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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

This anecdote is almost too perfectly aligned with the narrative to be true:

> Reared in Google’s data-obsessed culture, Mayer tended to require countless tests about user preferences before making an important product decision. But when it came to media strategy, she seemed perfectly comfortable going with her gut. As a teenager in Wisconsin, she grew up sneaking into the living room to watch “Saturday Night Live” and occasionally recited sketches during meetings; in April 2013, Yahoo paid an estimated $10 million per year for the “S.N.L.” archives. Even though the actress Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling cookbook and popular lifestyle blog, Mayer, who habitually asked deputies where they attended college, balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for Yahoo Food. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college.

Well, I can think of one obvious difference between Mayer and Jobs...

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> Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college.

Wow , sorry but wow. Paltrow is famous,more famous than Mayer will ever be.If this thing is true,it tells a bit about her personality.

In business,you want to associate with famous people that can drive their audience to your product.Does it matter they graduated or not?frankly?

Presumably they wanted her to actually do the job, not just be the face of the job, so her skills beyond "being famous" would of course matter, like hiring anybody else.

Of course that doesn't mean I agree with assuming that no qualifications means can't do the job, but that's unrelated to her being a celebrity (and indeed a commonly debated question with two big groups of people on both sides).

>Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling cookbook and popular lifestyle blog

A contributing editor job is essentially a writing position. That strongly indicates that she could do the job.

I'm not arguing that she could (or couldn't), just that whether she could do the job was more than just "she's famous". Personally I fall in the camp of people who will judge on experience more than degrees, clearly Meyer is on the other side.

That's kind of the thing, though. Contributing editors are often brought in because of their notoriety.

There's valuing a particular quality in an employee, and then there's being completely misguided in weighting that quality.

Plenty of people could write as well as David Pogue, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, etc., but the expectation is that those writers will bring the audience.

They get seven figure salaries not because they can write articles really well, but that they can bring an audience wherever they go and create revenue worth what they're getting paid

Given that a lot of web sales/pageviews has mainly to do with branding (i.e. the more famous you are, the more pageviews you get, making you even more famous), Paltrow's name (and the brand that it carries) is her doing her job.

It's her doing some of the job. Maybe it's big enough that if the rest of her time was spent sleeping it would still be worth hiring her. Maybe she'd be amazing at the rest of the job, regardless of qualifications. But if you're looking to hire someone to actually run something then being famous isn't enough on its own.

>But if you're looking to hire someone to actually run something then being famous isn't enough on its own.

This is what I was touching on downthread and I guess wasn't entirely clear: a contributing editor doesn't run anything.

They don't copy-edit other writers' work. They don't manage anyone. They don't touch anything related to the business backend.

It's a prestige title given to writers that generate an audience. That's it.

So is your (and others) assumption that Mayer was literally making a decision based on no logic at all?

The reason I made my point was that judging someone based on not having a degree can be considered foolish, judging someone on not having a degree where a degree couldn't even be related isn't foolish it's just nonsense - so I gave Mayer the benefit of the doubt. But maybe I was wrong to?

That's exactly why that anecdote has gotten an incredulous reaction.

If it's accurate that the position was for a contributing editor for a food blog, caring about a degree is completely nonsensical.

It's certainly possible that the story is inaccurate, but it seems to have been included in the article as an intentional example of bizarre decision making.

It's not unusual for content that appears to be by famous names to be ghost written and (sometimes) approved by the famous name.

Or their agent.

So here was absolutely no reason not to hire Paltrow - even if she can't write her way out of a YouTube comments section.

Celebrity culture sells. It's kind of disappointing, but empirically it's what a lot of people want and will pay money for.

Example of someone who doesn't do all of their own work, Martha Stewart. Sure she does some work, but she has a very talented assortment of professionals that help her blog and create content.

I don't think Martha has the time to put together slideshows like this one.

http://www.marthastewart.com/275712/kids-christmas-crafts/@c...

Appropriately, Martha Stewart has occasionally posted hilariously awful photos of her cooking, that she presumably did take herself. Don't have time to dig up the URLs, but it's easily found.

There was no running anything involved. The position in question was "contributing editor". That is an inflated title that means "part time blogger".

"balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for Yahoo Food"

Paltrow wasn't going to run anything, contributing editors for the role she was being brought in for submit content and bring in readers based on their popularity, which she has a solid track record on. There isn't any "rest of the job" besides that.

She created a best-selling cookbook. How is this not doing the job?

Paltrow is 42.

Basing hiring decisions for middle aged persons on their college record is incredibly foolish.

Mayer is 39. She probably doesn't think she's middle-aged (even if she is, and if she is, I don't want to hear about it either ;> ).

>Presumably they wanted her to actually do the job, not just be the face of the job, so her skills beyond "being famous" would of course matter, like hiring anybody else.

They were thinking about having her write/create content for yahoo. She has already successfully produced content for a long time on her blog. She was completely qualified for the job, but Mayer found a bullshit excuse not to hire her because she simply doesn't like Paltrow.

Paltrow already runs a web/email publication (Goop: http://goop.com/) that's pretty successful. That's why Yahoo was interested in her. Her celebrity status helps, I'm sure, but it's not like they were hiring a clueless airhead to be the public face put on someone else's work.

corin_ : Companies don't hire famous people to "do the job". They hire them because they are famous. E.g. Alicia Keys at Blackberry, Rihanna at Puma, Will.I.Am at Intel. So, university degree is indeed utterly irrelevant.

Normally they do, but the fact that Mayer cared about her qualifications surely means it was about more than just the famous face.

Generally speaking disqualifying someone for not having a degree is (in my opinion, and many others but plenty disagree too) foolish, but if you're only considering her for being famous then nobody would even bother finding out if she had a degree.

edit: By the way, if you want to reply to a comment and don't see the reply link (presume that happened to you? ignore me if not), click "link" for that comment and take it from there

Thanks for the reply tip!

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