Atraveller
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Yahoo gives CEO Marissa Mayer severance package worth $55M
- Thread starter Polari
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Black Republican
Member
Who's expected to buy yahoo?
CEO pay in general is obscene, but that aside this doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary. She gave up a good (and safe) position at Google to join a company which was, almost certainly, a sinking ship - so its little wonder she made sure she had a good 'get out of jail' card for it it went to the dogs.
Personally I think most of her decisions have been quite good ones, and her cultural changes have gone down quite well with the staffers I'm told. At this point her job is to keep the business running long enough to sell off it's key assets, which includes herself.
Personally I think most of her decisions have been quite good ones, and her cultural changes have gone down quite well with the staffers I'm told. At this point her job is to keep the business running long enough to sell off it's key assets, which includes herself.
Bet they wish they took that 43 billion from Microsoft.
Why? You could probably hire a random middle-manager and they wouldn't do a worse job.
It's my dream job!
Well I'm sure when they hired her they didn't think that she would be middle management material.
But basically you can't pay the person who controls everything and knows everything small amounts that would entice them to defect, start their own business, or join a competitor. Or just screw you over out of spite. In that sense business managers are kind of like artist management. You want them to really be hungry for success, so theyre given large cuts of the business, and to be proud of and eant to maintain their position, so that they represent you well.
This all sounds great, until you look at the fact that CEO pay is nowadays vastly higher than it was in the past, with (as far as I've seen) no good reason for it.
It's also way higher in the US than in other developed countries, which again I haven't seen a good justification for.
I'm seeing more and more stories of shareholders revolting and voting against CEO packages, so it seems that company owners are starting to agree with the above.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Apples and oranges. Flickr is a great site, it just has a different purpose for its users.
Lightning_Roller
Banned
I actually still use my yahoo mail account and reading this makes me wonder if I should probably change email address soon.
It's not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
RoninChaos
Member
I wish I could be bad at a job and make millions while crashing the company
This kind of shit has to stop. Share holders or the boards of these companies (or both) need to start limiting these golden parachutes. It's insane to me that people lose their jobs and companies cut their work forces while CEO lay goes up. It's insane.
This kind of shit has to stop. Share holders or the boards of these companies (or both) need to start limiting these golden parachutes. It's insane to me that people lose their jobs and companies cut their work forces while CEO lay goes up. It's insane.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
"Working" 130 hours a week just means that you sleep at your desk and eat all of your meals on campus. You're not getting anything worthwhile done at hour 20 of a 24 hour shift.
Vicetrailia
Member
"I'm paid so I'm good". Poor yahoo workers actually doing things to generate revenue and getting nothing by comparison.
entremet
Member
Studies show that past 50 per week, it is counterproductive anyway.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html
forgeforsaken
Member
The choices of who he could be based on are sadly too numerous to count.
Bony Manifesto
Member
That's for employees that actually produce something though. For a CEO whose actions have only ever lost the company money, who's to say working crazy hours isn't beneficial in some way? Perhaps they're at their most dangerous when they come bounding in on Monday morning, well-rested and full of beans.
No that would be from the smell of rotting peasant corpses in the dungeons below.
To be fair, she kinda does.
That picture is backwards right? I mean, the second one is from 1998, right?My favourite part of her tenure when was she got a bunch of designers together over the weekend to do a re-brand and produced their new logo...
entremet
Member
Her 130 hour figure was when she was an employee at Google.
mangochutney
Member
I don't see it having the need to become a Snapchat or an Instagram.
It does a good job of what it was created to be. From a business perspective I'm sure lots more could be done, but from the user perspective it is pretty good.
Those services are about disposable images. Here's a quick photo of my boobs or lunch, looks good don'it.
Flickr is more about decent quality photography.
Yep, in most executive-level positions they negotiate what's known as a Golden Parachute. Being at that level, you're in charge of so many factors outside ofnyour control, it's more likely you'll fail than succeed. You can come up with strategy all you want, it takes execution to pull it off. So you could have resistance from the board, staffing issues, a corp of generals who aren't suited to do the job, geopolitical constraints, economic barriers, you name it. The best leaders have the best leaders under them, and it seemed like Yahoo couldn't find or keep their best.
Plus, these folks basically eat sleep and dream work, so at risk of their health or family, they want to make sure they are taken care of in the event they give it their all and don't succeed. You can blame Mayer for not having a solid strategy, but you can't say she didn't work hard. And now, after sacrificing years of her personal life, she gets paid for it.
I've heard stories about how dysfunctional their development teams were, and that is a result of poor management. All the strategy in the world couldn't fix the lower level issues they were having. Whereas, Facebook and Google were iterating the hell out of their products, Yahoo was stuck with a broken system.
My favourite part of her tenure when was she got a bunch of designers together over the weekend to do a re-brand and produced their new logo...
Yup, the first one had so much more personality. And they treated the entire thing as some industry shattering event.
To be fair, if I had a 120 hour work week I might think all them logos look great.
So does a lot of people working two minimum wage jobs.
Except nobody gives a fuck about their health or if they can take of their family.
element
Member
And as someone who love looking at EXIF data and seeing what cameras people use, that is a huge minority and pretty much zero market.
Instagram already has become a place where decent quality photography is being posted, far more than Flickr is today. Given the right tools for content creators, you could service both markets.
YuriLowell
Member
I hope no one buys them and they fade into irrelevance.
This, truly this. If people are really interested they should read a bit more about her tenure at Yahoo. I can't think of a worse CEO in the last few years, and yet she's lucky enough that her incompetence might be shrouded enough under the false perception that Yahoo was doomed regardless that she might luck her way into another horrendously undeserved role.
None of this matters as had she done a better job she would be entitled to a larger severance package based on her ability to hit certain milestones.
$55m is pretty damn big no matter which way you look at it. Just because she could have got $100m instead doesn't change anything about how absurd it is.
WarMacheen
Member
Well, that's more than enough money to build another nursery next door at her next job while banning working from home.
Yoda
Member
Yeah, that's how she justified her insane salary to the board. She's the highest paid failure of a manager.
If she couldn't bring her kid to work her magnificent talent might have left and Yahoo wouldn't be in the great position it is now! She deserves it, those lazy scroungers too stupid to become CEO don't at all.
If you couldn't tell, /s
Agreed but this severance package was most likely negotiated prior to her signing on. So, to then point to her poor performance to argue that the severance package is too big is asinine. This is what the Yahoo board agreed to prior to bringing her on. They used the severance package among other benefits to entice her to join their company.
crazygambit
Member
Did she? I read somewhere that she lost a power dispute with another executive and pretty much left in disgrace.
Here are some of the decisions that earned her all that money:
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/top-10-management-mistakes-marissa-mayer-made.html
Numbers 4 and 5 are incredible.
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