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Comment by johnnybgoode | Hacker News Reader

Wow, years later, even after her de facto demotion at Google, people still think she's some kind of product genius?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028615

This is a hilarious situation.

This is typical Yahoo bullshit. They hire a CEO not for the primary reason of effectiveness or experience, but instead for their perception of effectiveness in the media. Is she an improvement over Bartz? No doubt, because the first time I saw Bartz discussing Yahoo's future several years ago, it was immediately clear to me that they weren't getting out of their tailspin. Is Mayer a genius? I'm sure of it. But from all the things I've heard from Google employees and their dealings with her, I suspect that a lot of the hype she receives in the media is due to the lack of female role models in the Valley. She damned sure doesn't sound like a good leader. Biting off heads, interrupting people mid sentence, forgetting what happened in the last meeting....... this is the epitome of somebody who has bitten off more than they can chew. The sad part is that there are so, so many women in the Valley that deserve the attention she gets.

Eh, I like Marissa, and I've worked on projects (the 2010 websearch visual redesign, and doodles) for which she was the executive sponsor. No, she's not a nice person, and most likely she does not give a shit about you as a person. But she is very often right about her design opinions, and when she's not, she'll listen to data.

I don't think Yahoo particularly needs a nice person as CEO right now. Their culture is dysfunctional enough that they probably need a Steve Jobs type, someone with clear opinions who's willing to ruffle a lot of feathers (and make a bunch of people quit). Steve Jobs wasn't really a nice person either.

I've worked at both Yahoo and Google. I've never worked with Marissa directly but I think your opinion of her is pretty much correct.

The biggest risk I see is that there is a huge difference in her role. At Google she stood atop a pyramid of other geniuses, with similar backgrounds and values, and was a filter for their ideas. At Yahoo she's dealing with a culture where engineering is not the highest value, and she's going to have to get off the top perch and descend into the ranks, clearing out the enemies of progress which exist at every level.

I disagreed with nearly everything I ever heard Marissa say related to design, especially her over reliance on A/B testing to inform design. I think she is one of the main reasons Google products tend to feel like they are designed by engineers.

Their products are usable and uncluttered. I have reservations about the new unified look (too much padding in horizontal stripes one can't scroll, trying to displace browser chrome), but I've been very happy with the previous, “designed by engineers” Google aesthetic.

There are so many UX problems with the current crop of Google core products, it's hard for me to agree that "usable and uncluttered" can refer to anything but the Google of the past.

Google of the past was built on A/B. The new UIs are designed by a small, closed-eared team of graphic artists.

And that is very obvious in the UI, unfortunately.

What's wrong with relying on A/B testing to inform design? In my opinion, except for the whole Google+ unifying process going on most Google products are highly usable.

What's wrong with relying on A/B testing to inform design?

It can help you find local maxima, but not the global maximum you are (or should be) looking for.

Most observers seem to agree that Yahoo's problem is cultural in nature. It's not a Nokia-esque situation, where the company was heavily damaged by competitive forces before Elop even showed up.

A big part -- a necessary part -- of the way Jobs changed the culture at Apple was by bringing in a lot of people who had been loyal to him for years at Next and elsewhere. I can't think of any cases where an outsider has parachuted into a large company, by invitation or otherwise, and turned it around by himself/herself.

Can/will Mayer do that? If so, where will the required team of revolutionaries and revanchists come from? If she doesn't (or can't) raid Google, then where will she get the people she will need?

There're lots of good people at Yahoo. I've heard from other Google engineers who do a lot of interviewing that their recent impression of a lot of ex-Yahooers has been "Hire this person NOW. How could the company let someone like this go?"

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if one of Marissa's first moves is to fire all the middle management and then promote a bunch of longtime individual contributors into their place.

I know almost nothing about her, but these descriptions remind me of this post about Zuckerberg.

"Working with Zuck" http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=339013388919

"Every time Zuck looks at a product, it is as if he does so with fresh eyes... He doesn't care what he said yesterday"

From the description, her behavior reminds me a lot of how Steve Jobs behaved. If you read the biography, Jobs would often contradict himself, he was extremely rude, he would cry at meetings, he would hear an idea and say it was shit, and then the next week propose the exact same idea as his own, etc.

I'm not saying she is at all comparable to Steve Jobs, but it sounds like they both know what they want, and don't spend a lot of time with what they think is wrong.

I've said this often, but Jobs was about 50% right and 50% wrong. When Jobs was wrong, it was usually a small strikeout, but when he was right, they were monster home runs, which is why people tolerated Jobs' behavior. Mayer needs to be right a lot more than she is wrong, so I guess we'll have to see how that pans out.

I read the biography too and this seems only remotely similar. Anyway, if someone shares some of Steve Jobs' bad traits, that means nothing at all. It's not an indication of a good CEO.

