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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

> Sure, there are plenty of shitty CEOs who don't deserve their compensation. But you have to respect the fact that, at this level, if you aren't sharp, you'll be fleeced by your peers (i.e. De Castro, and whoever negotiated the Mozilla deal). You don't want to work for a CEO who is getting the short end of the stick all the time.

I always assumed there were some shark lawyers behind these deals, does the CEO really ignore advice and go it alone? In Mayer's case it really does seem so, but a non-sharp CEO should still be able to not be eaten alive if they bring good counsel to the table (though I guess that itself is the sign of being sharp!).

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I think it's selling Marissa short to say she just didn't understand the contracts or her legal options and potential consequences.

I think she understood the consequences but thought that the risk was worth the reward. In some cases I think personal hubris was involved.

I don't do Billion dollar deals but I've done my share of 7 figure ones. At some point in every negotiation you need to tell your attorney that you understand the risks and you're willing to accept those risks or nothing would ever get signed. I think Marissa was convinced the Mozilla deal would be huge for Yahoo. She likely didn't think or care if the company got sold (honestly in that case she's probably out so there's no personal risk for her) and she was convinced DeCastro would be able to do at Yahoo what he was able to do at Google.

> I think it's selling Marissa short to say she just didn't understand the contracts or her legal options and potential consequences.

So she understood the consequences, but just had no clue as to their likelihood or didn't care because she would be set financially? It's horrible either way, she should not be negotiating deals at all.

there is a favorable interpretation of this for Meyer.

they're in a bidding war for mozilla with Google and Bing. Yahoo needs their traffic and is willing to exceed the price of the other buyers.. but it's well known that Yahoo has been struggling for years. So a cautious Mozilla would not take their offer unless it was substantially higher, or had some kind of protection if yahoo fails. Yahoo offers this clause, since Mozilla wouldn't do the deal otherwise.

Remember Mozilla wasn't desperate. They could have accepted another offer for at least $300m/year. Yahoo would have been seen as higher risk... people talk every few months about yahoo like it's a miracle they still exist.

Now, I don't know what happened. but yahoo agreeing to this does not necessarily mean Marissa is incompetent or didn't care or whatever.

Right. I have a feeling that this is shocking mostly because of the context, and not necessarily because of the agreement itself. How many other high risk agreements have been made in the world? I'm pretty sure most of the human universe runs on this kind of thing, we just either don't find out about it because it pays off, or it doesn't matter, because the context isn't exciting. I said "wow" when I first read it, but only because of what I know about the whole Yahoo and Marissa situation, not because it seems like a particularly crazy deal by itself.

> but just had no clue as to their likelihood

Likelihood is probability based on factors, each of which has different weight and is again based on other factors. In hindsight, the likelihood seems obvious; when she was making the decision, not so much.

Back in the nineties Excite did a similar deal with Netscape. Not a billion dollars but it was something like $70 million when Excite only had a fraction of that in the bank.

It worked for them in the short term. The traffic enabled them to raise more money and eventually IPO.

Mayer probably thought a similar shoot-the-moon risk was necessary for Yahoo.

> At some point in every negotiation you need to tell your attorney that you understand the risks and you're willing to accept those risks or nothing would ever get signed.

Amen to that!

> I always assumed there were some shark lawyers behind these deals, does the CEO really ignore advice and go it alone?

The leadership / negotiation prowess includes the ability to pick, hire, delegate and trust good people.

It is not a coincidence that she was neither able to negotiate a good deal but also failed to negotiate hiring competent advisors. There is a large overlap there.

Perhaps behind De Castro is a competent group of lawyers or advisors as well.

> It is not a coincidence that she was neither able to negotiate a good deal but also failed to negotiate hiring competent advisors. There is a large overlaps there.

Though she did negotiate herself one hell of a contract. When it personally counts she finds competent people to negotiate!

That's a good point.

Right, you need to be knowledgeable enough to delegate. It's genuinely a tall order to be able to figure who is a good product leader, who is a good CTO, who is a good CFO, who is a good litigator, head of HR, etc. Those fields are so disparate, and if you don't know enough about them, you won't be able to judge talent.

It's exactly the same reason that programmers need to be interviewed by programmers, and programmers prefer to work for managers that were programmers. You really do have to understand something about someone's job if you will manage them (and potentially fire them).

People with specialized knowledge will do all sorts of things to mislead you about their job performance -- doesn't matter if it's an engineer, lawyer, or finance person.

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