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posts about #presshere more → Marissa Mayer Is Right 80 Percent of the Time
New York, 4:16 PM
Mon Nov 23
42 posts in the last 24 hours
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Marissa Mayer Is Right 80 Percent of the Time |
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03/31/09
This talk about pixels and shades of blue is just a distraction. Marissa is Vice President of Not Killing the Golden Goose. Google ain't broke, and it's her job to keep engineers (and designers) from fixing it. Gatekeeper? Goosekeeper? You be the judge.
"Good students are good at all things": This comes from a New York Times profile of Marissa. She's discussing candidates, mostly recent grads, for "a program to foster in-house talent". To me it sounds more like an internship than internal transfer. With piles of applications from top students, it's not surprising that a single 'C' could take you off Google's short list.
In the next paragraph, another candidate has received employer ratings of 3.5 out of 4, exceeding expectations, for several quarters running. Marissa says "She is looking for a way out." It's not clear what she means or whether this is a Google employee. Maybe Marissa is looking for rising stars, not adequate performers, for this position. Or maybe she's just a bitch. There's no way to tell from the article.
And why was a reporter allowed to sit in on a hiring session like this? Where was HR and Legal?
03/30/09
If her job is to do nothing more than arrange focus group testing and crunch the data, then any old statistician could do her job. So why isn't any old statistician doing her job?
03/29/09
Meanwhile the UI in every app but gmail and reader is in need for a serious overhaul.
03/29/09
03/29/09
03/29/09
am I missing something?
03/29/09
03/29/09
03/30/09
03/29/09
(2) Has anyone noticed how different the interfaces can be across Google’s portfolio of web applications? Isn’t that ... problematic?
(3) Mayer is representing a position that is the opposite of hubris in design. In the implicit ideals in the words of the designer who quit, and in Owenrsquo;s use of the word "ugly," I detect more than a whiff of hubris and, indeed, elitism. Designers, like architects, want to control from the top down: they want to be taste-makers. But not everyone agrees on what is beautiful or ugly, not even after you "enlighten" them with the power of "good" design. De gustibus. At the end of the day, more people may prefer a design that professional designers find "ugly."
03/29/09
Actually Owen, it's you that just got the C in web design.
03/29/09
Sure, design is meant to be pleasing to a majority of people. That's a given. And there's a place for that. But nobody will ever really grow with that philosophy. It's just like trying to make art by committee, maybe you can make something that's moderately pleasing to slightly more than half of the people, but you'll never make something that's really loved, or that really changes people's minds. You'll never have a person really grow to like what you've made, and THAT'S what a design team is hired for. Good design grows your audience not by being instantly beloved, but by being innovative and quality.
That, plus the whole fucking whiney "I'm right 75% of the time, and all the data in the world supports ME and ME ALONE". What kind of shit is that?
03/29/09