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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer worked from her hospital bed shortly after having twins
- Thread starter Spring Drive
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D
Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
She's the CEO. They do not play by the same rules.
Maybe your point would have been stronger if yahoo wasnt run to the ground.
People also the talk about work crunch being terrible for game developers around these parts. That is completely consistent with their message here. Not everything on the internet is about putting down women.
dapperbandit
Banned
Marissa Mayer is the one who sounds like someone going down a flight of stairs in a toboggan when she laughs right?
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Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
has nothing to do with the company she works for. women in general face this professional crisis if they dare have children.
What's the point of the article? She can't stop working? She's driven? She doesn't know how to take breaks?
She's the CEO of a big company; I'm sure there are many besides her who work like dogs day in and day out. That's their personality type, and why they get the big bucks.
I don't envy her, however, I feel sorry for them.
Nobody has ever seen the end of their life coming and wished they put in more hours at work.
She's the CEO of a big company; I'm sure there are many besides her who work like dogs day in and day out. That's their personality type, and why they get the big bucks.
I don't envy her, however, I feel sorry for them.
Nobody has ever seen the end of their life coming and wished they put in more hours at work.
John Kowalski
Banned
It's really not on her though, the hubbub is to blame. If she's unfairly demanding others to be as invested as she is, that's one thing. But when outlets, companies, and other public voices instrumentalize her to their own benefit (e.g. what you just said), it gets really disgusting, because all bad things transpire when a woman is put to scrutiny and exploitative gotchas no one else would suffer through.
I have never seen anything from her even approximating St. John levels of what the fuckery.
BlueTsunami
there is joy in sucking dick
The Albatross
Member
Great work taking it out of context.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/give-marissa-f-break-anita-grantham?published=u
Anita Grantham wrote a piece about Mayer and then asked her to comment on it:
Anita Kalin Grantham ‏@anitakgran May 5
@marissamayer Would love your thoughts on this
The piece is a defense of Mayer against critics that said that she's not taking her maternity leave to make an example of people who do. Her response -- WHEN SHE WAS ASKED FOR IT BY ANOTHER LEADER IN SILICON VALLEY -- was "everybody takes maternity leave here, but this is what I did."
I'm going to quote Grantham's argument here:
Grantham goes onto make a similar point to one that I made: "Furthermore, we may actually enjoy working. "
rokkerkory
Member
Hardest working doesn't mean successful unfortunately for the employees at yahoo
TheSpoiler
Member
I agree with this to an extent. Women get shit on for going either route, and it's bananas that society doesn't allow them a moment's rest or they'll be seen as "weak"
That said, saying shit like this:
..as a boss is setting a standard for your employees and bragging about it. Whether her intentions were to shit on people shitting on her for giving her the double standard or not, this paints a "WHY CANT OTHER WOMEN DO IT TOO" imagery you (and hopefully she) would like to avoid.
I'm scorning society's drive to squeeze every ounce of blood from people's lives as their job becomes their literal lives instead of being able to separate the two. Health concerns alone are a big reason that this needs to be discussed, regardless of whether or not it impacted her pregnancy. Articles like this do nothing but continue that rhetoric.
You are right about female CEO's getting more shit in general than male CEOs. Still, I and many others are attempting to talk about society's focus on prompting people overwork themselves in any position, which hopefully Mayer doesn't subscribe to despite her Tweet.
That makes more sense. I redact my commentary about her Tweet. I still think articles like this in general do nothing for the workforce and society as a whole unless taken in context where the person enjoys their work and poses no health concerts, women especially included.
I don't see this point being made in this thread. I see lots of people saying she should take time off to take care of her new born child, and to stop glorifying workaholism. Do you actually think any of these are bad points? I don't.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
I don't for a second understand that mentality, putting work before everything else. Life is far too interesting for all that, especially when you can afford it.
She would still be getting obscenely wealthy without spending every waking moment thinking about Yahoo, of all things.
She would still be getting obscenely wealthy without spending every waking moment thinking about Yahoo, of all things.
