# Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is a Gold Plated Bitch **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 28, 2013, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614 "2013-02-28T06:41:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/181 "2014-10-22T15:22:02Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I think a big part of that is the one-time gain from the Alibaba sale. Yahoo still owns 383,565,416 shares in Alibaba, which are worth $35,640,898,454.72 as of this second. I think they’ll be OK for quite a while longer. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/182 "2014-10-22T15:22:41Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I know next to nothing about the health of tech companies. But I just looked at Yahoo’s stock since this thread began, and it has roughly doubled. > > You seem to be saying that Yahoo isn’t doing a turnaround, but the stock price has indeed doubled. I’m unclear on how one squares that circle. Can you explain why you think he is wrong? Revenues are down 10% from when she became CEO. To be fair, there was a big drop the year before she became CEO, so perhaps holding the line IS success. The company is reaping billions off of their stake in Alibaba, a deal that she had no part in constructing I’ll also say that I think Try2B is wrong because he’s pointing out facts that are not actually indicative of Mayer’s performance. He’s bolding numbers that make no sense, crowing about a one time windfall, the bones of which were negotiated before Mayer came on board. It’s clear to me that he doesn’t understand what he’s posting. If someone else suggested she was successful and had a real analysis of the company’s performance, I would give them their due. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/183 "2014-10-22T15:26:51Z")
> [@andros](#): > > …and therefore contradicting that idea, no? She didn’t crush the estimates, she beat them slightly, by a few percent. So, the company did a little bit better than the lousy performance predicted by the street. Hey, a D+! I had you figured for a D this semester, great work! ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/184 "2014-10-22T16:05:46Z")
I just looked up the company’s profile on eTrade and now I see what you mean – revenue is indeed falling quite sharply over the last four years and the last four quarters. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/185 "2014-10-22T16:16:43Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Let’s check the progress of our gold plated bitch, shall we? > > [Yahoo Sales Top Estimates as Mayer Pushes Turnaround](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-21/yahoo-sales-top-estimates-as-mayer-pushes-turnaround.html): > > I’ll be gol-durned! Making people show up for work can be detected in the bottom line :smack: You haven’t really connected the dots here. No way of telling if disgruntled employees are just going through the motions and revenues would have been higher if they were still working from home. The quality of Yahoo products, as evidenced by their home page and mail, does not seem appreciably better than it was a year ago. The front page is almost completely clickbait or paid content. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/186 "2014-10-22T17:14:50Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Yahoo still owns 383,565,416 shares in Alibaba, which are worth $35,640,898,454.72 as of this second. I think they’ll be OK for quite a while longer. Yahoo’s Alibaba stake and its $10 billion in cash alone exceed its current market cap by $8 billion. In other words, if you start with its Alibaba stake and its cash on hard, Yahoo’s core business has to be worth negative $8 billion in order for its current market capitalization to make any sense. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/187 "2014-10-22T22:22:09Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > You haven’t really connected the dots here. No way of telling if disgruntled employees are just going through the motions and revenues would have been higher if they were still working from home. > > The quality of Yahoo products, as evidenced by their home page and mail, does not seem appreciably better than it was a year ago. The front page is almost completely clickbait or paid content. Ohhhh, fun, a new goalpost! ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/188 "2014-10-22T22:46:25Z")
Finagle’s not the one who asserted that the turnaround was directly creditable to not allowing telecommuting, ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/189 "2014-10-23T02:40:41Z")
