
The secret hiring of Marissa Mayer: How Yahoo kept it all under wraps. - Brajeshwar
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-18/help-us-marissa-mayer-dot-you-re-our-only-hope
======
stevencorona
I was surprised she didn't have some kind of non-compete with Google, but they
are illegal/unenforceable in CA, right? (I'm on the East Coast so pardon my
lack of knowledge).

~~~
samstave
What if Sergei and Larry WANT her to go to Yahoo. Not to "compete" but to
build it out in some other way, to build it as a service that google can then
acquire.

She can go there to experiment on ideas that maybe even google had internally
but couldn't risk to do with google viewers...

~~~
pasbesoin
My thoughts ran to whether Google might want (in part) to ensure that credible
competition exists/continues. There's been a lot of "monopoly" language and
perhaps imminent regulation flying about.

~~~
samstave
Any way you cut this, Google seems ready to benefit from this coup.

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warech
This tagline is misleading. A single paragraph discusses "How Yahoo kept it
all under wraps" while the rest of the article is an also-ran discussion about
Mayer's potential success/failure at Yahoo.

------
gringomorcego
[http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-
go...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-google-
others-to-face-antitrust-suit-over-staff-poaching-20120419,0,4630280.story)

Until those companies apologize to every existing employee, I have absolutely
no loyalty to them.

If they can't even let the free market decide the value of the programmer why
should I have any fucking allegiance to any of them?

I can only hope she and others get the competitive salary they deserve.

~~~
adventureful
In an actual free market, collusion between companies is legal and occurs
regularly.

You're talking about a regulated market in which labor is protected by
government intervention from collusion between companies.

~~~
glesica
That's not the way "free market" is understood by the vast majority of people.
In your version of a free market murder is also a common business strategy.
Google could just kill any engineer who dares to work for a competitor.

No one wants to live in a world like that. So when we say "free market", we
mean a market with an agreed-upon set of rules that everyone is aware of and
that are generally followed and enforced.

~~~
pasbesoin
The problem is that a lot of people spouting "free market" demagoguery don't
practice your definition. Rather, it is indeed "anything and everything they
can get away with".

There is also strong correlation with people intent on telling _other people_
how to live _their lives_. (Even and all the more so when this ends up through
revelations and evidence being a "do as I say, not as I do" type of message.)

One of my problems with so-called "free marketeers", is that so many of them
are outright hypocrites.

Sigh. Trending too far towards the political, here on HN. But people,
including many technical people, need to look at, analyze, and take apart free
market arguments and statements, to see what parts are true and/or work and
what parts don't.

I myself favor broadly but fairly strictly defining spaces and rules within
which private enterprise can compete relatively freely. But, private
enterprise does not become the final arbiter of same.

That's what studies I recall seem to have indicated. Regulation works well in
broad strokes. It falls down in micro-management. But you paint those strokes
strongly, and you don't let the competitors step an inch over that line
without consequences. (Even if, sometimes, the consequences are a re-
evaluation and adjustment of the regulation. Sometimes, the times really do
change.)

If you let private enterprise loose entirely, you end up enabling the eventual
establishment of quasi-states -- perhaps to eventually become de facto or real
states. Autocratic states, by the nature of their structure.

I'm not sure we really want, or are willing to concede to the inevitability
of, a Gibsonian near-future. Yet.

As for the regulation. It should all be open. With the world an ever shrinking
place, private actions simply are no longer isolated. When company X pollutes
watershed Y, it's no longer just a matter of their bottom line. Even in
resulting settlements, court procedures, and arbitration, non-disclosure
should not be a legal option for them. Shine the light of day on these bad
actors. And shine it on government failures that enabled them.

A bit idealistic. But, IMO, better than "all hail free markets".

P.S. If you think markets are free, try following jobs across national
boundaries. There is no worldwide "free market" in labor. (Something a bit
less obvious to the highly skilled than to the rest of the world labor force.)

