Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AT 39 YEARS old, Marissa Mayer is the CEO of a $40 billion company.
In terms of personal wealth, she’s made at least $500 million. That’s $300 million at Google and another $200 million or so at Yahoo.
How did she put together such a successful career so quickly?
That’s one of the main questions I answer in my new book, Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!
The book spends several chapters telling Mayer’s life story, and how she gained wealth and worldwide fame at Google.
1. Choose the opportunity that’s scariest
When Mayer was finishing her graduate program at Stanford, she had a world of career options in front of her.
Mayer interviewed at the startup and was blown away by how many smart people were there.
They were so smart it almost intimidated her. Because the startup was risky, and because its people were so smart, going there was, for Mayer, the scariest option — which is why she went with it.
That startup? Google. Mayer was one of its first 25 employees.
2. Recognise your relative weaknesses
Mayer was hired by Google as a coder. Her first big project was to build Google’s advertising system. It took her months and months to make any progress.
Then Google went out and hired a star coder from DEC named Jeff Dean. Dean came into Google and built the system Mayer was trying to build in a matter of weeks.
Mayer, who already decided she loved working at Google, realised she wasn’t going to make her mark there as a coder. She would have to find other ways to be useful.
3. Identify your company’s problems and solve them
After Mayer realized her future at Google was not as a coder, she decided to make herself useful by throwing herself at whatever problems the company needed to solve. She worked in marketing. She rigged servers. She helped PR.
Finally, Mayer found three areas where she could materially improve Google. She ran Google CEO Larry Page’s staff meetings. She became the person who said whether new products had user interfaces that lived up to Google’s standards.
Eventually, this turned into a job where Mayer became the final authority for how all Google products, including search, looked and felt.
Finally, she launched the associate product manager program at Google — a training program where students with high technical skills are taught to manage.
The people in this program, called APMs, were spread throughout Google. Through them, Mayer gained great influence and prestige at the company, as each reported to their day-to-day bosses and to her.
4. Don’t worry too much about stepping on toes
Throwing herself at all these problems, Mayer would sometimes throw herself at problems that other people were already trying to solve.
Often, these people would get upset that Mayer was stepping on their toes. Mayer didn’t care.
More important, Google management didn’t care. They were just happy Mayer fixed some of the issues plaguing Google when it was a startup.
Mayer made some enemies at Google, but she also made hundreds of millions of dollars and turned herself into a business celebrity.
5. Know when to say goodbye
In my book, I tell the story of how, eventually, Mayer’s enemies at Google grew so powerful that they were able to have her sidelined.
Mayer could have quit in a huff then but she did not. Instead, Mayer continued to do good work for Google in a lower-profile role. She led the development of the Google Maps app for iPhone, for example.
Mayer also did not rush into the Yahoo CEO job. When Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was fired in 2011, a friend of Mayer’s told her she should consider that job. Mayer said she had, but that she thought the company’s board of directors was too unreliable to work for.
Months later, that board was almost entirely gone after it lost a battle with activist investor Dan Loeb. When Loeb reached out about the gig, Mayer was interested. She soon signed a $200 million deal.
For more on how Marissa Mayer became so rich and powerful at such a young age, read Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!
- Ncholas Carlson/Business Insider
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Scrap the carbon tax. And scrap the Greens.
This is utter madness, the Government are out of control as well as out of touch !
This lot in power are brown nosing the green washing brigade
The perfect solution to this crisis more green tax
“Insulate and retrofit”. Eamons one size fits all solution is so flawed, the cost to retrofit and insulate most houses more than 20 years old makes this approach un viable. Trying to fit a 1930s -40s 2up 2down house with a heat pump and suitable insulation, along with all the the correct windows!!! Etc……. Paying the higher energy bills would be equivalent or less than the loan to do it in the first place!!!!!