Yes. There's a big difference between a genius who's also a jackass, and someone who thinks they have to be a jackass to be a genius. Jobs was solidly in the first category.

CEOs in general tend to be hard to work with. There are also anecdotes about Gates being rude.

Further, I would say the people who want to judge a character by a few anecdotes are being lazy, small minded, and short sighted. Jobs, Gates, and Mayer are all different people with their own styles. I'm not sure if Mayer's style will be what Yahoo needs, but I wish her the best of luck.

A lot of people are assholes. That doesn't mean they are like Steve Jobs.

That description of her didn't include a single word saying anything positive about how she did her job. No description of Jobs of similar length, regardless of how much the writer hated him, would have failed to mention that Jobs also had many positive qualities.

In fairness, when Jobs was Meyer's age he was mostly regarded as a wild eyed dreamer who lost the computer wars. He was fortunate to get a second act at Apple (which looked very seriously at Be instead of Next).

I know people who worked directly with Steve and would write descriptions of similar length with nothing positive to say.

Not a good comparison. Meyer famously tested 41 shades of blue on Gmail. Optimising local maxima is hardly innovation. Jobs was more of the Henry Ford mindset that if he asked people what they wanted they'd ask for a faster horse.

I guess you didn't read very carefully because I didn't compare Meyer and Jobs except in the similarities of how their temperament were described. One was from an official biography, and one from from an anonymous forum comment, so I take the forum comment with a grain of salt. To be clear, I don't think they are at all comparable in terms of success or as a visionary.

But since you brought up the testing of 41 shades of blue, I guess you didn't hear this story about Steve Jobs obsessing over the yellow gradient on Google's icon on the iPhone.

https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...

I didn't say Jobs didn't obsess over details. Clearly he did. The difference is that he knew what he wanted up front rather than testing market reaction to make decisions. The latter is commonly perceived as the "Google Way" and it's more about meeting expectations than setting higher ones.

Steve Jobs also had moments like this: https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...

I was wondering if there are any public and published research reports/papers that were written by her? At least something from her time at Stanford? So far the only thing I could find were some Google patents where she appears as a co-inventor.

Edit: Oddly enough I can not reply to the comment below. My statement wasn't meant to be critical but more on the curious side. The "41 shades of blue" story sounded always intriguing, so I was wondering if there are any other traces of her research activities.

Even if she has, what of it? Academic success does not imply the ability to lead and vice verse. Steve jobs, bill gates, Zuckerberg all built businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars without any degree at all.

Gates had academic success: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_sorting

Wasn't topped until 2008...

Anybody read 'I'm feeling Lucky' by Douglas Edwards? He came across as a good judge of people to me, just based on my reading of the book. And he is not negative on many people in his book.

But he was critical of her, and there were lots of hints of bad blood between them in his book. Although he always remains very subtle in whatever he says.

Reading that comment, you share, reminded me of some sections of the book.

Interesting. So that reply was ages old, but in the event that you're dealing with a manager like that today - what is the best thing to do outside of leaving the organization?

I think leaving is your only option, actually, outside of going to HR and asking to be moved to a different team... and I'd never go to HR to ask that.

If the organization is large enough, try to make an amicable break and move internally. This is the simplest way if you do not have a conscience about the company or your work (not always a bad thing to be conscience-less about these things). If you can't move internally, pursue two threads of action simultaneously:

(1) In most situations, you will have a smart, rational person you might be aware of in the layer that he/she reports into (though preferable, not necessarily her direct boss). Talk to them about what you see as problems.

Be prepared to back up your claims with documented, solid evidence of the behavior. Keep emotional, hyperbolic, prejudicial expressions or assertions to yourself - they will only work against you in such situations.

Be as paranoid as you can be about who you can trust to back you up in your peer group in case there has to be a discussion. Knowing people who're discontent like you helps only if you know they won't stab you in the back.

Avoid ultimatums. Express faith in the system and the ability for the person to change. Express willingness to change yourself. In other words, come off as the bigger person right from the beginning and at all times.

(2) Have an exit strategy if the situation turns on you. This could include escalation to several layers (CEO/Board) above the layers you're dealing with and looking out for a new job.

"Be prepared to back up your claims with documented, solid evidence of the behavior. Keep emotional, hyperbolic, prejudicial expressions or assertions to yourself - they will only work against you in such situations. Avoid ultimatums. Express faith in the system and the ability for the person to change. Express willingness to change yourself. In other words, come off as the bigger person right from the beginning and at all times."

Based on past bitter experience I've boiled this down to, "Don't be easy to dismiss."

That actually makes it sound like she'll fit in at Yahoo just fine.

Aren't you getting "We've temporarily limited requests for old items." for that link?

http://web.archive.org/web/20100120004349/http://news.ycombi...

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