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Marissa Mayer is leaving Yahoo with a $186 million payout

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C

Crimson_Gold

Member
Synless said:
That is bullshit. In any business there is always steps you can take to remain either level out or grow the business. The problem is always time and money. I will never understand how payouts like this can happen when a person fails at what they were hired to do.
Click to expand...

Contracts. How do they work? Once we figure that out, it'll become clear
 
S

SummitAve

Banned
So she's never going to work again for profits, and spend the rest of her life giving back or in public service, right?
 
T

TarpitCarnivore

Member
Renekton said:
What's with the extra attention towards Mayer?

It's not like there is a shortage of well-paid CEOs in underperformers or fading giants.
Click to expand...

At the time it was a huge hire and especially news worthy for it being a woman. Yahoo was floundering worse than ever and Mayer had a good history at Google. Since it's become a running joke for SV writers because of the bungled companies, Flickr headaches and so on.
 
T

Tripon

Member
FairyD said:
So there is a CEO job position available at Yahoo?

I can do her job, I'm sure it won't be any worse. I'll just surf gaf and reddit all day, I'm sure doing nothing will bleed less money than doing something.
Click to expand...
Verizon is buying Yahoo, merging it with AOL and calling the new company "Oath".
 
B

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
Hari Seldon said:
She was a terrible CEO, but to be fair I don't think anyone could have resurrected Yahoo lol.
Click to expand...

Yep. Even at the time she was brought into the position, it was so awkward reading fluff pieces and articles about how she will be the savior and bring sweeping changes, when the reality was that everyone knew this ship was beyond saving and nothing substantive beyond a ringing endorsement of hope was all that was being touted.
 
M

muteki

Member
Synless said:
That is bullshit. In any business there is always steps you can take to remain either level out or grow the business. The problem is always time and money. I will never understand how payouts like this can happen when a person fails at what they were hired to do.
Click to expand...

I would imagine the payout and amount are conditions to her being hired to begin with.
 
W

whatsinaname

Member
Even if the company is floundering, didn't the share value during her tenure go from $15 to $45?

Though I guess most of that increase came due to increase in value of Alibaba.
 
M

Morts

Member
I mean that's a ridiculous amount of money, but didn't Yahoo's share price triple under her tenure (and most of her payout is in said stock)? Isn't that significantly outperforming the market?

I'm not sure it was realistic for any leadership to do better than that for Yahoo.
 
T

TarpitCarnivore

Member
D

dracula_x

Member
Renekton said:
What's with the extra attention towards Mayer?

It's not like there is a shortage of well-paid CEOs in underperformers or fading giants.
Click to expand...

for me, it's started from here – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/technology/yahoo-orders-home-workers-back-to-the-office.html

and, as you can see, that policy didn't save the company. Btw, because of that stupid policy, Yahoo lost a lot of talented people.

Hari Seldon said:
She was a terrible CEO, but to be fair I don't think anyone could have resurrected Yahoo lol.
Click to expand...

Yahoo was profitable company about 4 years ago.

and most companies can be "resurrected", see Apple for example.
 
D

Decider

Member
whatsinaname said:
Even if the company is floundering, didn't the share value during her tenure go from $15 to $45?

Though I guess most of that increase came due to increase in value of Alibaba.
Click to expand...
Quite a parasitic relationship but an interesting model for a company.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Seems like people generally don't understand how hiring (and firing) a big executive works. These things are negotiated into their contracts as a way for the board to bring them into the company, or to keep them at the company. It's not like the board sees them failing and says "Hey! Take this $190million for failing!" It's conditions of employment, usually contingent on stock options. That's how big, expensive corporations land brilliant, talented CEOs, and usually this works out well, but sometimes it doesn't. Mayer, as an executive at Google, at earned a high, secured, safe salary, and for her to leave Google to go to a company that was failing, she rightly negotiated beneficial terms for herself in case she leaves (resigns, fired, leaves on her own terms, etc) within a specific period of time.

And it's not like Yahoo! is like Lehman Brothers where executives got golden parachutes while their company tanked the American economy on risky, bad financial bets.

Wilsongt said:
i hope that one day I ruin a company and manage to parachute out with over $100mil.
Click to expand...

Yahoo was ruined well before she got there... but... aye.

Renekton said:
What's with the extra attention towards Mayer?

It's not like there is a shortage of well-paid CEOs in underperformers or fading giants.
Click to expand...

