At one point she was seen from the outside as the 3rd most powerful/influential person at Google, after the two founders and even ahead of Schmidt, I remember articles praising her decision of leaving the Google front-page almost empty with only two buttons on it (I think this was around 2008-2010). Then she went to Yahoo and drove it into the ground and as such I'm surprised that people still take her business-related pieces of advice that seriously.
It is a question of perspective. She was the head of a sinking ship, yes. But did she cause the sinking, or did she recoup the most returns possible for the investors before it sank?
I wasn't there. I don't know the inside story. I'm not going to take sides. But neither am I going to assume that she has poor business skills just because she headed up a shutdown effort.
For months, the team had settled on blue and gray. If users were going to read emails on their phones all day long, the thinking went, it was best to choose the most subtly contrasting hues. But now, Mayer explained, she wanted to change the colors to various shades of purple, which she believed better suited Yahoo’s brand.
According to one senior executive, Sharma’s body language changed the moment Mayer issued her request. He looked deflated. Altering the color of such an intricate product would require that members of his team spend all night adjusting colors in thousands of places. He slumped off and prepared to tell his staff the bad news.
I don’t know, but I can change the colors of all our products from one single place in the code. If you have to do it in multiple places something is probably wrong.
Excecutives change their minds on a whim, you are much better off anticipating that.
Does your codebase date from 1995? Because some of Yahoo's does. Time to send Jerry a nastygram about not adequately preparing the codebase for arbitrary color changes 25 years ago?
Wholeheartedly agree, and I think it comes down to "signalling by association". For sure she is a workaholic and that gets you far, but to me it seems like she is filling the gap of providing confirmation to insecure overachievers after she - being one herself - made mistakes and reflected on them. Mistakes that could have been avoided had you taken out the ego in the first place.
In contrast to my hypothesis: If you like her, feel free to share your thoughts or prove me wrong. What is special about her?
Marissa is one of the smartest people I have ever been around. Most of my knowledge comes from running in neighboring circles at Stanford. The (then) girl just had an amazing ability to remember things, get things, and analyze them. She also has outstanding social intelligence, and a bit of a reality distortion field.
Of course she chose the rocketship in 1999 while the rest of us fumbled around in the dot com bust. She always had the knack of picking the right place to be at the right time, and the talent (or ability to bs) that she could get noticed when she needed to.
The yahoo thing was the worst misstep I've seen her take, but she got paid $200 million to take the risk, and I'm working for peanuts. So who is the smart one?
Edited to add: There is exactly zero chance she remembers me. But everyone I hung around remembers her. She has a very strange ability to be remembered.
I've known Marissa since Stanford too, and you're wrong. I'm not sure if you're lying or what, but you're wrong.
Edit: Before you pile on, I'm rich too. Not as rich as her but rich enough not to take issue with her for that reason. The reason people remember Marissa is she was pretty. End of story.
Apparently our experiences in her orbit were pretty different.
That doesn't mean I'm lying, and I don't think you are either.
I have no idea what your experience is, and I have absolutely no reason to lie. I doubt Marissa could pick me out of a police lineup if her life depended on it.
But I watched her kick ass at Stanford--both socially and intellectually--and it takes more than a pretty face to do that.
Which she crushed, and then she moved on and crushed the master's level courses.
And then got a job at Google. Of all the dot-com companies hiring on campus at the time throwing million dollar opportunities at new graduates, she picks the unicorn.
At some point it isn't luck anymore.
Anyway, I'll agree to disagree here. The post I originally responded to was a question about what is so special about her.
I only know what I saw when I could observe her. That my observations differ from yours is OK with me.
I wrote this somewhere else in this thread, but I like her because she's one of the few (current) 'well known' women in tech that's successful and stylish. She's exactly the kind of representation I need and want.
She's not successful, she's wealthy. There's a difference. She got a lottery ticket at Google and cashed in, then proceeded to run Yahoo into the ground. She's widely considered a failure in tech and business circles, and for good reason (I was with her at Yahoo and can testify to her strategic incompetence). If Marissa is the role model you want - stylish but incompetent - then I feel bad for you. Much like Elizabeth Holmes (another destroyer of billions), Marissa should be considered an anti-hero for women in business.
Don't feel bad for me, I'm twenty-something years old and having Marissa as my tech woman icon is just some fun. I'm sorry you don't like her, but the choices for role models as a woman in tech are limited. (And yeah I know about Hopper and Hamilton and Borg, the difference is that Mayer is a current kinda-household name and in Vogue, literally.)
Also don't lump Marissa in with Elizabeth Holmes, Holmes could never be iconic with that hair.
Maybe you'd find more role models if you didn't segregate by gender (that's sexist, after all). If you can only look up to people who share your genitalia then I think that's pretty limiting.
I don't think I'm asking for too much by wanting a woman in tech to look up to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's not sexist dude, I just want some representation in my role models.
It certainly seems like her looks and stylishness are major factors in her popularity (especially when compared to a more accomplished woman like Lisa Su), but you think that is a good thing?
Absolutely - as I said elsewhere in this thread, I hate the typical tech uniform of jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies, but felt I wouldn't get taken seriously if I looked 'pretty'. Marissa made that ok for me.
> The cult of personality ~~around Marissa~~ is just confusing ~~to me~~.
Lest we forget Elizabeth Holmes, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and for those old enough to remember Bill Gates in the 90s.
If you're lucky you die before you start making terrible decisions. A quote from Napoleon that he supposedly said while in exile "Had I been hit by a canon ball on my entry into Moscow I would have been remembered as the greatest statesman and general the world had ever seen".
Elizabeth Holmes is the only appropriate comparison here. Those others were worshipped because they actually created value. Marissa never did that. In fact, like Holmes, she destroyed quite a bit of it.
Sigh. Regurgitating stuff you read is very different from being someone who actually knows how to build things. I don't think Marissa even pretends to know how to code at this point. I think in the past she did pretend to, which was sort of a problem.
Don't tell me to do some reading for f*'s sake, I know about Margaret Hamilton and Grace Hopper. Mayer is current, successful, and stylish. I like her. I'm trying to explain to you why there might be a 'cult of personality' around her.
Being stylish is super important (to me) because not only is she a woman in tech - she's a stylish woman in tech. I hate the typical tech uniform of jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies, but felt I wouldn't get taken seriously if I looked 'pretty'. Marissa made that ok for me.
If she wore the typical tech uniform it wouldn't detract anything for me, but she wouldn't be iconic to me.