Marissa Mayer's Reinvention of Yahoo! Stumbles

schnell writes The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth profile of Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo!, detailing her bold plans to reinvent the company and spark a Jobs-ian turnaround through building great new products. But some investors are saying that her product focus (to the point of micromanaging) hasn't generated results, and that the company should give up on trying to create the next iPod, merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?

Comments

it's not hard

[jetole]

It can be done. Yahoo has the resources and man power to get there but micro managing was mentioned and that's a key problem right there. I have worked with micro managing managers and I have worked with well informed managers who keep abreast of things and is course I have worked with bad managers. Since I have begun managing myself I have seen great results and I DO NOT micro manage. The best managers I have ever had which have lead me to how I manage now are involved and aware and make key management decisions but they do not micro manage and that was key. I do not micro manage and I have seen steady and excellent growth in our business due to how I operate and how the best managers before me operated has lead me down that path. You take micro managers and they are persistent firm of stress in the workplace. They are invasive and cumbersome. On the other hand I have had managers that are the opposite end of the spectrum where they were not involved enough and/or didn't understand the decisions as best as they should have. They lead to very poor management decisions. A good manager not only knows what is best but knows where to ask and where to trust and speaking of trust you need to know your team well so that you can effectively trust their decisions.

Re:Core business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore. Yahoo requires (yes, requires, no barely-visible option to skip) a cellphone number to sign up. Because putting your only-above-AOL-mail service behind a gate that requires giving personal information to a company infamous for shit security is a good idea, right?

Re:That's not what happened at all

[popo]

Well... aside from the vitriol..

We do know the following:

1) She actually did fire all of the senior management and replace them with puppets.
2) She did hire legions of publicists to promote Marissa.
3) She did spend quite a bit on acquisitions which were questionable.
4) It's not working out so well for Yahoo.

So I'm not sure what citations you're looking for. It's not exactly hearsay.