[cloakandswagger]

I can answer that: because she's a woman. That's the ugly truth behind the rabid defense of Marissa. Because she joins a long line of failed female CEOs and the mere recognition of this fact sends certain people into a frenzy, so just deny, deny, deny.

I fully expect to be repudiated as a misogynist by a tidal wave of people drunk off this cognitive dissonance, but I simply speak the truth. Marissa was an abysmal CEO, and for years people will try to whitewash that to avoid its ugly stain on female professionals.

[vidarh]

She also joins a line of failed CEOs at Yahoo.

Trying to tie this to her gender would require a lot of evidence to be remotly meaningful. Yahoo has been failing for a decade and a half, largely punctuated by a couple of lucky investments (Google and Alibaba).

I also see little evidence of rabid defenses of her. I see some that don't believe she deserves to be crucified for failing to save a company that's been failing for a long time before she joined, and a lot of rabid attacks on her with little substantive.

[cloakandswagger]

Here's the thing: If Yahoo was in such dire shape that it couldn't be saved (that seems to be the consensus), it should have been scrapped and sold for parts to maximize shareholder value.

Instead Marissa squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on random acquisitions and Katie Couric. In my mind there is nothing noble or defensible about coming into a dire situation, throwing a Hail Mary and then shrugging when it doesn't work.

[stanleydrew]

> it should have been scrapped and sold for parts to maximize shareholder value.

This is arguably true, but the board decided otherwise, and the board represents the shareholders.

[vidarh]

The board hired her presumably believing that there was some non-zero chance that she would manage to turn Yahoo around, just as it has done with a string of past CEO's. Presumably they also surmised that even if she didn't, shareholders would come out of it ok.

And lo and behold: When she joined the share price was below $16. It's now above $42. A lot of that (maybe all?) is the Alibaba holding, but the point is that whether not Mayer did a good job or not, Yahoo! as a whole is still worth a lot more today.

But presumably this is part of the reason they took the risk: Yahoo!'s core businesses were valued extremely low - the total value of the business is tied up in the Alibaba holding. As such spending hundreds of millions to try to turn things around meant betting with a miniscule proportion of the value of the company with a potential for huge payoff if it succeeded, and very little downside.

In retrospect its easy to say she didn't achieve what they hoped. But it's not so easy to say the alternatives would've been better.

I'm sure she did stupid acquisitions. I'm also sure most of Yahoo's CEO's have done plenty of stupid acquisitions. I'm equally sure Yahoo's board signed of on all of them.

The point isn't that she has no blame. The point is that she is par for the course for Yahoo, and there's little indication someone else would have achieved better results.

[speaktruth]

I think there should be more female CEOs. But if they are overbearing and underdelivering we should be allowed to talk about that with no restrictions.

[stanleydrew]

I'm not going to repudiate you as a misogynist because I think some of what you're saying has merit. And I don't believe you're saying it because you think females make bad CEOs.

But I'd hardly call my comment a "rabid defense" of Marissa. I was attempting to set a balanced tone for this discussion. I readily agree that she failed to prevent Yahoo from failing.

The reality that you yourself need to confront is that there are way more people who will shrilly call her "an abysmal CEO" without really weighing the facts.

[nommm-nommm]

Rabid defense of Marissa? You and I must have different Internets.

[thisnotmyacc]

> Because she joins a long line of failed female CEOs

I wonder: how many appointed CEOs, as opposed to founders, succeed? And how many of them them are appointed to floundering companies, versus say the transition that happened at Microsoft and/or Google? Heck, even Ballmer was a disaster.

How much of the history of failed female CEOs is likely because they get much, much less of the Bezos/Brin/Page/Gates initial growth, I am unsure, but I'd be interested to know.