Am I the <i>only</i> one who is seriously considering about applying to Yahoo, now?<p>You have a company that is profitable and is known for developing good technology, but that never had an "engineer mindset" at the top. PG himself tells how their biggest problem is that Yahoo's top management doesn't think about "products", but rather about "properties".<p>Now - after God-knows-how-many "media" CEOs - you have this insanely capable engineer at the top, whose sole focus is on using the brain power at the company for creating products, instead of pushing ads or competing in "social" anything. If she manages to change the culture at Yahoo, I think they will have a strong comeback - and I'd love to be a part of it.<p>Actually, I'd love to have Paul Buchheit to chime in. He is the one that probably got closest to her, and might be able to provide some insight as to how much of an impact she can have on Yahoo.
aside: I like that "OP/ED" is presented very boldly at the start of the article. I wish other news sites were as clear.<p>> The one thing she lacked is the sole reason she’s now at Yahoo: Power.<p>That damn well better be the reason. There really can't be any other reason at least as far as my feeble mind can fetch.<p>If you're worth $300 million and you don't plan to take, say, <i>a year or two</i> off to play and connect with your soon-to-be-firstborn child? Not to sound mean but what could <i>possibly</i> motivate you to do otherwise, than lust for power?<p>$300 million and you could be everything to your child but you insist on attempting to <i>overwork?</i> Jesus that just feels stark to me.<p>~~~<p>Wait a minute, didn't Yahoo pass on promoting Susan Decker because they demanded that they find someone who had been a CEO before? I guess they dropped that requirement. For the record, Decker resigned when Yahoo announced that Bartz was to be the new CEO.<p>Not that Mayer is necessarily a bad pick, I'm not wise enough to say, I just find the whole Yahoo CEO parade these past four years to be a very odd affair.
I don't quite understand why we're celebrating articles that gossip about her career and life. This article felt like the nerdy version of a tabloid piece that also took some cheap shots at entrepreneurialism. I can't properly articulate why this article (and others like it) irk me, but they do.
Good point about the fact that she had gone as high as she could go at Google, but the disparaging of startup CEOs:<p>"Running around Silicon Valley begging VCs for a handout; pitching weary journalists on another software product; building everything from the ground up and never knowing if people will actually use it. That’s not power, folks; that’s just working like a dog, and it’s a gamble at best, no matter who’s doing it."<p>I don't get her logic, the entire valley is built on people who did exactly that at one point. And now shes trying to convince us that well, obviously, she'd want to go take over a failed company instead of possibly trying to start her own, who'd wanna do that, that's just ridiculous?<p>A gazillion execs at companies like Facebook (Asana, Quora, I think), Paypal (SpaceX, Tesla, etc.) went and started their own company and have plenty of power.<p>Not to mention the obvious point that maybe "power" shouldn't be the only thing someone aspires to . . .
"she is known for pulling 130-hour work weeks and trading sleep for a few more hours in front of a laptop"<p>Is this even humanly possible? What does that leave, 5 hours a day for sleeping, even on weekends?
What did she contribute to Google exactly? Articles like this hand-wave through actual contributions with "influencing the minimalist and user-friendly interfaces of Google web search and Gmail" which is extremely vague and could easily amount to nothing.
and if she turns Yahoo's better assets (news, Flickr, dev tools) into the face of the company while inventing something ridiculously awesome (maybe a dead simple, language agnostic calendar/scheduling api...lol), she'll be hailed as a genius.<p>if you're an entrepreneur and you've already made it, taking the biggest risk seems like the obvious choice (elon musk, anyone?)<p>good for her.
> She could have run off and been a startup founder and “CEO,” but what kind of power is that, really? Running around Silicon Valley begging VCs for a handout; pitching weary journalists on another software product; building everything from the ground up and never knowing if people will actually use it. That’s not power, folks; that’s just working like a dog, and it’s a gamble at best, no matter who’s doing it.<p>Portraying visionary people believing in what they do are "beggars" is stupid way of explaining things.
The elephant in the room: why exactly didn't she get a promotion to Googles top tier? Considering that she was one of the first 20 employees there has to be some reason for that. I have the impression that there is some piece missing here.