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Comment by elgabogringo | Hacker News Reader

Has the valley ever seen a more hyped, yet disappointing hire than Mayer?

Theranos.

The valley is very sensitive towards women running companies with large valuations, that company's woes would otherwise have flown completely under the radar. The next one on the "overhyped but disappointing and in the valley list" would be Clinkle and its now 24 year old CEO. No women there but as you will see the valuations drop off a cliff pretty quickly in this list.

Why is the primary factor behind Theranos's bubble the fact that its founder was a woman? That is a notable aspect but Elizabeth Holmes also leveraged powerful connections and a TED-friendly dream to get that hype. There are plenty of female-led startups that did not reach any notable status despite having a woman at the helm.

The bubble and valuation? Thats not the real discussion here. The meltdown of a company that has no consumer product would never have drawn clicks. Fidelity could have marked it down 50 times and never made the news. There are tons of biotech startups with lofty valuations.

There was a consumer product. They performed thousands of blood tests, which were available in Palo Alto and Arizona.

But it's false that companies that don't have a consumer product don't draw intense interest. Ask Enron. Or WorldCom. Or Blackwater. Or Lehman Brothers. Or the folks behind the AOL and Time Warner merger

You have a point, but it operates under the assumption that there is an interest in disproving a role her gender had in the attention. An assumption I can't empirically prove, nor one you can empirically prove.

I would like to think the blood test product scandal was interesting on its own merits, amongst all of the other frauds going on in this country, but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective conscious because of that.

Holmes represents something inspirational to a marginalized demographic.

> but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective conscious because of that.

It was elevated because of the massive PR push by Theranos itself. I never even heard of Theranos until they did a massive PR push in 2013 or 2014. That, combined with the fact the company is valued at $9 billion, apparently has no actual working product and numerious other interesting facts about the company including it's well-connected-to-Gov (and large) [former?] Board of Directors, co-founder who committed suicide, at least two-large corporate partnerships that blew up (Safeway, Walgreens), etc., etc.

I'd like to see a woman hired as CEO for whom the principle talking point isn't that she's female.

I don't fucking care.

Be competent. Be a decent person.

Meg Whitman is a horrible person from everything I've seen. She's managed not to kill what's left with HP after Carly Fiorina drove it into the ground.

I meant to search for "most notable (female|woman) tech ceo", but left out the gender qualification.

A top 10 list fails to include any women:

http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/top-tech-ceos/#WNfESM0rbqqN

A list of 13 likewise:

http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company-...

A slideshow item I refuse to link on principle lists Alibaba, HP, Oracle (co-CEO), IBM, Xerox, Yahoo, YouTube, and ... um, one other I've now forgotten, fuck the slideshow very much. Oh, AMD. None of which are startups.

Women hold 23 CEO positions (4.3%) of the S&P 500, four of which I've already mentioned:

http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-sp-500

http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company-...

I think we'd all love to see the day when a woman reaching the position of Fortune 500 isn't news. As much as we might argue how much of Mayer's meteoric rise was because of her being a woman, I think it's outweighed by the fact that when she fucks up, she has to bear the burden of being the latest face of female inferiority.

Carly Fiorina.

Yahoo was dead man walking before Mayer came on. She wasn't the right hire to save it, but she wasn't the hire that killed it.

Fiorina drove HP into the ground hard. It's survived, only barely, but no thanks to her.

And while both are women, I'd keep an eye on both Nadella (Microsoft) and Pichai (Google). Nadella's got a turn-around job. Pichai's starting from a better position, but with a company that's grown fat, lazy, distracted, and manifestly evil. I'd actually say Pichai's got the harder job, and I've not been particularly impressed.

(The fact that I had to look up each of their names to confirm spelling says something about the lack of billing either's getting.)

I'd argue too that Sculley at Apple was quite possibly Worst Hire Ever, in terms of total impact and lost potential. Latter proven by Job's return.

(That said as someone who's not particularly a fan of Apple or Jobs.)

Gil Amelio at SGI did spectacularly bad things rapidly as well.

From a purely outcome-based view, I'd say firing Jobs was the best thing for Apple's long-term success. NeXT software was critical to the turnaround, and Steve apparently learned quite a bit (even some humility) during his time in the wilderness.

So: yay Sculley?

Bad luck? Good luck?

http://ymaa.com/articles/stories-proverbs/blessing-in-disgui...

Carly Fiorina?

As per Wikipedia: "several commentators ranked Fiorina as one of the worst American (or tech) CEOs of all time"

Then as a punishment for being a shitty CEO: "In 2010, she won the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in California; "

Overall she looks like at least a good challenger to Myers.

Fiorina certainly wins that matchup at least. Mayer arguably took over a no-win kobayashi maru situation and managed to at least not have it go up in a fireball. But, personally, I'd settle for a significantly smaller payday than Mayer simply to not make a further mess of a company going down the tubes.

Fiorina, on the other hand, caused active damage to HP and had at least some role in the evolution of what at least became probably the most dysfunctional board in a large tech company ever.

I don't know about hyped, but Carol Bartz (also at Yahoo) was the most disappointing. She single-handedly killed Yahoo faster than anyone else. Compared to her, Mayer is a genius.

True. Funny how the biggest contenders for "most disappointing" on this thread are all former Yahoo CEO's. Mayer, Bartz, Semel.

If you're a Yahoo shareholder, you're probably not all that disappointed. I believe their stock price has roughly doubled. Regardless of whether that was purely due to Alibaba or not, with her at the top spot the investors have done quite well.

Make them work on-site, problems solved.

-Mayer

Jonathan Schwartz?

Worst hair for sure.

Whoever downvoted this comment has no sense of humor.

Terry Semel

I mostly know that him through reading about his daughter on TMZ

Haha!

Terry Semel is where the "Yahoo is a media company" thing began.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/can-terry-semel-yahoo/ http://www.wired.com/2007/02/yahoo-3/

I'm still puzzled by Yahoo's hiring Semel, more than any other executive mentioned in this thread. (e.g. hiring Fiorina for HP made sense at the time).

He was from hollywood, right? No "tech" experience? In some ways he was right. A lot of "tech companies" are media companies now. Was he ahead of his time? A poor exec?

Yes on the two questions, but for as to exactly why the idea failed, I don't know. I'm an outsider to Yahoo, maybe someone who was there at the time has more perspective. [1]

I just remember thinking at the time they hired him (and still think): "I use Yahoo for products like Groups, Mail, Messenger, and so on, why are they hiring the guy who greenlit Batman?"

[1] - Another article discussing the topic in the meantime: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/6/was-yahoo-s-terry-seme...

It was Jerry's idea that tech was becoming immaterial and that the web would be just another media conduit. Terry was approached based on this. It was a mistake.

Jerry Yang sought out Semel. Blame Jerry.

Yahoo was always trying to position itself as a media company rather than a tech company. It was a strategic decision to fend off Microsoft -- who was a very very real threat in late 90s. Also, keep in mind that AOL was huge and actually bought Time Warner in an attempt at vertical integration (cable modems, Internet, and content). These decision made lots of sense at the time.

Portals were a big deal. Providing content and being a destination were considered important. They're still important, but apparently being a site that sells classified ads on URL redirects turns out to be a better deal.

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