, and a very expensive one, which would not have been made by non-Mayer person following my strategy. Young people do not, generally, use Flickr (at least in the US); they use Instagram or Vine/etc.

(In 2005, what Yahoo! should have done was different than what Yahoo! should have done in 2013 -- in 2005, it still had a reasonable array of options. By 2013, the olds strategy was probably the most viable operating strategy, although even then, massive cost cutting and redistribution of Alibaba winnings to shareholders might have been the most preferred outcome.)

As a college freshman in 04-05, I have no idea what you're talking about.

It could be true, but it certainly isn't obvious.

Maybe, but I doubt. An executive like her wouldn't settle just for a paycheck, success and image are way more important. Instead of becoming the CEO that saved Yahoo, her legacy is that she will become the last CEO of Yahoo (when the worst case happens) that didn't turn Yahoo around plus acquired a bunch of expensive startups. Oh yeah she did turn the culture around inside Yahoo more Google-like benefit, but history book usually tells the bad things first.

In fact it doesn't take an executive role to understand. I wouldn't want to go to another job with little accomplishment in my previous job. I just feel shit if I do.

I can't think of any profession where the demands to compensation ratio is so out of whack. As an engineer you're expected to be exceptionally bright, exceptionally creative (we have to invent new things all of the time), exceptionally passionate, deal with stress (an off-by-one error can cost your company millions) all while living a very middle class life. I'm sure being a brain surgeon is much more stressful and takes longer to achieve, but hey, those people live in neighborhoods I can't afford to go into.

There are all kinds of startups that Yahoo could have bought or invested in, all kinds of areas that have the potential to be wildly successful. Who would have thought Amazon, a retailer, would be the platform of the cloud computing world.

It's the CEO job to see this, what not everyone else can see. That's what deserves the many millions of $.

Meanwhile the engineers who get fired walk away with nothing.

Bleeding a failing company dry with a huge comp package is the complete opposite of taking responsibility. If Mayer stood to lose $300MM of her own money (i.e., money that she had before she joined Yahoo), then we could talk about leadership with consequences.

The problem is that companies are over reliant on a single leadership figure. This makes little sense in large companies with lots of complex divisions and interests. Does it really make sense to rely on a single person to guide the company?

It's altogether different point what market gives to that person. Market generally rewards anyone irrespective of their actual merits, because market works on apparent merits and anyone good at selling themselves succeed.

Ponzi was a very good example of how markets work. [1]

Yahoo as well might have allowed itself to get "ponzied". That's their foolishness and they are paying its price.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

Edit: typo and added link

The downside protection afforded to CEOs is ridiculous - heads I win, tails you lose.

As a CEO, you can screw up a company -- as a result, the employees and shareholders. However, the CEO's future must be secured.

Not bad.

If you were given $55 million and left tomorrow, then never worked again, by the time you hit 60 you won't have spent even half of it.

Frankly, $55 million is an obscene amount of money.

No, that is the 55,000,000.00 question.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur means people like Elon Musk not corporate CEO's like Marissa Mayer...

When a certain part of economy inflates some other part deflates. And that other part might be more important than unicorn companies that are pure bubbles full of hot air offering exaclty 0 in the society.

I hope you cheerlead with a lot of gusto for the golden boys. After all they didn't take money out of your pockets? Right? Right???

I am more convinced every day that the marginal income tax above a certain limit (my proposal is 100 * 2000 * minimum wage per hour, I'm willing to go lower to build consensus) above which the income shall be taxed at 90% of the additional income. It is the right thing to do. I want companies to go to the executives and say "look, it costs us too much to give you any more money. Please try to cooperate."

It is the right thing to do.

Since you bring up stagnating wages, it sounds like you are suggesting that the reason middle class workers aren't being paid more is because the money is going to bigger CEO pay. Do you think that if the CEO was paid less, then that money would go to the workers? Because it wouldn't, it would go towards higher profits for the company and so more money for the shareholders. The shareholders, who ultimately decide how much the CEO gets paid. This is the problem some of us have with debates about CEO compensation. It ultimately boils down to complaining about how people choose to spend their own money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...

The government failed to do its job since 197x. The growing income disparity is the result of free market let run completely free by the government. It is the basic example from statistics 101 - in completely symmetric odds situation that thus looks fair at first ("free market"), the player with deepest pockets wins with higher probability. The government by not increasing minimum wage provided for much significant disparity between the "depth of pockets" and thus the resulting increasing income gap.

You're acting like they just hired Paris Hilton off the street, when the reality is that she busted her ass her entire career in a field that few women have had major success in.

The last CEO to hold onto the job at Yahoo as long as Mayer has is Terry Semel, and he got booted in 2007.

Executive pay is what it is because the system is very, very broken.

The manners in which it has been systemically broken and remains broken through the collusion of the infinitesimally small number of people occupying the roles of winner are well documented, indeed, they are trivial to enumerate.

I'll say it again. In the future, that we let these systems degrade to this point will be viewed with horror, and the same sort of moral incomprehension that we now claim to hold with respect to slavery and every other human failing.

I hope my children see the day. If they don't it's because things have continued to slide in the other direction, which means things are going to live in a nightmare.

It was always the kinda-dowdy boring brand for non-technical people. Even at the very beginning it wasn't even the go-to link list for smart/knowledgeable people. Yahoo! Mail was for people who were too unresourced to have their own mail accounts or maintain university/work/etc. accounts.

This practice of manufacturing discrimination seems to be a popular tool among feminists (see: Hillary Clinton)

I also am not sure how you'd distinguish she was getting criticized due to her gender as opposed to it just being an extremely iconic company from internet history that has steadily gone down the tubes. It's a bad situation and tons of people have lost their jobs, I'm not sure how one could speculate accurately that the criticisms are because she's female vs. the other dozens of issues.

cheers

Scully and then Amelio @ Apple? Fiorina @ HP, certainly after Eckhard Pfeiffer screwed the pooch at Compaq. C. Edward Acker after Sewell screwed up at Pan Am. Kay Whitmore at Kodak.

Edison was a horrible CEO; but of the many companies he founded, the only one that survives is the one that fired him early on. No one every hired him to be a turn-around person.

Turn arounds are hard. The company falters. New person brought in. That person fumbles. Yet another new person. Company recovers. If the company doesn't recover - you probably haven't heard of them.