It's because she's a woman in a "man's world." People latch on to everything she says and outside of tech circles, usually attack her for it. Even people who are otherwise progressive target her because she's a woman in tech. She led like any other tech CEO would, Yahoo was failing with no direction, but because she's a woman anything that any tech CEO would do... like restrict Yahoo's abused work from home system or work through her maternity leave, got her criticized.
 
D

Dreamgazer

Member
TarpitCarnivore said:
Not defending some of these, but do you know how many acquisitions happen in large tech orgs and don't have any visible impact? Companies will buy smaller teams purely for the engineering talent.
Click to expand...

Outside of sales and ad agencies, talent acquisition is rarely the primary reason why larger companies would buy smaller companies.

For tech, acquisitions are usually done to:
1) Expand product offering to new customers (facebook/instagram)
2) To make existing products better (Google/DocVerse)
3) To leverage infrastructure breach digital/physical divide (Google/Motorola Solutions - although failure.)

Myers made too many acquisitions that ultimately yielded to none of the above.

And even if you want to argue she did it for talent acquisition, what has all of the new talent bought to the table?
 
R

Ri'Orius

Member
dracula_x said:
Yahoo was profitable company about 4 years ago.

and most companies can be "resurrected", see Apple for example.
Click to expand...

This one time a dying company turned around and became huge unexpectedly. From this I conclude that any dying company can be saved, and anyone who takes the helm of a dying company and fails to resurrect it is an incompetent moron.

Y'know how you save a dying company? You take risks.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
dracula_x said:
for me, it's started from here – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/technology/yahoo-orders-home-workers-back-to-the-office.html

and, as you can see, that policy didn't save the company. Btw, because of that stupid policy, Yahoo lost a lot of talented people.



Yahoo was profitable company about 4 years ago.

and most companies can be "resurrected", see Apple for example.
Click to expand...

Not sure if Apple is an example of 'most companies.' Apple was a tech miracle, and it's led by essentially the most or second most famous tech CEO, ever, Steve Jobs. Mayer is not Steve Jobs but then again, nobody is Steve Jobs other than Steve Jobs. For internet companies like Yahoo, there are thousands more examples of those that failed than those that succeeded. Very few internet boom companies from the late 90s are still around, failure, aggressive downsizing, or acquisition is the norm, not independent, continued growth, and success.

Mayer also made some very good decisions. Virtually all of the value in yahoo is with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce megalith and it was a really brilliant purchase that she pushed for.

The Work-from-home policy had bad optics because Mayer, being a woman, looked like she was preventing other women from being successful employees and mothers... But if you know anybody who has worked at Yahoo 5+ years ago, you knew it was a major problem there. Employees who hadn't been in an office in 6 months, who stopped replying to email, who stopped doing anything, yet were at home collecting $80 and $90,000 salaries doing as close to nothing as possible, across the whole company. Yahoo lost some talent on that gamble, but they helped cut a lot of waste, and it was also during a time when many tech companies were shifting back from the aggressive work-from-home culture of the bubbled-mid 2000s, and after the financial collapse.

It seemed inevitable at least 3 years ago that Yahoo was simply looking to sell the company at the best share price. Shareholders simply wanted the company to sell, as they couldn't compete with Google, Facebook, and others, in their only profitable internal businesses like ad marketing. Mayer's job for the last 3 years has been effectively to sell the company and sell herself out of a job. She's out not because she failed at running Yahoo, but because she's failed to sell the company.

zero_suit said:
One of the dumbest business decisions in recent memory.
Click to expand...

It was also a hostile takeover attempt, or "unsolicited shareholder buyout." Not exactly a business decision for Yahoo.
 
T

TarpitCarnivore

Member
Dreamgazer said:
Outside of sales and ad agencies, talent acquisition is rarely the primary reason why larger companies would buy smaller companies.

For tech, acquisitions are usually done to:
1) Expand product offering to new customers (facebook/instagram)
2) To make existing products better (Google/DocVerse)
3) To leverage infrastructure breach digital/physical divide (Google/Motorola Solutions - although failure.)

Myers made too many acquisitions that ultimately yielded to none of the above.

And even if you want to argue she did it for talent acquisition, what has all of the new talent bought to the table?
Click to expand...

Buying a bunch of companies to add talent to the mobile division is not going to result in high visibility stuff. You're pointing out some high level buys here, but also not mentioning any that were acquihires:

Here's a list of every buy from Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet

Here's the same for Facebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook
 
S

SporeCrawler

Member
The Albatross said:
Not sure if Apple is an example of 'most companies.' Apple was a tech miracle, and it's led by essentially the most or second most famous tech CEO, ever, Steve Jobs. Mayer is not Steve Jobs but then again, nobody is Steve Jobs other than Steve Jobs. For internet companies like Yahoo, there are thousands more examples of those that failed than those that succeeded. Very few internet boom companies from the late 90s are still around, failure, aggressive downsizing, or acquisition is the norm, not independent, continued growth, and success.

