How people love to talk about Marissa Mayer but not Yahoo



Contributing Writer
Photo: Inside Games Credit: Dennis Elema


Everybody has an angle to write about Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer.

She has “shattered the glass ceiling,” has started the “maternity leave debate,” Yahoo has “learned (lessons) from Playboy,” her “soft maternity leave” scares people (on behalf of her child), she needs to “fix Flickr,” she has a personal shopper that buys her all of seasonal fashions, she “wins hearts,” she “can’t have it all,” is either a “savior or symbol,” – on and on.

When writers have exhausted all platitudes and non-sequiturs, they’ll probably realize that the Yahoo board of directors is still the schizophrenic group it has always been, and that Yahoo has morphed into an email provider that has a lot of money tied up in content creation.  Earnings continue to decrease, and Yahoo has divested their interest in Alibaba while settling lawsuits that had potential for large one-time windfall payments.  And their “partner” Bing is siphoning off their search traffic.

Immediately before “product-focused” Mayer was recruited into the role, “content-focused” Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was the leading candidate, and now the board has given Mayer the directive to beat Google and Facebook.  Good luck with that since Yahoo doesn’t even compete in the same space as those two anymore.

I love a good human interest story, but the real story is that Marissa Mayer is in a dire situation.  She has done some amazing things with Google and will be a really interesting person to follow during her time as Yahoo CEO (who knows how long that might be?), but she is an emergency room surgeon who has inherited a cadaver and is being asked to resuscitate it into an Olympic athlete.  Even if she developed a plan that could accomplish a resurgence in advertising revenue, one wonders if the Yahoo board would allow her to change anything so radically?

As for people’s concerns about her pregnancy and potential time off of work, it begs the question if anyone has been paying attention to Yahoo recently?  This place could run itself.   The interim, fired and resigned CEOs have been comical – it will probably be shocking to Yahoo employees to have a CEO go away briefly and then come back.

And as for concerns about her kid, Miller is worth $300 million.  She could build a building on the MIT campus and he could have a doctorate by 13.  Her kid is going to be fine – please sleep easy tonight.

Her company will not be fine, however.  It hasn’t been for a long time.

 

Photo Credit

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Writer about social media and tech at Leaders West, I also tweet as @leaderswest.

Infographic: How to demoralize an aspiring social media marketer http://t.co/recxYd039z – 6 hours ago

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

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  • Anneliz Hannan

    Jim:

    I am falling off my seat laughing at the visual you created with ‘(Ms Mayer)… she is an emergency room surgeon who has inherited a cadaver and is being asked to resuscitate it into an Olympic athlete.’ I may never sleep easy again but it was well worth the nightmare. Perfect.

    Thanks,
    Anneliz

  • http://www.biculturalmama.com Bicultural Mama

    Good points you’ve made here. Mayer does have an uphill battle w/saving Yahoo. It’s a tough spot to be in, especially given peoples’ expectations of her. If she doesn’t turn Yahoo around, people will say, “See, you can’t be both a good CEO and a good mom.” It’s like a no-win situation.

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks so much for reading and commenting – I’m not the world’s most talented writer but was kind of proud of myself for coming up with that! Thanks for noticing!

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks Maria – you bring up a point that I hadn’t considered about how she can be successful in this role. It really is a no-win situation. I recently read an op/ed critical of Scott Thompson’s (last full time CEO, discredited because of an inaccuracy on his resume) hire at Shoprunner. Meanwhile the way he got the Yahoo gig was to substantially grow Paypal as their SVP and CTO. I would imagine for the reasons you mentioned all of the warm, fuzzy pieces about MM will just be rewritten into why she failed – why her son sent Yahoo into a tailspin and her personal shopper’s insight into Yahoo’s descent. And none of it is fair or would even be a conversation if she were a man.

  • Hillerie Camille

    Genius, bravo…that emergency room surgeon concept was amazing writing!

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks so much Hillerie!

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