
Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer on Selling a Company While Trying to Turn It Around - terryauerbach
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-marissa-mayer-interview-issue/
======
ryandrake
> My husband [the venture capital investor Zachary Bogue] runs a co-working
> office in San Francisco. He runs his company out of there and other startups
> cycle through. And if you go in on a Saturday afternoon, I can tell you
> which startups will succeed, without even knowing what they do. Being there
> on the weekend is a huge indicator of success, mostly because these
> companies just don’t happen. They happen because of really hard work.

I bet if you tell me only these three things, I'll have a more accurate
prediction of which startups will succeed:

* Founder's parents' income

* Founder's parents' education level

* Number of people with over $1M liquid assets that founder knows or has "social access" to

~~~
matwood
> * Founder's parents' income

I find this to be one of the biggest indicators. I have friends whose parents
are extremely wealthy and they tried all sorts of random careers before
finally settling on something. For them there was zero real risk since they
always had their parents to fall back on. One's dad even told him to come up
with a business idea and he would fund it and help him make it happen. Instead
he goofed around for awhile, before simply going back to school.

Personally, I'm more irked at potential wasted than jealous. I have no one to
fall back on, and that has made me fiercely independent, but also very risk
conscious. The good thing is that it is easier than every to bootstrap ideas
with minimal time.

~~~
gr33nman
This is a good argument for a basic income, combined with free healthcare and
higher education.

I suspect that lowering the risk of entrepreneurship could unlock enormous
innovation potential for society.

~~~
prostoalex
Two thirds of the above seem to exist in Denmark (and a few other European
countries) with no visible improvements to the entrepreneurial scene (I
struggle to come up with a Danish startup success story that's been founded in
the last decade or two).

~~~
doppp
They're there if you just do a little Googling. Unity Technologies,
SteelSeries, Zendesk come to mind.

------
ma2rten
_“Could you work 130 hours in a week?” The answer is yes, if you’re strategic
about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom.
The nap rooms at Google were there because it was safer to stay in the office
than walk to your car at 3 a.m. For my first five years, I did at least one
all-nighter a week_

Really? I always thought that pulling all-nighters hurts more than it helps.
Optimizing your bathroom breaks seems really silly to me.

~~~
weka
Some people work to live and, well, Marissa chooses to live to work. Some
people cannot help but revolve their lives around their job 24/7.

~~~
the_af
Agreed. A good indicator of that is when you start micromanaging your bathroom
breaks, i.e. when not only your mental life but also your bodily functions get
subordinated to corporate success.

------
whack
_The other piece that gets overlooked in the Google story is the value of hard
work. When reporters write about Google, they write about it as if it was
inevitable. The actual experience was more like, “Could you work 130 hours in
a week?” The answer is yes, if you’re strategic about when you sleep, when you
shower, and how often you go to the bathroom. The nap rooms at Google were
there because it was safer to stay in the office than walk to your car at 3
a.m. For my first five years, I did at least one all-nighter a week, except
when I was on vacation—and the vacations were few and far between.

My husband [the venture capital investor Zachary Bogue] runs a co-working
office in San Francisco. He runs his company out of there and other startups
cycle through. And if you go in on a Saturday afternoon, I can tell you which
startups will succeed, without even knowing what they do. Being there on the
weekend is a huge indicator of success, mostly because these companies just
don’t happen. They happen because of really hard work._

This was actually the part I found most surprising and interesting. One the
one hand, it's scary that you have to put in insanely long hours like that to
succeed. But on the other hand, it's liberating knowing that one of the keys
to success, is something everyone has access to.

If some random person had made the above comments, I would have laughed them
off as an insane workaholic. But knowing that this advice is coming from
someone's who's seen it first hand at early-stage-Google, and many other
startups... it's hard to ignore it, no matter how much I may want to.

~~~
econner
The amount you work is one of the few variables in your control. I'm still a
believer that luck plays a bigger role than most will give credit.

Also, people tend to think they work harder than they actually do. I'm sure
they worked hard, but there's almost no chance they were working 130 hour
weeks, certainly not consistently. There are only 168 hours in a week. I also
don't believe the one all-nighter a week line. Working like this would
completely destroy your productivity.

~~~
andreasklinger
I found this especially true in US culture.

There seems to be a lot of "showing off" of and around your work.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Yep, not just in work, but in personal life too. Everyone is always so "busy"
but if you actually probe, it's mostly false or exaggerated. I don't know why
having free time is such a dirty word.

