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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

> I personally viewed her job as managing the divestiture of the valuable part of the company (Alibaba) in such a way that it delivered maximum value to the shareholders of Yahoo.

If that was the case she never would have been given the job. That's something any old bean counter could do and they wouldn't require hundreds of millions of dollars for the babysitting job.

She spent Yahoo's money like a drunken sailor, an odd thing to do if her job was managing Alibaba (how exactly do you manage a passive stake in anything?).

Some examples:

* Tumblr - $1.1b with the majority of that later written off because they have only figured out how to keep losing money

* Polyvore - $230m A fashion search engine run by people she used to mentor at Google

* Summly - $30m to a teenager for a news app that was shut down and never heard of again

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> She spent Yahoo's money like a drunken sailor, an odd thing to do if her job was managing Alibaba (how exactly do you manage a passive stake in anything?).

Well, it's no small thing to divest a big chunk of equity like that without crushing the value. There are a few ways you can do it, but you need someone empowered to actually execute on it for the board. That's the CEO's job. She did a good job in that.

And yeah, she made some bad acquisitions. But most of these types of acquisitions fail (it's not like great companies put themselves up for sale -- just look at Microsoft's or HP's acquisition history) and the losses on those acquisitions were more than made up for by the additional amount she was able to get for the combined Alibaba + Yahoo. She basically ended up spinning off the entire value of the Alibaba stake plus $4.5 billion -- which is about $5 billion ahead of where the company was at when she started (remember the articles basically saying Yahoo's operations were worth negative money?)

>it's not like great companies put themselves up for sale -- just look at Microsoft's or HP's acquisition history

I wouldn't think of HP or post-Gates Microsoft as very good examples of how to run a publicly-traded tech firm.

I think OP's point was that Microsoft and HP have purchased a bunch of not-so-great companies.

i think the point was that is an EASY hurdle to get over

>... She basically ended up spinning off the entire value of the Alibaba stake plus $4.5 billion -- which is about $5 billion ahead of where the company was at when she started

The market value of the company almost always is not equal to what the company could sell itself for to another company. In this case, the board would have likely gotten much more for the shareholders by spinning off Alibaba and selling the rest rather than hire Mayer.

For example:

- She did some very bad hires such as Henrique de Castro who in 15 months got over 100 million in salary, stock and severance.

- She wasted billions on acquisitions that did not add value.

- Most of the comments from Yahoo employees since she was hired were never very good, and her behavior with employees was said to sometimes be somewhat bizarre (such as reading a children's book at a comm meeting) or essentially throwing a company party where she is the guest of honor.

I don't know the numbers for sure, but with the security breaches, web site redesigns and inability to get ahead of technology trends, I think user engagement with the site is likely less than when she started.

To be fair Summly became Yahoo news digest so it wasn't a complete write off.

So here is what Yahoo did: It "aqui-hired" a team of people, led by a 17-year-old living in London, that cannot claim to have invented a cool technology OR to have built a cool app. Yahoo does own the technology SRI invented for Summly, but it doesn't own SRI, so it hasn't acquired the team that can scale the technology for Yahoo.

>* Polyvore - $230m A fashion search engine run by people she used to mentor at Google

Your anti-female bias is showing here. Polyvore has been profitable for years. I have a friend who works there and loves it.

I think the OP is just skeptical. Where is the anti-female bias?

>Where is the anti-female bias?

In specifically marginalizing a profitable business acquisition just because he'd assumed it was frivolous by its' nature.

How is that in any way related to gender? I also "marginalized" Tumblr and Summly, was that me throwing shade towards men?

They didn't make money.

He asked how is that related to gender?

Yahoo doesn't break out the numbers so we don't know how much revenue any of the companies they acquired are bringing in (profit would be even more difficult because of shared resources). Regardless, none of this has anything to do with gender. I chose a large, medium and small example from a list of Yahoo's acquisitions.

So, if someone posits that a business venture is frivolous, actual profitability aside, that is anti-female (or anti-male) statement/view?

I still don't understand. Can you please elaborate?

If someone posits that a profitable business venture is frivolous, it's not about whether it's good business or not. Also, you do understand.

Back to the point: what does any of that have to do with sex or gender? Maybe you will elaborate, if OP won't.

I don't know what gender made the most money on Polyvore, it doesn't matter. The point was she enriched her friends. The price made waves at the time:

https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/31/why-polyvores-jess-lee-sol...

> "Yahoo bought Polyvore in what we’ve heard could be anywhere from a $25 million* to $60 million"

Quickly followed up by an update revealing it was actually ~10x more!

This comment only shows that those who talk most online about how people are mistreated based on gender are the ones who are the most sexist.

Step back for a minute and think about how this relates to sexism at all. It is you who associated these two concepts together. You are the one who's being sexist. Once you take off your sexist glasses and see things clearly, you'll realize you are making as huge logical fallacy as the one you're criticizing.

Sexism needs to stop but comments like this are what makes it hard.

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