
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Loses Bonus And Stock Award Over Security Breach - diafygi
http://gpbnews.org/post/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-loses-bonus-and-stock-award-over-security-breach
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Irishsteve
Quote from MM -

"When I learned in September 2016 that a large number of our user database
files had been stolen, I worked with the team to disclose the incident to
users, regulators, and government agencies. "However, I am the CEO of the
company and since this incident happened during my tenure, I have agreed to
forgo my annual bonus and my annual equity grant this year and have expressed
my desire that my bonus be redistributed to our company's hardworking
employees, who contributed so much to Yahoo's success in 2016."

So does that mean no one pushed it up the chain

~~~
amptorn
From this quote it seems like she didn't so much lose her bonus as voluntarily
declined it.

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iand
When you agree to forgo something, you do so because someone else asked you to
do it. Otherwise you would say you offered to forgo and they accepted.

~~~
rashkov
That is a pretty good demonstration of a fluency in business speak.

~~~
devoply
Business speak in the upper echelons.

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joaodlf
The state Yahoo is in, I don't think anyone else in there expected less.

Public information on these bonuses shocked me, to be frank. Ok, you took a
hard job, but you also failed. A culture that rewards upper management - even
on failures - is a recipe for failure, especially when you employ a large
portion of talented and educated individuals who can very easily move
somewhere else.

~~~
arachnids
They probably agreed on the bonus ahead of time. I doubt she would have taken
the offer if it was conditional on Yahoo doing well.

~~~
MegaButts
> I doubt she would have taken the offer if it was conditional on Yahoo doing
> well.

But that's the point. What motivation does she have to do a good job and
actually care about the well-being of the company if she gets extraordinary
sums of money no matter what?

~~~
arachnids
If she had turned Yahoo around, she would be making much more in equity.

~~~
MegaButts
But does she care? Clearly if someone negotiates to get paid no matter what,
they're putting themselves before the company. And based on how she's acted as
CEO, I don't see any reason to believe she cares about saving Yahoo!

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
_Clearly if someone negotiates to get paid no matter what_

This is generally how I go about negotiating my salary.

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rectang
So when she ultimately escapes from the crumbling wreckage, she'll have
marginally fewer millions.

The incentives for CEOs at today's ridiculous pay grades are all towards
short-termism. That's how we get into messes like this in the first place.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The incentives for CEOs at today's ridiculous pay grades are all towards
> short-termism. That's how we get into messes like this in the first place.

That's a pretty weak criticism of Marissa Mayer. First, she was hardly set up
for success - a first-time CEO placed at the helm of a company that had been
struggling for years to find its market, and whose _two_ predecessors were
_both_ fired in very public scandals. I'm not sure if anyone could have turned
Yahoo around in those circumstances.

Furthermore, Mayer was not at all incentivized towards short term thinking.
Yahoo's share price was largely driven by Alibaba from when she joined until
the IPO, and it was literally one of the selling points used to recruit her:
that she, unlike most CEOs of public companies, would be able to focus on
executing a long-term vision without the pressures of worrying about the daily
share price for the first couple of years (until the Alibaba IPO).

~~~
bogomipz
>"That's a pretty weak criticism of Marissa Mayer."

I don't believe the OP was criticizing her but rather the exclusive "CEO Club"
where their compensation is 2200 times[1] what their average employees get
paid, recieve bonuses in bad or unprofitable years, always get to resign and
never fired, and if they do resign in a cloud of scandal they magically show
up somewhere else and repeat the whole process anew.

[1] [http://fortune.com/2015/06/22/ceo-vs-worker-
pay/](http://fortune.com/2015/06/22/ceo-vs-worker-pay/)

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mrspeaker
Is it a cultural thing (american?) that everyone here is calling her "Marissa
Mayer" or "MM" or "Ms Mayer"? No one would say "Mr Mayer", or "Dave Mayer" or
"DM" in a hacker news comment, they just say "Mayer". Is that a traditional
thing, or is it specific to Mayer?

~~~
thiht
I guess something in the name makes it feel more natural to use the full name.

In the case of Bill Gates for example, I rarely see anyone using "Gates", the
full name "Bill Gates" is used.

~~~
zulln
Does not explain Ms Mayer though.

~~~
purple-again
Look up my post history, I referred to Warren Buffet as Mr. Buffet. It's a
sign of respect for someone you are discussing but have no personal connection
to. Nothing sinister going on here.

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kzrdude
It wouldn't be a bonus if you were entitled to it no matter the circumstance.

~~~
lojack
That's true, but the circumstances to which she is entitled the bonus are
probably well defined. The article made it sound as if she was still entitled
to the bonus, but was asked to not accept it. In this case, being asked to do
something is a pretty loose definition, there's usually fallout from refusing
these kinds of things.

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lloydde
What I imagine happened based on hints of what Ms Mayer wrote is that the
breach affected all employees bonuses for 2016. Ms Mayer would have been under
pressure to forego her bonus and put it into the general employee pool and
even then bonuses are likely much lower than previous years.

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drudru11
Wasn't the guy responsible during this time frame the guy who now heads
Facebook security?

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CaptSpify
I hope this is the start of something better. There's been a distinct lack of
punishment for allowing and even hiding breaches across the industry that I've
seen.

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omarforgotpwd
Marissa Mayer is still the CEO of Yahoo?

~~~
mgiannopoulos
The deal with Verizon is still on hold
[http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/23/technology/yahoo-earnings-
ve...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/23/technology/yahoo-earnings-verizon-
sale/)

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git-pull
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13654513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13654513)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13386349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13386349)

I still don't have my flickr account.

Here's the response from Yahoo Concierge:
[https://imgur.com/a/smjuL](https://imgur.com/a/smjuL)

The employees at Yahoo have been kind and helpful to me. But the bureaucracy
is a rotted waste who just doesn't care.

What am I supposed to do? Why can't you just allow accepting verification
documentation like FB and Blizzard does.

The engineers are great. The managers are great. But the rotten core would
screw over tens of thousands of people locked out of their account so as to
not make one mistake with an identity theft.

How can I be sure my account wasn't one of the ones hacked in one of their
many security fiascos?

I'm just exhausted.

~~~
arjie
If the information you can provide doesn't match, what would you prefer they
do? (Going off the picture you shared here)

~~~
git-pull
Accept the mountains of information I've provided them:

\- Picture of me with my driver's license (which has logins from the area)

\- Sworn oath under penalty of perjury

\- Proof photos in my public account are linked to me (I have pics of a laptop
with an xmonad config open which is the same as my GH)
[https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2741/4437425032_a059639217_o_...](https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2741/4437425032_a059639217_o_d.jpg)
== [https://github.com/tony/xmonad-
config/blob/master/xmonad](https://github.com/tony/xmonad-
config/blob/master/xmonad)

~~~
arjie
The fact that you can present the Credit Cards that were used for billing and
then the bank can prove provenance and all that is in your name would be
pretty convincing to me. I'm surprised by their strict adherence to policy
here.

