Hacker News Reader

Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

I enjoyed the first couple of Yahoo/Meyer post-mortems, but at this point, it just seems like people are flogging a dead horse and taking potshots at Meyer while she's down.

She took on a hard job at a struggling company with minimal core competencies and a downward trajectory. Yes, she spent big and made a number of risky bets, which ultimately didn't pay off. Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets, but now that we know the outcome, everyone's suddenly an expert who knew better all along.

Yes, she wasn't able to save a sinking ship, and yes, we now know that she's no Steve Jobs. But that just makes her an average executive, in the same league as most SVPs/CEOs out there. It doesn't make her a failure or incompetent. Let's bury this dead horse already.

View on HN

> Yes, she wasn't able to save a sinking ship

Why do you think this? Based on the WSJ article [1] she created a mobile ad revenue (non-existent before Mayer) of 1.5 billion. Mavens is a huge success. She does need a little more time. I honestly thought Mavens was a wash until this article but she's followed through on what she said and it's working. A 4 billion dollar company that created a 1.5 billion market...I'd call that pretty awesome. She needs to do better though. Double that and the public should see the turnaround as well, which she's on track to do with 1-2 more years of aggressiveness.

[1] https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BX746_YAHOO__9...

Mavens isn't a new product, it's advertising sales in the only growing parts of the company (mobile/video). Meanwhile other revenues are collapsing and total revenue is sagging. Profits are in the shitter and they're trying to sell off all the pieces before it's too late. It's absolutely a sinking ship.

So yes, she cherry picked the hot areas and highlights how they are growing and ignores the fact that costs are also growing and profits are disappearing. Yay MaVeNS!

I'm not a fan of the public just repeating talking points. Namely, you are doing this as well because Mavens wasn't in existence pre-Mayer [1]. Maven IS a new product, you're very misinformed to think anything else.

Yahoo isn't a sinking ship, it's previous 'core' is. Hence why Mayer is shifting emphasis, focus, and ahem revenue. Banner ads wasn't going to keep Yahoo alive, Mavens can and will. Mayer was insightful enough to see this and pounced on it even though she believes in some areas she should've acted sooner (I think she's referring to her Maven's focus).

[1] http://marketrealist.com/2015/03/yahoo-coins-term-mavens-key... tl;dr; "Yahoo coined the name MaVeNS, a broad acronym for mobile, video, native, and social. Prior to 2012, Yahoo had no native or social ads, and mobile and video were in the nascent stage. The four MaVeNS businesses didn’t contribute any revenue. And now, within less than two years, MaVeNS has contributed more than $1 billion of annual revenue."

> Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets

Plenty did, but it was not politically correct to attack her publicly, so these people's concerns were quickly dismissed as you know what (it begins with a s... ).

Yahoo has zillions of product. How about integration between these products ? there is none. That's how you start building a valuable ecosystem, that's what Google, Apple and Microsoft do ! You can't buy your way into success if there is no real global strategy to interconnect all the apps you bought.

There's a big difference between critiquing a business strategy and "attacking her".

When people do the latter to a prominent woman, I think it's reasonable to ask whether sexism is involved. We know from a variety of studies that people are more critical of women, and more personally critical. [1]

It's often unintentional; many people who are consciously not sexist demonstrate significant bias. So I don't think anybody needs to feel accused or defensive. But it's certainly something we as a society need to work on.

[1] E.g.: http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias... and http://www.wsj.com/articles/gender-bias-at-work-turns-up-in-...

I'm afraid you can't have it both ways. In part of your comment, you say that attacking someone in a sexist way is quite easy to do because it's unintentional, it's done by people who are not sexist, and broadly applicable statistical heuristics should be used to determine the likelihood that a remark is sexist.

Elsewhere, you say there is a big difference between non-sexist and sexist criticism. A big difference should be observable and definable, thus easy to avoid committing.

My opinion is that there actually is a big difference and your heuristics are wrong. I would not accuse someone of a serious faux pas, which a reasonable thing to feel accused and defensive about, unless I could clearly explain the difference between it and a reasonable remark in a way that others could repeatedly point to when constructing their own remarks. In a statute or regulation, this kind of definition is referred to as a safe harbor.

I said there's a big difference between commenting on a strategy and attacking a person.

This is all in reference to spriggan3 changing the ground from her bets, which is what heimatau was talking about, to "attack[ing] her publicly".

It is possible to address both in sexist ways. But when somebody is attacking a prominent woman in ways that prominent men in similar situations get a lot less of, I'm much more inclined to read the personal attacks as sexist in motivation.

I definitely didn't say "there is a big difference between non-sexist and sexist criticism", and I don't believe that to be generally true. That's why hidden biases like sexism and racism are so pernicious. Is any individual Mayer comment sexist? Who knows. But when we look at statistical patterns in how women are treated, it's obvious that bias is in play, be that conscious but hidden or entirely unnoticed by the commenter.

Your focus on assuring safe harbor for dudes is telling. You don't talk at all about safety for the people actually being harmed by the sexism; they appear irrelevant to you as long as guys don't have to endure examination and possible criticism.

Your last paragraph is way off. I don't have to list my anti-sexism accomplishments to justify making a point about something else.

Trying to create a safe harbor for apparently sexist men is not "something else".

Sure, you don't have to list anti-sexist accomplishments. But if you want to be read as somebody who has a balanced approach to the topic, you have to demonstrate that balance.

I think people knew the logo redesign was a joke immediately. It was obvious she was the wrong person to run such a large company and no-one liked the company to begin with. It's hard to blame people for having the advantage of hindsight when they were criticizing her at the time. Being an average executive at that level just doesn't cut it.

>Few people took a stand against her when she made those bets

I'd like to know why you think that nobody wanted to call her out publicly. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to know your opinion in regards to why people kept quiet.

People kept quiet? I'm not a Mayer apologist (or even a "fan"), but she has been criticized for everything. From her looks (people said she is a dumb blonde who is going to wreck everything) to her decisions (everyone knew tumblr was a bad idea). I have even read about people saying that Google offloaded her to Yahoo in order to sink them. All of this right here on HN.

So no, they did not keep quiet. They've treated her worse than Jobs. Who by the way, conspired with others to pay tech workers less...

I think people kept quiet because most of what she did seemed reasonable at the time. When you're suddenly put in charge of a sinking ship, you need to make big risky bets in order to turn things around. When you're managing a company worth tens of billions of dollars, obsessing over a few ten million dollars seems penny wise and pound foolish. She didn't make any obvious mistakes, which is why there was no consensus that she was doing a bad job. But now that everyone knows the outcome, people seem to have known better all along.

If I'm reading the subtext of your post correctly, you're insinuating that people didn't want to call her out publicly because they didn't want to seem sexist? If so, that certainly hasn't stopped people from taking potshots at her now.

> with minimal core competencies

Sorry - do you mean Mayer or Yahoo?

Yahoo.

Mayer is a very competent woman, as anyone at Google would tell you.

I don't think that most CEOs/VPs would take such a job in the first place though.

I think they would. If you can turn Yahoo around, you become legendary. CEOs are already risk takers, it makes sense.

Also it wasn't all that risky. Even though she failed she'll walk away with enough money for a lifetime (to add on top of the lifetime supply she already had).

>I don't think that most CEOs/VPs would take such a job in the first place though

You don't? A job with a huge potential payoff while making oodles of money in the meantime? Yeah, sounds awful. You fail that job and, worst case, your family is set up for 3+ generations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com