------
thieving_magpie
I've never been more convinced Yahoo is a 20th century company with 20th
century ideals. It's no wonder they can't survive in the 21st.

I'm sure she has a whole staff of weekend workers that spend quite a lot of
time making sure you know just how much they're working.

~~~
zaphar
You are reading far more into this interview than she actually said.

~~~
thieving_magpie
My comment was made in the context of her entire tenure. Though I think she
said plenty about her definition of success and hard work in this interview to
justify my statement.

------
ebbv
The bit she has in here about knowing which companies will succeed based on
who's there on the weekends is such a crock of shit. It's like she's saying
all the ones that failed it's because the people involved didn't work hard
enough. That is so condescending and insulting.

Start ups fail for all kinds of reasons, sure sometimes it's because people
didn't work hard enough. But not remotely always. Sometimes an idea just
doesn't pan out. Sometimes people get screwed by a bad choice, sometimes that
bad choice was made _because_ they were working so hard they weren't thinking
straight.

Any kind of statement like saying that you can tell which start ups will
succeed or fail based on a single criteria is just hubris and obviously wrong.

~~~
mrits
I agree. The difference between 40-80 a week isn't that much when you can
consider some places you can get by doing just a few hours of work. If you
create an atmosphere where people are excited to work then you are perhaps 20x
more productive than some other companies.

~~~
whoops1122
maybe she is saying that yahoo failed cause ppl didnt work hard enough

------
Jedd

      > If I’d stuck to my original five-year plan
      > when I was 18, I would have missed every
      > great thing that ever happened to me.
    

I'm not a fan of five-year plans, or any x-year plans, but this sounds very
passive - in the sense of 'happened _to_ me'.

Which sounds out of place in the context of the other advice <sic> provided -
such as 'work Saturdays to guarantee success', 'make a choice and stick to it
and make it great', 'it's safer to keep working than walk to your car', and
the Alibaba question dodge.

Clearly we live in different worlds.

~~~
dopamean
Her 5 year plan at 18 probably didn't include working 130 hour weeks.

------
gaius
_There are some mothers who want to work; there are some mothers who need to
work; there are some mothers who want to stay home; there are some mothers who
need to stay home_

Interesting quote from the boss that banned working from home!

~~~
orcdork
Why?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Because this is the woman who had a _nursery_ built in her office so that
someone would attend to her kids while she worked, while at the same time
_not_ extending this same courtesy to any of her female employees.

Cutting off the ability to work remotely, which is how most people who cannot
afford child care manage small children, sends the message that she is
uniquely allowed to work and be a mom, while everyone else can pound sand.

~~~
wesd
>Cutting off the ability to work remotely, which is how most people who cannot
afford child care manage small children

I haven't seen anyone who can look after a small child and work at the same
time. Either you're working or looking after the child.

On the other hand if your argument is that Yahoo should have offered
discounted childcare on onsite that Marissa received, then your argument makes
perfect sense.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
I don't agree, particularly for a developer role. I've known developers who
worked remotely specifically for this reason, that they could not afford
daycare. Developers tend to be tracked more based on hours logged into a
project than being in one's desk from 9-5, so the general concensus was that
if they punched in their 40 hours and met deadlines, no one really cared where
those 40 hours came from.

------
kristianc
> The other piece that gets overlooked in the Google story is the value of
> hard work. When reporters write about Google, they write about it as if it
> was inevitable. The actual experience was more like, “Could you work 130
> hours in a week?” The answer is yes, if you’re strategic about when you
> sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom.

You could add to that "and care not a jot about the quality of the decisions
you're making."

------
personlurking
> But I would never have a five-year plan. If I’d stuck to my original five-
> year plan when I was 18, I would have missed every great thing that ever
> happened to me.

_____

As someone who just created the general outline of a five-year plan (my first
one), I'm wondering what other HNers have to say about the subject.

~~~
pjc50
"Plans are useless. Planning is vital." \-- attr. Eisenhower.

That is, you need to do the planning to look around and see e.g. what your
strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats are, what your objectives are, and
what direction to set out in. Otherwise you run the risk of paralysis or being
permanently _behind_ events.

On the other hand, reality deviates from the plan immediately, for better or
for worse. But at least you have the information gathered from the planning
phase to re-plan from.

------
thesimpsons1022
I'm currently watching a Stanford class online called blitz scaling and
recently saw the class in which they brought in Marissa Mayer. I enjoyed it
but it bothers me that a lot of what she says in this interview is word for
word the same things she said in the video. Must have a memorized speech for
this type of thing.

