Marissa Mayer's changes at Yahoo!, 2012-2013

Here's an excerpt from an upcoming book about Mayer and the history of Yahoo! If this account is accurate, she made changes that are very similar to Google practices, but I guess that's the only other company she's worked for - so no big surprise.

• She tried to increase mgmt. transparency and communication, so she started a series of Friday afternoon townhalls called "FYIs" (Google's meetings are on Thursdays and called "TGIFs")
• The food and drink at Yahoo! are free and high quality (I believe they were not free in the past?)
• She implemented a goals-based quarterly performance review process ("QPRs", called "OKRs" at Google) with fixed %s of workers allocated to each ratings tier (and repeat low performers would be let go)

QPRs are the biggest source of employee complaints now. It's possible that the Yahoo! system is closer to Microsoft's (that was abandoned after Ballmer left, due to myriad problems and perverse incentives). 

• When FTEs are uniformly stack-ranked vs. immediate peers, the company risks punishing the "weakest" high performers on strong teams, and rewarding the "best" slackers on poor teams
• The best talent didn't want to work together (harder to get top rating), and focused on specific projects that had the best chance of making them look good
• Due to calibration (where higher managers could unilaterally change ratings for workers they barely knew so their teams would fit the target distribution), resentment and workplace politics increased - meaning less time spent on actual work
• The quarterly rankings left little room for error and set people up for disappointment: an FTE who was rated misses/misses/meets/meets may still get fired, even if (s)he was showing diligence and improvement, and an FTE who was rated exceeds/exceeds/meets/exceeds might not get promoted

Mayer earned some love for refusing carry out massive layoffs (~30-50% staff) that the Board and others were calling for (she did conduct some small layoffs and product sunsets). However, some commented on Glassdoor that she carried out "stealth layoffs" instead. By eliminating WFH and implementing QPR attrition, Yahoo! likely encouraged less committed folks to leave, fired the ostensible low performers, and saved money by not having to pay severance. I am not sure how much their headcount has shrunk since Mayer joined, but some Yahoos are not happy that the salary saved from the stealth layoffs might have been spent to recruit new talent with comp packages much higher than what veteran Yahoos were making. And the stricter promo reqs of QPR makes it harder for veteran Yahoos to advance and get raises too.

Yahoo! needed to cut some dead weight, motivate the staff, and recruit new talent to revitalize their business. Mayer seemed to carry that out with some success, but there were morale and priorities consequences. I'm not saying that turning Yahoo! around is an easy task (others have tried before Mayer), and you can't please everyone, but it may be hard to accurately estimate the net benefits of her policies because there are so many complex repercussions.