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Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure

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diesel828
10/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
What a stupid article. This really didn't have anything to say about Mayer... just one or two examples and suddenly we can paint a picture of who she really is? Right. And that section about her manipulation of Schmidt... someone take a reading comprehension class because interpreting that segment into a manipulation of the execs is like saying hurricanes happen because god hates gays.
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judge9999
03/03/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
Wow pure and simple the bitch is stupid.

Guess getting on your knees means you can place 7000 out of 7800 eh?
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Owen Thomas
03/03/09

@judge9999: Good commenters are good at all comments. Goodbye!
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random_play
03/02/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
Still love her and her last-place-finishing cupcake butt. No way Larry and Sergey will ever let her leave. Otherwise, how will they decide between blue-green and slightly greener blue green?
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Vipula Kariyawasam
03/02/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
I started working from six years back normally started from 1mil. Within first month it was increas up to five mils within one our. Normally fat barning start after twenty mints working one of most power full tool to maintain health body.
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SteveR
03/02/09

@Vipula Kariyawasam: You know, I was having a conversation with a parking meter last night, and it said the exact same thing. Hmm...
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Owen Thomas
03/03/09

@SteveR: Don't feed the trolls. Just let us ban them.
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its_a_feature
03/02/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
Google may indeed be a meritocracy, but you need to remember that there is more than one way to measure "merit". For example, Marissa slept with the boss and is now a high-level Google executive. Perhaps she's been measured by her ability in the sack and not her technical prowess. Of course, given the geeky nature of Larry, her only real competition in that arena was probably Rosie Palm.
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siliconvalleydropout
03/02/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
"Ah yes, the Portland Marathon, in which Mayer placed 7,074th out of 7,862 contestants. Or the Birkebeiner ski race, in which she placed dead last in the women's competition. Good students are good at all things."

wow owen this part here made me lmao
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Phyllis Nefler
03/02/09

@siliconvalleydropout: Yes, I too let out a satisfied chortle.
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ektorp
03/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
Ha ha, she completed that marathon at an average pace of 15:46 per mile according to the results. Which means she flew to Portland and basically walked the 26.2 miles so that she can say she completed a marathon. What a way to demonstrate your athletic prowess. And totally not a transparent attempt to seem less girly, which is obviously bad for her image in more serious circles.
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i'm a bottle
03/02/09

@ektorp: 4:30 would be a decent time for a completely dilettantish female of her age; 5:28 is -- on similar, slightly hilly courses -- painfully slow even for the least serious runners.
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$Image of Terrafractal$ Terrafractal
03/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
Not for nothing, and this may be the scotch talking, but I've found (on a smaller scale) that businesses tend to benefit from employing someone with social skills who knows how to mediate and manipulate for the sake of getting things done. Meritocracy is a half-myth. How many programmers weren't graced with an upper-middle-class upbringing and access to technology from the get-go?

That being said, the perfectionist tendencies are a little rough. I wonder if she got any C's in college...though the one guy I know who works for Google never got less than an A in anything. Maybe this is a company-wide trend and the code monkeys who make the algorithms JUST RIGHT are press shy.
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Tremonius
03/02/09

@Terrafractal: Mr Gladwell convinces us that good fortune is a product of birth order, specifically: early in the year for hockey players and just before the big bam boom for industrialists and software moguls. He goes on to cite the number of Carnegys born in the 1840s just before the Industrial Revolution and in 1955 so they'd be in school during the digital divide. It helps that you're a rich kid around a university with plenty of toys to play with.

On a different note: there are surfing competitions where I live, and they award prizes to them as happen to be sitting when the big swell happens behind them. I think all of them have to be straight A stoonts before they're issued a wetsuit.
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Wrapitup
03/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
"Good students are good at all things."

But a good student is not necessarily a good software engineer or a good marketer. There is an argument to be made that in these times of uncertainty about where the Web is headed, Silicon Valley needs intelligent people with unconventional minds. And such people are not often consistently good students.
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cellardoor
03/02/09

@Wrapitup: I still cannot get over the hiring practices at Google and eBay (perhaps the latter has loosened its standards). 10, 15 years out of college and people still care about your grades? Really? Weren`t some of the smartest minds known to mankind failures at conventional education? What about late bloomers? And as you said, unconventional approaches to life? I think working there sounds like an ungodly high school experience.
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its_a_feature
03/02/09

@Wrapitup: The "good students are good at all things" has got to be one of the stupidest things a (supposedly) smart person has ever said.

I especially love the followup indicating her lackluster placement in her athletic endeavors. I guess she wasn't a good student after all, as she clearly didn't do well in gym class.
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backseat_driver10023
03/02/09

@cellardoor: Google is pretty strict with the A's in all their engineering and R&D positions.

They are #1 so save your lecture when a strong and credible contender arrives.
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Tremonius
03/02/09

@backseat_driver10023:

They are #1 so save your lecture when a strong and credible contender arrives.

Bill Gates is a college dropout and, by taped evidence during a Microcon, a really sorry dancer. But he was great at surfing the tsunami when it came. Serendipity counts for more than grades. QED
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belltolls
03/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
No one ever talks about the time I was playing second base in high school (I usually sat on the bench but we were ahead by 12 runs, so I got to play) and a guy from the other team starting razzing me because he mis-interpeted a nickname our first basemen had called me earlier--I think it was "Goofy" or "Stumbles" but it is hard to remember; I had so many nicknames.

So, when the guy who was razzing me got a walk he decided to try to steal second thinking "Goofy" wouldn't catch on. As he rounded first, I shouted to the our rocket-armed pitcher who then threw a strike towards second that had such velocity it sprained my hand as it forced my glove against the head of the Razzer who was sliding into second head first. His helmet and part of his scalp flew into right field: the ump yelled "Out."

The pitcher and I made a great display of hanging out around the mound discussing how great a play this was, as my hand completely lost feeling, and as Razzer crept back to his bench. As he passed I said, "Fuck you."

Now, when I am forced to say, "Fuck You" (a rare occassion but it does happen) I am really just saying it to Razzer the baseball smartass and it will be that way forever.

See, Marissa, THIS is a sports story. You can use this one if you want.
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No Day Like Friday
03/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
"It hasn't shown up anywhere that I am really physically active," she says. "I ran the San Francisco half marathon this year. I did the Portland marathon. I went skiing just yesterday. I'm going to do the Birkebeiner, which is North America's longest cross-country ski race. That just shows you how much there are gaps."

I'm sorry, what?

What kind of person complains that people aren't paying enough attention to her?

It is one thing for Julia Allison to set up a website supposedly about her three friends but actually about herself; it's another thing entirely for someone to complain that no one cares. At all!
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its_a_feature
03/02/09

@No Day Like Friday: Shouldn't the all powerful Google search engine be able to provide full coverage of her life? Aren't they claiming their goal is to index all knowledge? What a bunch of slackers.
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
03/01/09

In reply to Marissa Mayer: Google's Biggest Failure
How come when you click on the "Marissa Mayer" tag at the bottom of the post you get: "We can't find any posts with those tags. Or check your spelling and try again."

There are plenty of Mayer-related posts. Artifact of merging in Valleywag?
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RoosiDesi
03/01/09

@Uncle_Billy_Slumming: Umm.. I can see plenty of posts.
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
03/01/09

@RoosiDesi:

Looks like they fixed it. Yahoo.
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