I don't know what the future for Yahoo holds, but it's hard for me to say that she has done a bad job so far.
Really? I haven't read anything like that.
Seems to me most of her critics are from people who want Yahoo! to sell (or merge) so they make tons of $$$$$$. Before she came in they were set to strike it rich as Yahoo! went down in flames, now their money is tied up until she "fails" (from their perspective).
These people have just lost faith in the company after several consecutive failed executives promising similar things to Mayer. If she actually made Yahoo! profitable again they'd likely change their tune pretty quick, but she hasn't just yet, and she's spent a lot of "their" capital buying other companies which has further upset them.
Honestly I've seen very little "she's a woman" criticism, and rather a lot of broad criticism about the overall strategy. Although there has been a discussion of her interpersonal skills (however I've also read that about a lot of other, male, CEOs).
She takes over after years of neglect at a time of even more substantial crisis, and yet gets and will take far more of the blame than her very incompetent predecessors for Yahoo's failure. What's worth wondering is whether her being a bossy boss woman was also responsible for her being sidelined and pushed out from the OC at Google: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/technology/in-googles-inne...
I'm not saying that is what is happening here or that Mayer's strategy shouldn't be questioned, just responding to the "no one said 'because she's a woman' so it can't be sexism"
There's no shortage of sexism out there, but it's dangerous to jump to the conclusion that any criticism of a woman is automatically rooted in sexism. That doesn't do social progress any favors either.
You can see the same thing happening with President Obama. All of the people who criticized him for his race directly have all but disappeared after his first few years in office. Now you get people who criticize him in more indirect ways. It's like natural selection of bigots, you need to figure out where the line of social acceptance is.
Again, not saying anything about Mayer in particular. Just that the parent had said "it can't be sexism because no one mentioned that she's a woman" isn't a rational train of thought. Of course no one would directly mention it.
Yahoo has been profitable to the tune of over a billion dollars a year for a LONG time.
Maybe. When she first came on board, there was lots of gossip about her having a baby and being a CEO and all that. I personally think that was unfair nonsense.
However, I do have a problem with how she generally treats people and I have a problem with the relentless self-promotion she seems to spend much of her time on.
If it's unfair to talk about her being a CEO with a baby just because she's a woman, why isn't it unfair to talk about the uncountable number of fashion magazine covers and fashion focus she seems to have plenty of time for? (I understand of course that there's a bit of a feedback effect from the media on this, but really, just run the company and ignore the noise).
She's obviously very smart, but I worry that some of her personal interface issues may overwhelm all that. All the best business decisions in the world may still turn into a failure if you alienate your people by reading nursery rhymes to them and treating them idiot children.
Larry Page does fashion magazines too. And don't pretend Fortune isn't a fashion magazine.
I don't know, I'm obviously not the target for that kind of cult-of-personality marketing strategy, but I think it's a huge waste of time and as a stock holder it makes me grit my teeth every time.
I don't really mind the occasional interview, I think that's important for a business leader to do, especially a large publicly traded one, but at the same time, prancing around in high-end boutique clothes is not where I want my corporate leaders to be spending their time.
(and before you complain that I'm trying to dictate what they do in their free-time, I'm not, these magazine covers and interviews are very much part of their corporate work)
For example even when dealing with Washington, star appeal goes a long way to getting people to take you seriously and to listen to you.
As a similar example, take Steve Job's fame and how he was able to use it in order to close deals that an unknown CEO from an equally large company would never be able to do.
I agree. This article is very positive, but in the past, when I've read a lot of her criticism, I have often wondered: is this being said because she's a woman? Would they be saying similar things if she was a man? And the answers, often, are "yes" and "no".
True, but that's not really what this article does. It's mostly supportive.
One reason (among many) she is prominent is the fact she is a successful woman in tech.
In other words, I don't feel the criticism is because she is a woman, but I do think she's more in the spotlight than her predecessors because she is a woman.
It almost seemed like a trick to me, convince the world that things are really dire at Yahoo! then whoever you bring in is going to be a hero unless they are completely incompetent because things weren't that dire. They had both cash and revenue... and an f-ton of traffic and eyeballs. They definitely weren't growing at internet rates though.
I'm not saying they hadn't bought a lot of stuff that they didn't need and they didn't need to kill some products and focus but dire?
I would say the hate stems from her pushing a policy of ending working from home. A lot of companies followed and it really pissed off a lot of devs and ops people.