[throwkd29488]

> Marissa Mayer was an accomplished engineer and then a senior executive at Google through its transition from startup to behemoth

She was a product manager not an engineer. Her greatest accomplishment according to her was keeping the home page simple by only including the search bar. She also made the right decision to invest heavily in google maps.

You also left out the part where she slept with the founder during her time at Google, which undoubtedly gave her a leg up for promotions.

> then took on the impossible task of rescuing Yahoo when no comparably experienced man wanted to step up to the plate

She took it because she struck a sweat deal with board. In exchange for forgoing her google shares, she was able to reap 300 million in 4 years despite having an abysmal performance. Give any experience man that type of deal and I assure you there will be many that step up.

[tomhoward]

> She was a product manager not an engineer

This is false.

She completed a master's in computer science and had built machine learning systems in her studies and internships in the late 90s. She was in the first 20 employees at Google and started out as an engineer, building the first version of what would become Adwords.

Then she went into product management and engineering management. Perhaps she wasn't a good enough engineer; I don't know or care really. She was hired for her engineering talent, made a solid contribution as an engineer, then made an even bigger contribution as a product manager then as an executive - all for one of the most successful and internally-competitive companies of our generation.

You don't achieve that by accident or by dating the boss.

Your comment is pure armchair quarterbacking. People who have actually built or managed hugely successful companies don't make those kinds of dismissals.

[throwsadf1231]

> This is false.

She might have built the first version of adwords, but she was a product manager for most of her time at Google. So my statement is not false, but true.

> Your comment is pure armchair quarterbacking. People who have actually built or managed hugely successful companies don't make those kinds of dismissals.

Says the person that is throwing personal insults in violation of hacker news rules. I prefer not to stoop to your level.

As much as you don't like it, sleeping with your boss no matter you are male or female does have an effect on one's career. Dismissing them just because you have an naive view of the world is your choice.

There are reason why people that do that tends to get fired in other companies. For example,

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/airbnb-china-chief-w...?

[tomhoward]

Seriously, it's nice to hear you're concerned about the site guidelines.

The main concern behind my comments is that in the dismissals of Mayer (the original one I replied to and the two of yours) we've had comments that are uncivil and against the guidelines, by (1) likening her to an alleged criminal, (2) ignoring/diminishing her science/engineering qualifications/experience, (3) dismissing the entirety of her career achievements as being due to her being a woman and/or dating the boss, and (4) pinning all blame on her for the failure of Yahoo and indeed dismissing her tenure there as a outright failure.

Fair enough, (4) is worthy of discussion.

Everything else is sexist and/or disrespectful.

As for being personally insulting, I took care to criticise your actions, not you as a person.

These comments you've written are offensive and of poor quality, and I do encourage you to do some soul-searching about what motivates you to make them.

(Edited to clarify that not all civility breaches were in all of the comments upthread).

[throws18477]

> (1) likening her to an alleged criminal

> (3) dismissing the entirety of her career achievements as being due to her being a woman

> (4) pinning all the blame on her

I did no such thing. I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t put words in my mouth. I made sure to point out that sleeping with your boss whether you are male or female is inappropriate. I have 0 opinion on whether she is female or male. That has not been the point of the argument.

And no, I do not think of her as a criminal. Those are your own words, not mine.

As for the failure of yahoo, I only pointed out she stepped up because of the deal she got. I have not blamed her for the downfall. Those are your words again.

I think you are having an overreaction to my comments. I don’t need some soul searching as you suggest. Rather you need to learn to calm yourself down and argue less with your emotions. Most of these arguments you claim I am expressing are of your own skewed perspective.

I have no interest in arguing with someone that thinks of himself as better than others. You are entitled to idolise her as you wish, but people can have different opinions of her. You took a counter argument and drew a whole picture of my character based on that. The one with a problem is you. Since you asked me to souls search. I would kindly ask you to stare at the mirror. Have a good day.