------
lintiness
marissa mayer values hours at work; she'd better because she's logged a lot
and accomplished basically nothing as yahoo's "boss". below the article, stan
lee talks about bosses:

"What’s the worst advice you ever got? Listen to what your boss tells you. My
boss never liked the idea of Spider-Man. He didn’t want to do it. I had to
sneak Spider-Man into another book, over my boss’s head. Experts really know
nothing."

------
agentgt
_> In the Midwest, where I grew up, you shrug off a ­compliment like that and
think a lot of people in the world are really busy, like President Obama. And
then President Obama started posting YouTube videos for fun._

I have nothing against Marissa Mayer and some respects really appreciate
having a prominent female CEO but did anyone else find that shocking that she
would say that? I mean she is a CEO. Wouldn't she want to avoid talking about
US political figures. Also I'm not really sure if it is a dig or a compliment.
It could be a compliment. Lots of busy people can have the facade of looking
like they have relaxing lives which takes even more work.

There is also an intensity factor of work. Some work is insanely intense both
physically and mentally and you just can't do 130 hours. I did consulting for
40 hours a month for a brief period. Those 40 hours felt like 40 hours a week.
Meanwhile I worked on my own startup and early in its fledgling years my wife
complained about how many hours I worked (she claims more than 90 hours) but
to me it felt like 40 hour work week.

------
uptown
"Will you stay at Yahoo indefinitely? - I plan to stay. I love the company,
and I want to see it go into its next chapter."

Anyone want to take that bet?

~~~
erdevs
Until the deal is fully closed, or only ancillary closing conditions remain to
be met, she kind of has to say that. Also for her golden parachute to deploy,
she has to be let go so she can't sound as if she wants to quit.

Actually stay? I have trouble seeing it. Only if she's got some guaranteed
line of sight on the VZW ceo gig, but Armstrong and many others will contend
there.

------
bluedino
>> And if you go in on a Saturday afternoon, I can tell you which startups
will succeed, without even knowing what they do. Being there on the weekend is
a huge indicator of success, mostly because these companies just don’t happen.
They happen because of really hard work.

Do people still think you can get away with 40-50 hours when the next guy is
just as good as you and putting in 80?

~~~
allendoerfer
I don't think that many people working 80 hours a week for months can be just
as good as people of the same skill level working only 40.

~~~
matwood
There are times in a startup when it is a race. Those working 80 will beat
those working 40. Can those working 80 do that forever? No, but if it helps
them put the ones working 40 out of business they do not need to work 80
forever.

I think the real key is recognizing when working more will help.

~~~
samastur
An example would be nice as I cannot think of any.

~~~
jasode
Basically most of the companies mentioned in Founders at Work.[1]

There are several common themes to why all those companies had to put in crazy
hours but one theme that sticks out is the _" oh shit, the user count is
growing like crazy and we've got to scale out our servers to handle the
exponential workload like YESTERDAY or we're going to DIE!"_

It happened to the Youtube engineers, Google, Napster, Etsy, etc. It's a
stressful combination of fighting fires and adding capacity at the same time.

For horizontal scaling re-architecting & re-engineering, there is no
commercial off-the-shelf or open-source software that let's you install it in
one afternoon such that all programmers can just work 40 hours a week without
a hiccup. Today, you can't just install a distributed database like Cassandra
and fire up more AWS instances and assume those newer technologies that the
previous _Founders at Work_ didn't have will prevent _your_ employees from
putting in 80 hour weeks _for months_.

Going from a single instance database to handle 10k to 100k users to a sharded
distributed db to handle 100 million is not going to be a 40-hour a week job
for startup employees. If any companies have done it with zero overtime,
please write a blog highlighting your user traffic growth, database sizes, and
migration strategy. That would be a very impressive achievement.

[1]
[http://www.foundersatwork.com/interviews.html](http://www.foundersatwork.com/interviews.html)

~~~
samastur
You are right, thanks. I have misunderstood it as being a race against some
other company/team.

------
mrits
Anyone that has the discipline to work 130 hours a week doesn't need to take a
job at a startup.

~~~
lintiness
when i graduated from college, the ibank analysts were the ones declaring "120
hour work weeks!". none of them worked that much, but it's funny that the lie
has gotten even bigger ("130!").

~~~
Roboprog
The whole "work until you can't think at all" thing really does sound like
propaganda, doesn't it?

