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Comment by alistproducer2 | Hacker News Reader

Marissa Mayer did the same thing shortly after getting to Yahoo. I think the results there speak for themselves. There's never a case where a move like this will boost morale or attract/keep top talent. IMO moves like this are all about showing dominance and being a "person of action." It's corporate politics showmanship at the expense of results.

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Remember, though, Marissa's move came because a very large number of Yahoo remote employees weren't working. I went through something similar at Intel about 10 years ago when "telecommuting" became a code word for not really doing any work.

I don't think IBM is in the same situation, though. Telecommuting works or fails based on a company's culture, work ethic, and employee accountability.

If an employee can do nothing and remain employed, the issue is not where the employee does nothing from. It's the fact that the company doesn't expect anything from said employees. Telecommuting has nothing to do with it. Lack of a managerial layer that a.) makes sure employees have anything to do or b.) consistently accept late deadlines or a total dereliction of duty has everything to do with it. I'm not getting paid million of dollars a year like Mayer, or any c-suite executive is, but I managed to figure that out. They know it too, but again, it's easier to pick the lowest hanging fruit (the abused "privilege" of your employees) and say "look at how decisive I am making this major cultural shift."

> I think the results there speak for themselves

151% stock increase? Nearly double market cap?

are you seriously arguing Mayer's tenure was a success? Every major decision she had her fingerprints on (sumly, tumblr, etc) turned out to be massive, expensive failures. Lots of external factors go into stock price so I would argue stock price alone is not a good indicator of leadership.

I'm no fan of hers but I think she failed at an impossible task and could have done a lot worse.

I can't actually tell if you're kidding. Forgetting whatever made up number Wall St. has assigned as Yahoo's "worth" they've gone down in flames completely as an organization.

I don't judge a business by the stock ticker, I judge one by their products.

Yahoo had a negative valuation if you removed their stake in Alibaba.

Not really true..

The math that made the rounds was based on a faulty premise. You basically had what I'll call Yahoo Group (YG) comprised of Core Yahoo (CY), a stake in Alibaba (YAB) and Yahoo Japan (YJ).

People were saying that if you took YG and subtracted YAB and YJ, that the value of the remaining business, CY, was negative.

What they missed was that you can't just plop in the current market price of YAB and YJ. Yahoo's ownership in those companies was old enough that they would have to pay significant taxes to unload them.

So the real math would be YG = [YAB x (1-T)] + [YJ x (1-T)] + CY

Where T is the tax rate. Realistically, it'd be some Monte Carlo of the likelihood of tax rates as they were aggressively trying to minimize the tax paid, but still, CY wouldn't be negative.

As a final bit of evidence for this -- Yahoo's core business was just bought for over $4.5 billion. So.. you know.. not a negative number.

You mean Alibaba Holding Co? The value of Yahoo is entirely based on their Alibaba holdings.

I find the enthusiasm for tearing down Mayer gross, but to be clear: subtract the value of the alibaba stock and all that disappears.

Would it be less gross if she were not a woman? When other CEOs make decisions that ruin a company, they get critized too. Steve Balmer was a frequent object of ridicule. Other women execs such as Sandberg aren't treated badly -- the enthusiasm for tearing Mayer down comes from the fact that she was lauded as some kind of exceptional executive when she was really just a lot of high minded talk backed by questionable decisions and a slew of pointless acquisitions at ridiculous prices. She was positioned as some kind of ultra-woman when she was just mediocre at best (within the Yahoo context.) In my mind, Mayer earned every cent of criticism and someone like Sandberg has earned every cent of praise.

> Would it be less gross if she were not a woman?

> the enthusiasm for tearing Mayer down comes from the fact that she was lauded as some kind of exceptional executive

While some of the comments are no doubt rooted in the perspective you mention, there are also plenty of overtly misogynistic comments about her too. I think it's a bit of whitewashing to claim that all the enthusiasm for tearing her down is strictly disconnected from gender. I don't know how you can read the comments that go by on reddit et all and pretend that elephant in the room isn't there.

I think a lot of the criticism of Balmer is specific and factual, but that people also overlook that on raw financials his tenure at MS was successful.

I agree using a protected status classfication to justify what happened at Yahoo is gross. She made the company less profitable and a place few would apply.

The only reason Mayer was brought into the discussion is because she employed a similar tactic: not because I was "enthused" with tearing her down. I haven't read any criticism in this thread that was base or that smacked of sexism. The criticism has stuck to the facts of her tenure.

I can't even name a single Yahoo product I ever used beyond circa 2000 search. I don't even know what that company does anymore. Google owns half the internet, Apple makes stuff you can buy in stores.. Yahoo? The company that can't even secure email passwords? Hurray for Melissa!

I still have my email address from them since 1996. Still use it. People still consider me "aged" because of that.

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