
Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google - Harj
https://triplebyte.com/blog/marissa-mayer-interview
======
NelsonMinar
I was also at Google when the AOL deal was signed and remember the decision
and outcome quite differently. It was definitely a high risk deal,
deliberately so, but in no way was it only "the best-case scenario had us
breaking even". Nor was it the case that "all of our models were wrong". The
product manager in charge of ads at the time had a clear understanding of
exactly how the deal could be hugely profitable for Google because of the
value of extra advertisers attracted to the Google platform thanks to the
added AOL inventory. It was by no means a sure thing, but it was a likely
outcome. Fortunately the decision makers believed him, they took the risk, and
it paid off enormously.

~~~
mathattack
Execs rewriting corporate history after the fact. Go figure.

~~~
ido
Seeing as this happened 20 years ago and she was quoting from memory, I think
we can give her the benefit of the doubt. It could have also been that her
view at the time was different than OP's/the person who made the deal & she
recalls her opinion as "how it was".

Such things in-fact happened to me (even tho I'm a bit younger than Mayer & my
career started a few years later than hers), human memory is really unreliable
& a lot of times you remember your feelings & translate those to facts upon
recollection even when that wasn't quite the case.

~~~
joesb
As if only evil CEO can remember things differently.

"This CEO rewrites history! My friend's memory is more trustworthy!"

------
Harj
Marissa described possibly the most thorough and analytical job search process
I've heard from anyone, when she was talking about how she joined Google. I
really liked her reflection on this in hindsight on how being overly
analytical is dangerous and it's something I try to remind myself of when I'm
in danger of overthinking a decision:

"I think this is a common thing that very analytical people trip themselves up
with. They look at things as if there’s a right answer and a wrong answer
when, the truth is, there’s often just good choices, and maybe a great choice
in there."

~~~
lkrubner
Too much focus on utility functions, not enough focus on novelty functions,
even though it's been proven that utility functions decline in usefulness as a
search space expands. Given an infinite search space, a utility function can
only find local optima, there is no global optima. In such situations, a
novelty function that finds a path from one happy local optima to another
happy local optima is a better bet than using a utility function.

The above paragraph is rational, and yet people who consider themselves hyper
rational often ignore the truth of this. And the irony is that some of them do
this for an emotional reason: they want the security that comes from believing
that there is an absolute right answer. They are irrationally rational.

~~~
tlb
How would you prove that?

Here's a simple counterexample to what I understand your theorem to say:
consider an infinite search space: 𝕽∞ and a utility function: 1-|x|. There's a
single global optimum at (0, ...), and the gradient of the utility function
would find it quickly.

~~~
antt
Counter example: R^1 with a random function. There is no algorithm that can
find a global maximum other than checking every point in R^1, of which there
is an uncountable number.

~~~
salty_biscuits
Not all cost surfaces are equally likely to occur in real problems... Also
depends on the constraints, linear assignment (i.e. one job to one worker with
a big matrix of cost for job to worker and you minimize the sum) has a
polynomial complexity solution.

~~~
antt
We are not talking about real problems here. Reality is so far from linear, so
path dependent, so temporally dependent that by the time you gather 10 data
points to try and match some function to the function is already outdated and
error prone.

This is infinitely truer for when you try and find absolute maxima and minima
and not just local ones.

------
rajeshp1986
"I realized that, while I had a very deep understanding of artificial
intelligence, I did not yet have some of the basics down. I knew how a
database worked. I knew how an operating system worked. I knew how a compiler
worked. But I hadn't taken classes on those topics, so I went back for my
master's and took the rest of the AI offerings as well as a lot of programming
basics. That way, I could actually go and market myself as a software engineer
and say, “I've written a compiler. I've written an operating system. I've
written a database. I know how they work"

I am confused. Is she talking about foundation CS courses like OS & database
systems OR AI courses?

~~~
antt
Keep in mind that she is a queen of self promotion. When she was talking about
140 hour work weeks she conveniently left out the fact she was paying someone
else to do her domestic work [0]. Or that most of her days involved meetings,
lunches and dinners.

I am reminded of the story of Henry IV who stood barefoot in the snow for
three days. And through the grace of God not getting frost bite. We have come
so far when we no longer believe you need God for acts like this.

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/marissa-mayer-who-just-
ba...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/marissa-mayer-who-just-banned-
working-from-home-paid-to-have-a-nursery-built-at-her-office-2013-2?r=US&IR=T)

~~~
ceph_
> When she was talking about 140 hour work weeks she conveniently left out the
> fact she was paying someone else to do her domestic work

HER domestic work? There is absolutely no reason why she should or would
mention this other than your sexist expectations.

Do you expect male CEOs to mention they pay someone to do their laundry and
are abdicating their "domestic responsibilities"? Seriously?!

~~~
antt
I liked the part were you called me sexist for making the complaint the
mothers in Yahoo made against her when she cut their rights to work remotely.

You of course would know this if you read the link I provided, instead of the
first line of my post.