What could be interpreted in my post as a goalpost would be the criticism that she was not generating shareholder value, to the point that she needed to be disposed of and Yahoo! dismembered. Is that due to her position on telecommuting? Yah, obviously I can’t prove that, but there is a larger, more general criticism of her going on here, and I think the large earnings beat and general state of the company are to her credit. She certainly hasn’t screwed it all up. People can discount the huge cash influx from the Alibaba stake, but that revenue does go on her record and is another thing she didn’t screw up. She seems to have taken the classic advice, “Pigs get slaughtered; take a profit.” The company isn’t going backwards- revenue is up, and as **Ravenman** points out the stock has climbed dramatically. That’s “shareholder value”. Looks like a win for Mayer. Because of her position on requiring people to show up for work? Again, I don’t know if I could prove that, but if she says to do it maybe people ought to listen. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/190 "2014-10-23T03:18:18Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > Yahoo’s Alibaba stake and its $10 billion in cash alone exceed its current market cap by $8 billion. In other words, if you start with its Alibaba stake and its cash on hard, Yahoo’s core business has to be worth negative $8 billion in order for its current market capitalization to make any sense. Isn’t this just proof that the stock market is more or less a giant game? ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614/191 "2014-10-23T09:48:04Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Wow, she is awesome, making $6.77B of net income on $1.09B of revenue. That’s a nice trick, having -$5.68B of cost in a quarter. OK, I laughed. Thanks for pointing that out. My eyes popped open when I read that income quote. This thread has been interesting. It started in Feb. 2013 and went to March 201 **3** , then picked up again in March 201 **4** , almost a year to the day later as if it hadn’t missed a day. Now in Oct. 2014, the same issues are being discussed. But in that time, Yahoo has laid off 2,800 employees. When the thread started, there were 15,000 employees at Yahoo\*. Now there are 12,200 employees, according to [this website](http://www.macroaxis.com/invest/ratio/YHOO--Number_of_Employees) (admittedly not the most reliable looking site). Earlier this month, it was announced that 250-400 more employees will be let go in India, based on [this article](http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/yahoo-to-trim-india-headcount/article6479016.ece). Since the telecommuters only numbered in the several hundreds according to an earlier post in this thread, it was probably the least of their worries not to be able to telecommute. If they weren’t in the over 3,000 employees to get cut so far, they may be next to go. Looking back at it in hindsight with a more generous slant to the CEO, it might have been that the CEO wanted all the telecommuters to show up onsite to assess who should stay and who should go, giving everyone an equal chance to be seen before the decisions were made. In June 2013, a few months after the thread started, [1000 employees were cut](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-quietly-cut-1000-jobs-at-yahoo-2013-6). In Oct. 2013, a year ago, 500 more employees were slated to get cut, based on [this article](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-is-firing-500-under-performing-yahoo-employees-2013-10). Was that ruthless? Based on that same article: > [@](#): > > Before Mayer took over Yahoo, top executives there had plans to cut headcount from ~15,000 down to ~4,000. Those cuts would have involved spinning out Yahoo’s search business. Her predecessors wanted to cut 11,000 people immediately. She may still cut 11,000 people, but she’s been doing it a few hundred at a time, it seems. As to whether the CEO is making the right decisions, that’s harder to say. Up until last quarter, revenue was declining. The increase in net income was in some part due to the savings from reduction in headcount. Did she make the right decision about the telecommuters? With over 3,000 people laid off, I would question whether it made much of a difference for very many people. \*[this article](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2014/08/01/marc-andreessens-two-year-old-ignored-advice-to-marissa-mayer-fire-10000-people-now/) claims that there are 3,000 more people overseas in the headcount not counted in the 15,000. > [@Ravenman](#): > > I know next to nothing about the health of tech companies. But I just looked at Yahoo’s stock since this thread began, and it has roughly doubled. > > You seem to be saying that Yahoo isn’t doing a turnaround, but the stock price has indeed doubled. I’m unclear on how one squares that circle. Can you explain why you think he is wrong? Other people have already answered this, but [this quote](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/technology/yahoo-revenue-and-profit-surpass-estimates.html?_r=0) seems on point. > [@](#): > > But Ms. Mayer did not address the biggest concern on the minds of investors: How does Yahoo take advantage of its $43 billion in stock holdings in the Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan? > “What are you going to do with these assets?” said Colin Gillis, director of research at BGC Financial. The reality, he said, is that those shares are far more important to Yahoo’s stock price than its core business. Yahoo’s investment holdings have more to do with the stock price than its actual business. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-a-gold-plated-bitch/651614.md?page=9)