I interpreted that as showing that most of the women taking maternal leave at Yahoo take the full amount, and that she is an extreme exception with regards to taking a small amount. I think her point is that she is an exception due to her position and is pushing back on the notion that her handling of leave is affecting others at the company. I think this is the data being referenced at the end of the quoted article excerpt in the OP.
Skellig Gra
Member
Yes, she and any parent is at liberty to parent any way they want. That doesn't mean its good for the parent or the child. Kids need their parents, its a basic biology thing. If you wanted to work all the time you probably shouldn't have had children. That goes for men and women.
D
Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
You see it in this thread, with people posting a laugh compilation so they can laugh at her. Undeserved shitting on someone.
Closest thing we get in parity is Steve Ballmer because he was exceptionally bananas.
D
Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
She WILL get shit for spending time away and her peers or employees will hold it against her if she takes off time. She simply cannot win in the eyes of others. She's damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.
not necessarily, and we cannot be the police on who should and should not breed.
If this were an article about Melissa Myers taking 6 weeks of maternity leave after giving birth... it wouldn't even be an article. There would be no story, except maybe that 6 weeks is an awful short time to recover from having babies then spend time bonding with them.
The outrage is less at Myers (though she remains a fun target for her various shortcomings,) but at a work culture that DOES punish women who choose to have children, and at a woman that is celebrating that culture by bragging about the work she continues to do literally from the hospital bed. It's a bad look. If Myers took this opportunity to say something about how crazy it is to expect women to both bear the children that are humanities future and maintain an uninterrupted work schedule, well that would be pretty great. Instead she is probably placating some VC dork who is really keen on knowing what's happening with the recent acquisitions in the personal diet tracking app space.
The Albatross
Member
Are you confident in judging Marissa Mayer as a mother from reading a single, 4-paragraph fluff piece from from Business Insider, or maybe a handful of biased, clickbait articles on Mayer?
Do you have any recommendations for anybody else on who should and shouldn't have children?
The Lamonster
Member
Yep. She sounds like a wonderful mother :/
LegalEagleMike
Member
If that is what she wants to do then so be it. I only put in about a year of 80 hour work weeks in a traditional law firm setting before I burnt out and started my own practice.
Skellig Gra
Member
I am confident that an article saying its a good thing to work immediately up to and immediately after giving birth has a negative effect on our society which is already in dire need of changes to parental leave laws.
Are you asking "does maternity / paternity leave have any benefits to kids"
Azzurri
Member
My dad is the same way.
Growing up my dad left the house at 6am and came home around 7pm almost everyday of the week. He's 70 now and still works from 7 to 6, 5 or 6 days a week. I don't know what it is with foreign men but their work ethic is crazy. He won't retire, work is the only thing he knows.
Growing up my dad left the house at 6am and came home around 7pm almost everyday of the week. He's 70 now and still works from 7 to 6, 5 or 6 days a week. I don't know what it is with foreign men but their work ethic is crazy. He won't retire, work is the only thing he knows.
RustyNails
Member
Shit like this has a chilling effect in workplace. People will be afraid of taking leaves without being seen as lazy, and they will be staying late even if they have nothing to do.
"Our CEO was working from hospital bed while having twins, and you want to leave 15 minutes early so you can walk your dog?"
Toxic. She's a horrible CEO.
"Our CEO was working from hospital bed while having twins, and you want to leave 15 minutes early so you can walk your dog?"
Toxic. She's a horrible CEO.
Dr. Feel Good
Banned
Look at the context of that Tweet though. She's responding to an article that is wondering if her "bad" example made others in the company follow suit. She's saying no one looked at what she did and felt pressure to do the same, on the contrary most used the maximum amount of time.
I'm not saying she's right for what she did, but don't twist her Tweet into something it's not.
Zoe
Member
Er... I don't think she's bragging. She's proving that her actions don't influence those below her.
Edit: beaten, should have refreshed.
Lasthope106
Member
Not impressed. What good did it end up doing. Probably if she didn't have tunnel vision from always thinking about work, she would have been able to have better ideas for the company.
