[steve8918]

From the description, her behavior reminds me a lot of how Steve Jobs behaved. If you read the biography, Jobs would often contradict himself, he was extremely rude, he would cry at meetings, he would hear an idea and say it was shit, and then the next week propose the exact same idea as his own, etc.

I'm not saying she is at all comparable to Steve Jobs, but it sounds like they both know what they want, and don't spend a lot of time with what they think is wrong.

I've said this often, but Jobs was about 50% right and 50% wrong. When Jobs was wrong, it was usually a small strikeout, but when he was right, they were monster home runs, which is why people tolerated Jobs' behavior. Mayer needs to be right a lot more than she is wrong, so I guess we'll have to see how that pans out.

[tjmc]

Not a good comparison. Meyer famously tested 41 shades of blue on Gmail. Optimising local maxima is hardly innovation. Jobs was more of the Henry Ford mindset that if he asked people what they wanted they'd ask for a faster horse.

[steve8918]

I guess you didn't read very carefully because I didn't compare Meyer and Jobs except in the similarities of how their temperament were described. One was from an official biography, and one from from an anonymous forum comment, so I take the forum comment with a grain of salt. To be clear, I don't think they are at all comparable in terms of success or as a visionary.

But since you brought up the testing of 41 shades of blue, I guess you didn't hear this story about Steve Jobs obsessing over the yellow gradient on Google's icon on the iPhone.

https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...

[tjmc]

I didn't say Jobs didn't obsess over details. Clearly he did. The difference is that he knew what he wanted up front rather than testing market reaction to make decisions. The latter is commonly perceived as the "Google Way" and it's more about meeting expectations than setting higher ones.

[stfu]

I was wondering if there are any public and published research reports/papers that were written by her? At least something from her time at Stanford? So far the only thing I could find were some Google patents where she appears as a co-inventor.

Edit: Oddly enough I can not reply to the comment below. My statement wasn't meant to be critical but more on the curious side. The "41 shades of blue" story sounded always intriguing, so I was wondering if there are any other traces of her research activities.

[duaneb]

Even if she has, what of it? Academic success does not imply the ability to lead and vice verse. Steve jobs, bill gates, Zuckerberg all built businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars without any degree at all.

[cma]

Gates had academic success: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_sorting

Wasn't topped until 2008...

[reledi]

Steve Jobs also had moments like this: https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...

[packetslave]

Yes. There's a big difference between a genius who's also a jackass, and someone who thinks they have to be a jackass to be a genius. Jobs was solidly in the first category.

[RivieraKid]

I read the biography too and this seems only remotely similar. Anyway, if someone shares some of Steve Jobs' bad traits, that means nothing at all. It's not an indication of a good CEO.

[c2]

CEOs in general tend to be hard to work with. There are also anecdotes about Gates being rude.

Further, I would say the people who want to judge a character by a few anecdotes are being lazy, small minded, and short sighted. Jobs, Gates, and Mayer are all different people with their own styles. I'm not sure if Mayer's style will be what Yahoo needs, but I wish her the best of luck.

[wilfra]

A lot of people are assholes. That doesn't mean they are like Steve Jobs.

That description of her didn't include a single word saying anything positive about how she did her job. No description of Jobs of similar length, regardless of how much the writer hated him, would have failed to mention that Jobs also had many positive qualities.

[drumdance]

In fairness, when Jobs was Meyer's age he was mostly regarded as a wild eyed dreamer who lost the computer wars. He was fortunate to get a second act at Apple (which looked very seriously at Be instead of Next).

[polarix]

I know people who worked directly with Steve and would write descriptions of similar length with nothing positive to say.