@antisocialbarber: try it with a 1900s farmhouse believe me it’s not feasible. Assuming you can find the trades which don’t exist for old buildings
@ed w: I can only imagine. Any savings made through grants etc would be hoovered up by the trades….. if you could get them.. as you mentioned
Another dumb move from the Irish government.The levy on fuel reserves which Ireland desperately needs to insure there are no power cuts is far more important than the carbon tax.
@Don Hogan: The NORA levy is for oil, we don’t really generate any electricity here from oil so ditching the levy will have no effect on power cuts at all.
@Lee King Buckett: the NORA was introduced to put infrastructure in place to have reserve fuel supply in the event of a crisis..NORA are awash with cash. 2 cent of every litre… infrastructure is in place and paid for!! And you are right, it will have no effect on power cuts.
The greens don’t seem to realise that the first priority of a successful politician is to get re-elected!
Ill donate a fee trees to the government if they send this ape off to plant them and he doesnt come back. he needs to go ..ruining this country with tax on coal and fuel..its the only answer he has is to tax everything
@Diarmuid O Brien: Totally agree. He knows the other two need to keep him happy. Although I don’t think he’d have the spine to walk away from his one and only chance of ever being in government
Carbon taxes disappear into the governments black hole and where it goes nobody knows???
Minister for turf etc. tells us this tells us that about grants bla bla bla and nothing happens.
I know people say milk the system for all you can get. This guy is the master. He should come with a warning.
@Mary Nugent: we got the warning and the people who elected him have a lot to answer for. But Mehole saw the him as a means to an end and become the Man. People please remember all this next election and please please please just one or two ticks on the ballot paper. That will sort out the men from the boys.
40kg bag of coal has increased by 66.6% in the past twelve months and they are putting further carbon tax on it. It won’t be the cigarettes which land many older people in hospital this coming winter – rather pneumonia because they cannot afford coal to light their fires. Then to top that they want to ban turf cutters from supplying turf for sale. Shame on all of them.
Not just Ryan although he’s making himself redundant. FF/FG where always good at using smaller partners in government to do the nasty work.
@Spud Geshletter: you think this is FF/FG plan? Nah….this are the Green’s own ideas trying to force through what they can because they know it will be a very long time before they will get a chance to do so again and the other 2 are too scared to stand up to them for fear that they will pull out and force an election.
@Joe_X: Sooner we have an election the better.
@Joe_X: next goverment greens may well be gone but the policy will still be in place. Wont be easy to shift the two main party’s next election, few independents join them.
Hope I am wrong
And fags gone up to. Seriously, tbe gov trying to stem inflation? How’s this toxic Journal bot? ‘Fag’ is a 20th century term of endearment for a cigerette. ‘Bot-off!’…and obey Asimov’s rules.
@Keth Warsaw: Ah Keith, ever bemoaning the cost of living whilst smoking all his income…
as long as electric or alternative fuel options need a investment of 1000s of € more compared to a petrol/diesel car an increase in carbon tax won’t make people to switch cars. if someone doesn’t drive a lot an petrol or diesel price will always be the cheaper option compared to the initial cost of any electric car and electricity doesn’t get any cheaper anyway, regardless if used for a car or your fridge. personally I would still use diesel even if the price/liter hits 3€ as the price on the pump is only a tiny fraction of the fixed up-front cost of an electric car. a 60liter diesel tank gets me close to 1200km on my 10 year old car with average consumption of 4.5-4.6L/100km. no new car you can buy today can beat this, they all need more and mostly also have higher co2 emissions.
Out of decency and respect for the opinion of others we take the time to listen and try to see is there any common ground that cud be tolerated, but this man is unique, every time he opens his mouth leaves people shaking their heads in disbelief, the hard of hearing checking their hearing aids, pace makes jump in the chest of cardiac patients, I think some people actually lose the will to live, the majority of people are genuinely helping him to realise his dream but he’s going to have to wake up and smell the carbon, unless the world is playing the game our efforts are futile and a waste of money, the Irish people have had enuf of this man taking the food from their mouths to advance his own personal crusade to save the planet, the world is more complicated than u think Mr Ryan, wake up.
have your say