I have no respect for workaholics. I work with tons of them and most of the time, then only thing they manage to do is make bad decisions, and burn themselves out.
I have no respect for workaholics. I work with tons of them and most of the time, then only thing they manage to do is make bad decisions, and burn themselves out.
therealist
Member
You might not agree with it, but I trust that Marissa makes rational decisions about how much she wants to work. That's her prerogative. She's very intelligent, I doubt that she's oblivious to the studies that say the more you work the less effective you become.
Think of it through her eyes, she became a multi-millionaire CEO because she set the bar for intense work hours. Why deviate from what made her successful in the first place?
We also know that her company is under fire and investors are frustrated. If she continues to make the wrong decisions it could be catastrophic for the company. Now is the time it's imperative that she makes good decisions. She is under an unbelievable amount of pressure to perform. Her reputation and legacy is on the line right now.
Byakuya769
Member
I mean.. I don't want to be CEO, so more power to her. As long as she isn't shoveling similar expectations down.
I do wish our corporate culture would just slow down, though. This insatiable want of productivity is going to be the death of us all.
I do wish our corporate culture would just slow down, though. This insatiable want of productivity is going to be the death of us all.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
These expectations are often there regardless, and that's real shitty.
I would love to fail like Marissa Mayer.
Failing like that for a year and you are set for life.
Not just set for life, you would have enough to ensure your children and their children could do whatever the fuck they wanted.
Vermillion
Banned
Thanks for the response
I guess my next question is "rational or comfortable?" Clearly the decisions being made aren't effective. The rational decision would be to try something new.
But I do understand the desire to do something comfortable over something different when you're stuck. I also understand that the decisions she's making may take her a lot of time - I don't know everything she does.
I suppose we'll find out in time - for better or for worse.
CyclopsRock
Member
She has enough money that she could retire whenever she wants and never have to worry about money. In that position, free from "wage slavery" and the like, the decisions she makes are up to her.
This thread makes me sad because it really demonstrates the double-edged sword female executives deal with. Female CEOs are disproportionately chosen to lead companies that are failing or in otherwise tenuous state. Then if the company goes down they get blamed for the failure and the articles start coming out about their attitude, their management style, being "too aggressive," etc.
It's possible that people didn't notice that the whole reason Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer was that it was already dead in the water. It's been a really long time since Yahoo's core business was worth anything -- like, literally anything if you account for the Alibaba stock. So of course they went for a hyper-aggressive ex-Google employee who had a vision, and of course the Yahoo employees who were apparently perfectly happy slipping into worthless oblivion didn't appreciate having to deal with somebody from a company that actually succeeds occasionally and who wanted to try to do the same thing.
And of course it didn't work, because in the end Yahoo is still Yahoo and $33 billion of Alibaba stock is still $33 billion of Alibaba stock that you can only get if you break the piggy bank. Once the IRS nixed the tax-free spinoff, Yahoo getting sold off was more or less inevitable. Like a person of color with two functioning kidneys, our economy considers it more valuable in pieces.
But somehow a company that was doomed to fail actually failing is now Marissa Mayer's fault.
My main comment on this article is that I wonder how many male CEOs worked the day after having kids. I don't recall seeing any articles about that! I know it happens a lot, though. But somehow there's no discussions about how they're compromising work/life balance or creating a bad company culture. It's almost like there's a double standard for women in the workplace!
I would also note that, like, one important thing about newborns is that they spend 18 hours sleeping. My wife took some phone calls the week after our daughter was born too. There's really not much else to do since you can't leave the house or go to bed for any length of time.
tl;dr sexist
It's possible that people didn't notice that the whole reason Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer was that it was already dead in the water. It's been a really long time since Yahoo's core business was worth anything -- like, literally anything if you account for the Alibaba stock. So of course they went for a hyper-aggressive ex-Google employee who had a vision, and of course the Yahoo employees who were apparently perfectly happy slipping into worthless oblivion didn't appreciate having to deal with somebody from a company that actually succeeds occasionally and who wanted to try to do the same thing.