------
erdevs
Boy, I disagree with Mayer's take on sustained crunch => success. But she
seems to repeat it.

> _When reporters write about Google, they write about it as if it was
> inevitable. The actual experience was more like, “Could you work 130 hours
> in a week?” The answer is yes, if you’re strategic about when you sleep,
> when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom_

This is fine in spurts but doing it on a sustained basis is actually
suboptimal. Crunch time for extended periods is _bad_ for problem-solving and
for productivity. There are critical periods where it can be productive...
when the team is all obsessed in tackling a crisis or timely opportunity. But
sustaining this for more than several weeks a year at most in total is
actually detrimental.

> _I can tell you which startups will succeed, without even knowing what they
> do. Being there on the weekend is a huge indicator of success_

No. This is not true. At best, this is a gross oversimplification.

And it's disheartening to see Mayer hammering this single point over and over.
It almost seems like a point of pride for her... which leads to:

> _There was a moment when someone said to me, “Wow, you might be the busiest
> person on the planet.” In the Midwest, where I grew up, you shrug off a
> ­compliment like that and think a lot of people in the world are really
> busy, like President Obama. And then President Obama started posting YouTube
> videos for fun._

Alright, douchey-ness of this humble brag (let alone humble-brag in even
glancing comparing yourself to the POTUS) aside, this underscores again the
obsession with hours worked. I just vehemently disagree with this. Valuable
output and quality matter most, not hours worked. It's highly questionable to
claim that more hours worked leads to greater overall value of output. Beyond
some threshold (which I believe varies person by person), there is an
asymptotic incremental contribution to total valuable output. And at some
point, total value of output declines, where the incremental contribution of
more time worked in a given period is _negative_.

This is an unhealthy and unhelpful view.

Moving onto totally different topics...

> > _Does it bother you that your parenting choices were criticized?

> In my view, there’s just entirely too much judgment over motherhood..._

Here, here! Totally agree.

> _I would never have a five-year plan. If I’d stuck to my original five-year
> plan when I was 18, I would have missed every great thing that ever happened
> to me._

Agree very much again. I think you can have high-level achievement goals, but
not a specific destination or path laid out for getting there. Having fungible
plans is usually wisest because every day you have more information than you
did before and every day you have a chance of encountering a previously
unknown opportunity. Need to be open to leveraging that information and those
opportunities when it's called for, as opposed to sticking to a rigid plan.

> _We had shareholders with two different priorities. We have some people who
> owned Yahoo stock because they really cared about digital advertising and
> the internet and a possible turnaround there. And we had another set of
> stakeholders who owned it because they saw a lot of positive transactions
> that could happen with these very large, lucrative Asian assets. And we had
> duties to both as the executive team of the company._

That is totally fair. I think Mayer's biggest failing was not recognizing this
early enough and not being proactive enough about resolving it. It was a
disaster waiting to happen. She and the company seemed very focused on the
turnaround early on, and overly committed to holding the assets together.
Recognizing from the get go that Yahoo had different shareholder groups -- and
in particular that Yahoo was or easily could become the target of activist
investors -- it is surprising that this wasn't addressed boldly, head-on,
quickly.

It seems the company (and Mayer) could have landed in a much better spot if
they'd been proactive in selling off or restructuring assets. If they ended up
in a spot where they're splitting up assets amyway, it might have been better
to do that from the get go and use it as a way to clean up the shareholder
base at the same time. _Plenty_ of PE and IB firms would have been interested
in helping to do a structured deal around Yahoo's investment assets and this
might have positioned Yahoo much, much better to execute the turnaround Mayer
seems to have clearly wanted to focus on (stronger balance sheet, less ammo
for activist investors, opportunity to clear out unhelpful shareholders,
perhaps even an opportunity to go private, if that would have been helpful).

Shame this didn't happen.

~~~
whoops1122
the funny thing is that, imagine business is a car and CEO is the driver. if
you step on gas (working harder) but heading toward the wrong direction, you
would end up further away from the destination.

to me Mayer is saying Yahoo did not get over the hump cause they dont have
enough determination, while failed to acknowledge that she drove them the
wrong direction past few years.

------
untilHellbanned
All that we've learned from her now makes me question whether she was actually
useful while at Google.

Seems like she a walking business cliche. Can anyone counter this with
evidence of her creativity?

------
sideproject
I digress... but surely they could have selected a better photo of her in
their article.

~~~
martinko
I find it charming and human