~~~
praneshp
> she cut their rights to work remotely

Do you have a citation that mothers at Yahoo complained? Or that mothers at
Yahoo were non-trivially worse off than other companies in their situation at
that time?

disclaimer: ex yahoo

~~~
Jach
Yes, the link 'antt posted goes into it by the third sentence.

"This upset many employees – mothers in particular."

As for other companies, well, my employer existed at that time, had and still
has a work-from-home culture that's more friendly towards mothers, and is
routinely highly rated in most innovative company beauty pageants. The link
from the link also details basically every other company in 2013 having a non-
trivially better situation with flexible WFH policies.

------
Causality1
Considering how Mayer absolutely cratered Yahoo I'd take her advice with a
grain of salt. Quarterly operating profit dropped by more than 50% during her
tenure and she was the driving force behind the acquisition of dozens of
worthless companies leading to the write-off of billions of dollars in
goodwill value.

~~~
nostrademons
"When management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a
reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that
remains intact." \-- Warren Buffett.

~~~
sfblah
Yahoo is in a business that has fantastic economics. Try again.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
Why do you say this?

------
alexeiz
Did Marissa Mayer have any accomplishments at either Google or Yahoo? It looks
like she just /was/ there, but she didn't make any significant decisions which
can be undoubtedly attributed to her.

------
ArcMex
"Our final question: Why isn't everyone happy all the time? I don't know.
Overall, I'm a pretty happy person, and one of my theories in life is that
people fundamentally want to be happy. So, if you ever find a moment when you
aren't happy, you should just wait. Something is likely to change in the
scenario. Someone else will change what they're doing, or you'll get motivated
to change what you're doing, so the situation will change overall for the
better."

Sort of in a slump and I don't have anything smart to say but this made me
feel a little better. I feel like I have far more ability than my company
utilizes but I cannot quit because I need this job. I don't have the balls to
start a company because I don't have a great idea. I just write code. So I
will wait. Something will give eventually.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
You will wait forever dude. Don't take advice from someone who won the
lottery. Try taking action if you can and put yourself in areas (or companies)
where the chance to encounter good ideas and possibly build upon them yourself
is greater. It is incrediblely different to work with motivated people who
love what they do vs folks who just clock in and clock out.

------
thecleaner
Was it really necessary to put in the phrase - "..bought with my babysitting
money" ? Does she mean her job as a babysitter or is it just an adjective ?
How much did babysitting pay that you could afford a computer with that stuff
?

------
musicale
I'm more interested in an explanation of what went wrong when she was running
Yahoo!.

------
cirkut
M.M. One of the worst CEO. Just lucky to be on right side of the fence

------
hwj
I liked this phrase:

> And one of the reasons I was a good product manager was because I had been
> an engineer.

------
dustindiamond
She seems like a lucky Elizabeth Holmes type.

~~~
devoply
Yeah pretty much, I don't see much going on with many of these high status
women (and men) other than their network. Especially when their actual
performance doesn't speak volumes.

~~~
antt
To be fair I don't see much going on with all the high status men either.

I'm reminded of the chimps who outperformed the stock markets:
[https://www.ft.com/content/abd15744-9793-11e2-b7ef-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/abd15744-9793-11e2-b7ef-00144feabdc0)
of course replacing the cocaine bill with grapes dramatically lowers your
running costs.

~~~
devoply
agreed.

------
omot
I'm always irked by hns attitude towards women leaders. There so many comments
trying to discredit her or trying to shame her for self promotion. In general,
there's always a sexist undertone, and I feel like the anonymity of hn brings
the sexism of the tech community to the surface.

In regards to Marissa, I personally believe that the Glass Cliff is real. It's
inspiring that she was integral in creating one of the most valuable company
in the valley. Likewise, I find it impressive that she was able to climb the
political ladder of a generally sexist industry.

~~~
ckastner
> _I 'm always irked by hns attitude towards women leaders. There so many
> comments trying to discredit her or trying to shame her for self promotion._

HN demonstrably shows the same attitude towards male leaders as well. Elon
Musk is the poster child of this.

This has nothing to do with the gender of the leader, but rather an aversion
to self-promotion, hyping, or any other exaggeration of the self or one's
accomplishments.

~~~
shaki-dora
Nobody has ever accused Musk of outsourcing his dry cleaning when discussion
his workload.

~~~
ckastner
According to the HN comment search below, nobody has ever accused Mayer of
that either, so what is the point of your comment?

~~~
shaki-dora
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620176)

------
tardo99
The cult of personality around Marissa is just confusing to me.

~~~
thenaturalist
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?

~~~
hlurhhh
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.

~~~
JudasGoatse
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.

~~~
hlurhhh
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.

~~~
JudasGoatse
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.

~~~
hlurhhh
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.

~~~
Udik
I mean, apart from everything else in this thread, Marissa Mayer doesn't
really seem to have done much: a good management role in Google, tanking a
former internet giant and getting a lot of money for it, and setting up a
company that doesn't seem to have produced anything so far.

Even if you look for women role model in tech, is it possible there aren't any
more successful ones?