And of course it didn't work, because in the end Yahoo is still Yahoo and $33 billion of Alibaba stock is still $33 billion of Alibaba stock that you can only get if you break the piggy bank. Once the IRS nixed the tax-free spinoff, Yahoo getting sold off was more or less inevitable. Like a person of color with two functioning kidneys, our economy considers it more valuable in pieces.
But somehow a company that was doomed to fail actually failing is now Marissa Mayer's fault.
My main comment on this article is that I wonder how many male CEOs worked the day after having kids. I don't recall seeing any articles about that! I know it happens a lot, though. But somehow there's no discussions about how they're compromising work/life balance or creating a bad company culture. It's almost like there's a double standard for women in the workplace!
I would also note that, like, one important thing about newborns is that they spend 18 hours sleeping. My wife took some phone calls the week after our daughter was born too. There's really not much else to do since you can't leave the house or go to bed for any length of time.
tl;dr sexist
Spring Drive
Banned
Do you have proof of that?
Spring Drive
Banned
That doesn't answer my question. All in see in your links are opinions and correlations/coincidence at best
I was actually paying attention?
Here's a chart of Yahoo's stock price over the last five years: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive#{"range":"5y","allowChartStacking":true}
Mayer was hired in July 2012. Does it look like she ran the business into the ground? Keep in mind that Yahoo's all-time stock price high was 120 or so.
Here are some quotes from Vanity Fair's profile in 2014, back when it was still socially acceptable to like Marissa Mayer:
vanity fair said:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/01/marissa-mayer-yahoo-google
Pay attention to that Dan Loeb bit at the end, because he eventually got control and installed Marissa Mayer, and he was interested from the beginning in Alibaba.
Here's another piece of information to consider:
aabaco holdings information statement said:Following the Spin-Off, the Fund will be an independent, publicly traded, non-diversified, closed-end management investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “1940 Act”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1646775/000119312515378561/d77711dex991.htm
This is from Yahoo's tax-free spinoff filing last year, attempting to spin off its Alibaba stake into a smaller company. It wasn't until the IRS stomped on this spinoff plan that Yahoo decided to sell itself off.
Here's one more little graph:
Can you put the pieces together? Yahoo owns 15% of Alibaba. It's worth about $32 billion dollars*, which is more than Yahoo itself is worth. But Yahoo can't sell those shares without incurring about $16 billion in capital gains tax.
The only company that can acquire those shares and get the full value without paying taxes is Alibaba, because Alibaba doesn't need to sell the shares to get the value -- it just absorbs them as a buyback.
So Yahoo, and Dan Loeb's, and thus probably Marissa Mayer's whole agenda for the last four years has been to find a way to sell those Alibaba shares to Alibaba. It's worth 16 billion dollars to do that, which as noted is probably a lot more than everything else Yahoo does.
That's why they spent all last year working on a tax-free spinoff plan to spin off those shares into a separate company that Alibaba could just consume. Once the IRS stopped that for being too obviously tax evasion, the only remaining way to solve the problem is to sell off Yahoo itself. Then somebody can just spin off ALL OF YAHOO, leaving just the Alibaba shares, and then sell the remainder. So surprise surprise, that's what Yahoo is now doing.
The market has been pretty clear ever since Alibaba went public: Yahoo is a worthless business. Like literally has negative value compared to its assets. It has been for like ten years. Marissa Mayer didn't change that. I'm not sure she even wanted to! The person who hired her pretty clearly cared about the assets, not the business.
edit
Okay. In that case the answer is "since you deny the concept of proof of course no proof exists."
* The graph is out of date, also I think Yahoo sold some stock which made people mad since they had to pay taxes.
D
Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
should know better than to argue with a D.Va stan
55 million bucks isn't considered nothing for most people I'd wager.
Spring Drive
Banned
I'm not asking for the proof Yahoo was tanking, I'd like the proof that the W H O L E (i.e. the one and only) reason for hiring Marissa Mayer was sexism
I'm not going to play this game, but I would, like, recommend you go back and read your post? It's pretty short, but you seem to have forgotten what you wrote in it.
Spring Drive
Banned
I rest my case.
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