Headline April 05, 2015/ ''' MARISSA MAYER : YAHOO'S : GEEK GODDESS '''

''' MARISSA MAYER : 

YAHOO'S : GEEK GODDESS '''

THERE ARE TWO THINGS about Marissa Mayer upon which everyone, -every single person, who has met her, known her, and worked with her agree.

That, -Marissa Meyer is one of the smartest people they have ever met.

The other is that she has a  ''superhuman''  capacity for work.

BY NOW.....-the headline, every headline-getting series of events has become business lore.

In the fall of 2011, New York moneyman Daniel Loeb, who runs the $14 billion hedge fund  Third Point Capital,  staged a raid on Yahoo,  -the well known, but struggling Silicon Valley Company.

After a brutal fight to depose the company's  C.E.O, he helped raid Google for one of its longest-serving and most famous executives, Marissa Mayer, then often called ''the face of Google,''......or....

'''Google's glamour geek.''

Last year's summer,  on the same day that Yahoo announced that Mayer would be its new C.E.O........becoming the youngest women, at  37, to lead a Fortune 500 company.

Mayer announced that she was pregnant, thereby completing her journey from nerdy small-town Wisconsin girl to   Stanford-educated engineer   to business superstar to cultural idol.

By the time Mayer arrived at Yahoo it had long been a widely recognised brand, and even though the company had compiled a laundry list of mismanagement and missed opportunities:

Some 700 million consumers still logged in each month to check their e-mail, get news, see stock quotes, search, and more. But the company hadn't launched a hot not new product in years-

And it had become something of a joke in Silicon Valley.

The stock, from a peak of $118.75 in early 2000, was bumping along between $14 and $19 in the months before Mayer joined.

Most people in the Valley want to see Yahoo  succeed, if only out of  respect for its legacy. And they generally believe that, if anyone can fix Yahoo, it is Mayer. 

She is an engineer and engineers are revered in the Valley.

She is also a  ''product person,'' which means that she  has a track record of designing Internet-based products that people want to use.

Product people, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, are the reigning Kings and Queens of today's Valley, because, the thinking goes, all the other parts of running a company can be delegated-

But the ability to innovate cannot.

On the surface, Mayer's first year has been a stunning success. Yahoo's stock has almost doubled, to around $31 per share, and she was recently named No: 1 on Fortune's   ''40 under 40''   list, making her the first women to achieve that singular honour.

To celebrate her one - year anniversary, her team sent a companywide memo, which technology reporter Kara Swisher, who runs the Web site  All Things  D with Walt Mossberg, got hold of.  

The memo encouraged employees to thank Mayer  ''for everything she's done for Yahoo''  by clicking on a link that read   yo/thxmarissa.

The messages that ranged from   ''Thank you for epitomizing the values of a Yahoo superstar''  to  ''Best C.E.O I have ever worked for''  were collected in a book that features photos of Mayer-

Wearing a red red shirt to address a sea of purple-shirted, mostly male engineers; conducting an interview with  Barefoot Contessa food guru  Ina Garten, and more.

''Yahoo! thanks you, Marissa!'' reads the spine of the book.

Mayer than had the copies of the book sent out.

But a glittering surface often deflects attention from a messier reality, and that's true with Mayer and Yahoo.

The Honour and Serving of the  ''operational research''  continues. Thank you for reading, and maybe learning. And see Ya all on the following one.

With respectful dedication all the Girl Students/Technologists of the world. See Ya all Girls, on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Fly Beyond '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless