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Comment by greenhatman | Hacker News Reader

Is all the Marissa hate rooted in facts? Or do people not really think that far?

Just because a company failed, doesn't mean the CEO ran it into the ground. Is it possible that the company just didn't have any chance and that she actually did pretty well?

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Did you watch the decisions she made as they came down? It was bad call after bad call after bad call. Pretty much no one thinks she did even a mediocre job.

What were all these bad calls that weren't just due to hindsight?

So lets say that Marissa was handed a steaming bag (other than the BABA stake obviously) and that the stub was destined for failure either way (probably true). Why does she still deserve several hundred million from shareholders?

I think that is a criticism of the whole concept of golden parachutes in the C-suite. Mayer's compensation wasn't that unusual but it just seems silly to offer a huge amount of money in the event of failure.

I mean, even high level employees joining a beleaguered companies don't get big payouts if they fail or the company goes under. Why should it be any different for the C-suite? You should only get a big payout for success.

Because that's the contract she signed knowing that this was a possible outcome and could ruin her career.

I wouldn't say the company didn't have a chance, I would say that it was on a downward trajectory that would have been a challenge for any CEO to turn around. Given the challenge I understand the aggressive compensation package.

I don't know if Mayer was the best person for the job, but at the least I can't say she was appreciably worse than any of the previous Yahoo CEO's.

I think its largely because she's a woman. Yahoo was a already sinking ship when she took over and I think she did a decent job.

There are loads of overpaid executives in tech and no-one else gets as much hate as Marissa does. The main other unliked executive is Sheryl Sandberg who's also missing a Y Chromosome.

Or, it could just be your confirmation bias. I'm not saying women aren't treated harshly, but plenty of male CEOs also get flak (uber, Adobe etc). IMHO, women are treated unfairly at lower levels of work, it is hard to sympathize equally for someone who has risen to the CEO level and still feels discriminated.

I think Marissa Mayer's gender was a double-edged sword. She got a lot more media coverage than most males would've gotten in her situation and I think that gave her turnaround effort a bit of a positive perception boost. She also received a lot of scrutiny and a magnifying glass on mistakes whereas a male in that situation might not have.

I agree that Yahoo was a sinking ship from the start, and ultimately I think she may get another shot at CEO because of that.

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