Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The wrong time for a token CEO

Milo Yiannopoulos observes that Marissa Mayer's leaning-in is proving disastrous for Yahoo!:
How does one go about finding a CEO? If you’re Wal-Mart, you designate your heir like a Viking chief, picking the strongest of your children. If you’re Yahoo!, however, you put “Affirmative Action Hire” or “Easy, Breezy, Covergirl” in your third-rate search engine and hope for the best. What dubious specimen does the search engine spit out? One Marissa Mayer.

When Mayer and Yahoo! first jumped into bed together, it began like any relationship between a glamorous young woman and an ageing, increasingly desperate sugar daddy. She erratically spent all of Yahoo!’s money. Not only that, but she spent it on Tumblr. For goodness’ sake, the new CEO of the company and she blows a billion dollars on Tumblr.

The jokes write themselves. But just in case you’re out of ink: a token female CEO who immediately goes on a disastrous spending spree — colour me shocked!

Investors seem to be clocking on to the disastrousness of their board’s decision, and are at last pushing for the beleaguered CEO’s removal. Eric Jackson, CEO of SpringOwl Asset Management, recently wrote an op-ed for Vanity Fair explaining why investors wanted her gone. “Mayer’s leadership run at Yahoo may only have four more weeks,” he predicted.
Men build, women buy. That, in four words, explains why affirmative-action token CEOs are dangerous, particularly when the economy is contracting. What might work just fine in a boom economy is not going to work in a bust economy.

Especially in light of this surprising fact: "Despite representing 4.2 per cent of the Fortune 500, not one company with a woman CEO has engaged in meaningful downsizing." 

It's fun to buy companies. It's not fun to lay people off. Laying people off causes feelbads for everyone.

14 comments:

Patrick said...

Can someone explain Tumblr and why it was a bad buy? I'm vaguely aware that it's a social media thing like Twitter. Why is it any more laughable than investing in Twitter?

Dark Herald said...

Buying Twitter would be laughable I'm surprised she didn't do that too. Basically Tumblr is a social media site that uses pictures. It's like Twitter for illiterates. While a huge eyeball generator it doesn't make money.

Mayer was by most a accounts a bad choice from the start. Hard worker but a micro-manager and she couldn't make a criticism without investing herself emotionally it.

We are now on Ellen Pao melt down watch. How far SJW will Mayer go the minute she's certain that she has nothing to lose?



Patrick said...

Can someone explain Tumblr and why it was a bad buy? I'm vaguely aware that it's a social media thing like Twitter. Why is it any more laughable than investing in Twitter?

Revelation Means Hope said...

Don't buy an "eyeballs" company like Tumblr and then immediately go totally SJW on that company.

You know what attracts eyeballs. Viewing non-PC images. Didn't Tumblr ban a whole slew of categories during the beginning of the GamerGate thing?

Aeoli Pera said...

Men build, women buy.

Perfect.

People need to understand this is not a bad thing. Women are by and large the reason consumer goods have gotten much nicer over the last few centuries. To a much lesser degree, fags.

If it were up to men the only things that would improve in quality are alcohol, tobacco, and firearms.

Oliver Märk said...

http://freedompowerandwealth.com
I have seen enough women who can’t make the decision for donwsizing. In the end the damage is so huge that a hard and clear decision in the first place looks like something were mild compared to all the people which have to be layed off later.

tz said...

She needs to become CEO of Twitter (see Vox' recent post at Popoli)

PhantomZodak said...

she bought tumblr & didn't monetize it, then let the teens who over-run that place get more control. instead of promoting flickr on tumblr, she's done nothing. Yahoo even makes their own tv shows, but they don't push that either. she's completely clueless.

7916 said...

I think the missing words to "Men build, women buy." are:

"with a man's money"

If there is no respect for how the money was earned, it will be spent and gone quickly.

Mark said...

Didn't anyone learn their lesson with the total disaster that was Carly Fiorina's reign of terror at HP?

liberranter said...

It's important to remember that in the age of globalization, Social Justice Warfare, and the move to destroy all vestiges of anything white and male --which includes advanced human civilization-- making money is NOT a priority. On the contrary, capitalism, that filthy exploitative WHITE MALE concept, must be erased from human memory at all costs. What matters is that SJWs co-opt the machinery of the abomination of capitalism put in place by these white male monsters and use it to destroy them and everything they've built (cue Lenin here: "we shall hang the capitalists with the very rope they sold us!"). Marissa Meyer is probably not truly an SJW herself, but a clueless dupe captivated by decades of progressive-feminist brainwashing in which she has been led to believe that vagina=greatness in spite of being a talentless hack.

Bet on Yahoo replacing her with a similarly talentless estrogen vessel who will also soon be in over her head. Remember, folks: it's not the system that's a failure; it's a matter of persistence in finding the right people to make it work (where have we heard THAT before?).

Robert What? said...

With very rare exceptions, women don't make good leaders / executives. Just look at what Merkel is doing to Germany. Going on a migrant buying spree, if you will. Of course most men aren't good leaders / executives either. But that is from individual stupidity lack of skill, not because it's against their nature.

Fatebekind said...

When Carly Fiorina engineered the disastrous merger between HP & Compaq, HP wound up laying off thousands of workers & then outsourcing much of their work overseas. Previous to this, HP had never had layoffs. They retrained and transferred their workers to other jobs within the company.

Anonymous said...

Tumblr is a huge porn site.

Free porn.

Yahoo can't even monetize sex.

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