Mayer also made some very good decisions. Virtually all of the value in yahoo is with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce megalith and it was a really brilliant purchase that she pushed for.

The Work-from-home policy had bad optics because Mayer, being a woman, looked like she was preventing other women from being successful employees and mothers... But if you know anybody who has worked at Yahoo 5+ years ago, you knew it was a major problem there. Employees who hadn't been in an office in 6 months, who stopped replying to email, who stopped doing anything, yet were at home collecting $80 and $90,000 salaries doing as close to nothing as possible, across the whole company. Yahoo lost some talent on that gamble, but they helped cut a lot of waste, and it was also during a time when many tech companies were shifting back from the aggressive work-from-home culture of the bubbled-mid 2000s, and after the financial collapse.

It seemed inevitable at least 3 years ago that Yahoo was simply looking to sell the company at the best share price. Shareholders simply wanted the company to sell, as they couldn't compete with Google, Facebook, and others, in their only profitable internal businesses like ad marketing. Mayer's job for the last 3 years has been effectively to sell the company and sell herself out of a job. She's out not because she failed at running Yahoo, but because she's failed to sell the company.



It was also a hostile takeover attempt, or "unsolicited shareholder buyout." Not exactly a business decision for Yahoo.
Click to expand...

yeah people give her too much shit but there are things that she has done right as well.

i think she was heading for a investment company for smaller tech startups and was hoping that some of those companies yahoo bought would be booming. the shares of alibaba certainly did help but the rest was meh..
 
F

Fancolors

Member
Is there anything that could be done to save Yahoo?

I remember when they bought Tumblr and proceeded to do nothing with it.
 
K

kmfdmpig

Member
She's awkwardly laughing all the way to the bank.
To be fair, Yahoo was a dumpster fire before she got there and remained one. She certainly didn't turn it around, but I'm not sure that would have been possible.
 
O

O Canada Our Home and Native Land

Banned
The Albatross said:
Not sure if Apple is an example of 'most companies.' Apple was a tech miracle, and it's led by essentially the most or second most famous tech CEO, ever, Steve Jobs. Mayer is not Steve Jobs but then again, nobody is Steve Jobs other than Steve Jobs. For internet companies like Yahoo, there are thousands more examples of those that failed than those that succeeded. Very few internet boom companies from the late 90s are still around, failure, aggressive downsizing, or acquisition is the norm, not independent, continued growth, and success.

Mayer also made some very good decisions. Virtually all of the value in yahoo is with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce megalith and it was a really brilliant purchase that she pushed for.

The Work-from-home policy had bad optics because Mayer, being a woman, looked like she was preventing other women from being successful employees and mothers... But if you know anybody who has worked at Yahoo 5+ years ago, you knew it was a major problem there. Employees who hadn't been in an office in 6 months, who stopped replying to email, who stopped doing anything, yet were at home collecting $80 and $90,000 salaries doing as close to nothing as possible, across the whole company. Yahoo lost some talent on that gamble, but they helped cut a lot of waste, and it was also during a time when many tech companies were shifting back from the aggressive work-from-home culture of the bubbled-mid 2000s, and after the financial collapse.

It seemed inevitable at least 3 years ago that Yahoo was simply looking to sell the company at the best share price. Shareholders simply wanted the company to sell, as they couldn't compete with Google, Facebook, and others, in their only profitable internal businesses like ad marketing. Mayer's job for the last 3 years has been effectively to sell the company and sell herself out of a job. She's out not because she failed at running Yahoo, but because she's failed to sell the company.



It was also a hostile takeover attempt, or "unsolicited shareholder buyout." Not exactly a business decision for Yahoo.
Click to expand...

Mayer had nothing to do with that. That deal was made by the previous CEO and cofounder, Jerry Yang.
 
J

jungomitis

Member
dracula_x said:
for me, it's started from here – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/technology/yahoo-orders-home-workers-back-to-the-office.html

and, as you can see, that policy didn't save the company. Btw, because of that stupid policy, Yahoo lost a lot of talented people.



Yahoo was profitable company about 4 years ago.

and most companies can be "resurrected", see Apple for example.
Click to expand...

I think most would agree Mayer is not the visionary Jobs was.

Also, Apple was literally bailed out by Bank of America? They were at completely different fsilure points. Yahoo never went to level of bankruptcy
 
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