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Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Defends Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (sfchronicle.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has absorbed blistering criticism for the way he handled allegations of sexual misconduct at the San Francisco riding-hailing service. But he can at least count on the support of one big name in Silicon Valley: former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Speaking at the annual Stanford Directors' College Tuesday, Mayer defended Kalanick, suggesting that he was unaware of the toxic culture brewing at Uber because of the company's rapid growth. Mayer's name has come up in reports as a possible replacement for Kalanick at Uber, though there's no indication the company has had talks with her. "Scale is incredibly tricky," Mayer said. "I count Travis as one of my friends. I think he's a phenomenal leader; Uber is ridiculously interesting. I just don't think he knew," she said. "When your company scales that quickly, it's hard." Mayer then compared Uber's situation to the early days of Google when it first brought in Eric Schmidt as CEO to help co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page manage the company.
After firing men with prejudice she's now backing up a man who took advantage of women in the workplace?
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I could probably buy that Travis Kalanick was unaware of his company's toxic culture because of his other duties if that was the only example of him being careless and an overall jerk. But it isn't. It is pretty hard to defend Travis Kalanick as being a good person. And whether he is a good leader depends on your viewpoint about how important employees are to a company.
If financial success of a company is the only important metric, then sure Travis is a phenomenal leader. But if you actually care about the people he is leading, it's hard to describe him as a phenomenal leader. Travis Kalanick is a great leader in the same way Michael Jackson's abusive father was a great parent.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
>> Mayer then compared Uber's situation to the early days of Google when it first brought in Eric Schmidt as CEO to help co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page manage the company
I think she hit on something profound here: maybe Mayer should have brought in someone to manage Yahoo for her?
You mean Marissa "I was back at work a day after giving birth so everyone should be able to do that" Mayer is friends with the "I'm going to run my company the way it was run when it was a startup"?
In my industry experience the mark of a good leader was one that could see alternative points of view and that possibly, just possibly, not everyone agrees with theirs.
Mayer may have been a half decent CEO if she sat down and thought "Hm, maybe some women don't have an in-office baby sitter and would like to spend time with their children" or "Tele-working works for some of our best and brightest, maybe we shouldn't force them out". Nothing infinitely complex just a realization of different strokes for different folks.
The problem with Marissa Mayer, as mentioned in "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards, employees will always find ways to work around her while appearing to do what she wanted. The jock culture at Uber may outwardly change if she became CEO but it would probably persist behind her back and cause other problems..
Yay! Having exhausted the Fields of Yahoo, the Locust Marissa espies fresh prospects.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
So just more CEO scapegoating to dodge responsibility when anything goes wrong? They're always the sole reason for a company's succcesses yet are always completely in-the-dark for anything negative.
It's literally what he does for a living. Why is it when the guy that makes your Hamburger screws up he's relentlessly savaged but a CEO does it it's OK. Oh, wait. Ruling Class takes care of their own. Silly me.
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There's absolute ZERO chance he wasn't aware that there were/are significant problems in this regard at Uber. He simply didn't care enough to actually face inward. Many CEOs who were with the company before it scaled have this critical flaw.
They think that what brought them to scale was that they were almost exclusively outward facing - so they never make any effort to embrace scale properly.
All software/internet oriented companies that tend to scale very rapidly need to scale in THREE distinct ways. Many only scale in one, some scale in two, the truly successful scale in all three. Those three ways (and the order in which companies are likely to scale) are:
1. Technically - Ensuring your technology is scalable in a manner that it not revenue negative
2. Organizationally - Staffing and organizational hierarchy (adding people.)
3. Operationally - Process and delegation/responsibility (having a scalable plan.)
The vast majority of found CEOs fail to do anything other than #1, then orphan #2 to somebody they personally trust but have no actual idea as to their ability to accomplish the job.
This kind of sh** is in all the standard 'please learn from my suffering' books (such as 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' and 'The Art of Scalability.') The problem is, most people read those books so they can randomly throw out a quote, they don't think it actually applies to them because - hey - "I'm a unicorn. My investors tell me how great I am all the time." Stop thinking you're going to write your own book someday - and execute first. Pontificate later.
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Yes, poor poor CEO... he was paid to do a job he couldn't because he was so naive. I'm so fucking blinded by living in a bubble filled with dollar bills.
Gimme a fucking break Marissa. If that's the mindset you are going into to lead Uber, and apparently the justification you are giving to kill Yahoo, I hope Uber also dies if they decide to hire you. If Uber investors that are part of the board know any better, after this they should avoid hiring her at all costs.
It's either a situation Kalanick created and has full responsibility for, or it's complete incompetence on the very specific job you are getting more than well paid for.
Cry me a river.
Regarding any CEO who claims - or about whom it is said - that they were unaware of some serious problems: a CEO is supposed to know - it's part of the job. Especially if they are getting paid mega-bucks.
A story behind that comment: in the years before World War 2 the air defence of the UK was reorganised under the leadership of Air Chief Marshal Dowding, who managed the development of an integrated command and control system: ...The Dowding system is considered key to the success of the RAF against the German air force (Luftwaffe) during the Battle of Britain. The combination of early detection and rapid dissemination of that information acted as a force multiplier, allowing the fighter force to be used at extremely high rates of effectiveness. ... Although many histories of the Battle of Britain comment on the role of radar, it was only in conjunction with the Dowding system that radar could be truly effective. This was not lost on Winston Churchill, who noted that: "All the ascendancy of the Hurricanes and Spitfires would have been fruitless but for this system which had been devised and built before the war. It had been shaped and refined in constant action, and all was now fused together into a most elaborate instrument of war, the like of which existed nowhere in the world."
Dowding did not have day to day control of the RAF fighters in the Battle of Britain, but was in overall command, for example managing reserves and rotating the pilots flying the fighters: in short, he had managerial skills of a very high order which were - in my view - demonstrably better than most CEOs today. But after the Battle of Britain had been won a meeting was held to discuss the tactics used. To Dowding's surprise, a relatively junior officer Douglas Bader (who had - wrongly - disagreed with Dowding's system, partly because Bader - undeniably courageous and an excellent fighter pilot - didn't understand it) attended the meeting. The result of that meeting was that, disgracefully, Dowding was dismissed, along with - even more disgracefully - Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, who had commanded the most important group of fighters in the Battle of Britain.
What now follows is my recollection from reading "The Right of the Line" by John Terraine, which deals with the Royal Air Force in World War 2. At some point after that disgraceful meeting, Dowding said that he hadn't known about Bader's (remember, a relatively junior officer) disagreement about tactics, and Terraine remarks that possibly a solution might have been to transfer Bader from a relatively secondary group into the main group fighting in the Battle of Britain, which would at least have given Bader the action he craved, and might have kept Bader quiet. Terraine then quotes a senior civil servant remarking on Dowding saying he hadn't known about Bader: a commander-in-chief is supposed to know - that's part of the job.
She got her job at google by working on her knees.
im thinking child support backfired. marissa is going to back travis to get her investment back.
Dear Uber,
We wholeheartedly endorse the notion that you might hire Marissa Meyer as your new CEO. We think she would be a fantastic addition to your team, and that her competency and managerial agility will help Uber usher in a new dynasty of success and profitability.
Sincerely Yours,
Lyft
How would she know what happens when a company scales quickly?
WTB [sig], PST!!!
At this point hasn't the shine of being lucky enough to be an early employee at Google worn off?
Hey, you can scale down as well as up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not surprised that Mayer is friends with the likes of Kalanick.
Are you fucking stupid? She was at Google when they scaled like a motherfucker.