capstone assignment

Yahoo!Inc.30-11

EXHIBIT 6 Yahoo! [nc. Selected Stock price Data (g at close of market)

Date Prire

19.18

11.73

15.01

16.12

15.47

15.74

Source: Yahoo! Finance, http://finance.yahoo.com_/, accessed May 2,2012.

Enter Marissa Mayer

Early Actions

Prior to joining Yahoo, Marissa Mayer had a 13-year career atGoogle, where she held a va- riety of positions. She was responsible for launching more than 100 products at Google and was a key player in developing Google's home page. Her last position at the compaiy was vice-president of Local, Maps, and Location Services, where she led the producfmanage- ment, engineering, design, and overall strategy for the Google Maps suite of products.2r One of the first things that Mayer did at Yahoo was to announce that she would review every hire that the company made, a practice similar to that done at Google by the com- pany's two co-founders. While this slowed down hiring atYahoo, one anonymous company employee was quoted as saying:

It's gotten a little frustrating. But I can't say that I blame her. The problem at yahoo in the past couple of years has been "B-players" hiring ,.c-p1ayers,, who were not Iired up to come to work and were tolerated too long. I mean nobody good wanted to come to yahoo. If I am inheriting a mess like that, I'd want to review all the talent that comes in the doors. too.22

She quickly instituted a number of changes at the company. principal among them were a weekly all-employee meeting every Friday afternoon, free food in the company cafeteria, replacement of employees' BlackBerry phones with a choice of iphones or Android-based phones, and the launch of a program termed "pB&J,,'an acronym for process, Bureaucracy, and Jams' The PB&J program was to solicit employee input on a variety of things including improving the work culture and increasing p.odo.iiuity. one employ"L."u","d to Mayer,s actions:

while the free food and iphones are nice, it was the midnight email that finally won my heart' Redundant processes and policy, and bureaucracy, are the worst enemies to innovation and efficiency. ofcourse, change will not happen overnight. There are so many things that need to improve in order to get us back in the same league as Google and Appte. But I have faith in the company and Marissa. And I trury hope the company *itt u" gr;t again.2:l

2r"Board of Directors," Yahoo!, http://investor.yahoo.neL/directors.ctm, accessed September lg, 2012. 22Nicholas Carlson. "Marissa Mayer Reviews Every New Hire at yahoo," B usiness Insider,september 4, 2012, www'businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-is-reviewing-every-single-new-hire-at-y ahoo-2012-g,accessed September 19,2012. z3Nicholas carlson, "Marissa Mayer ssnt a Late Night E-mail promising to Make yahoo .The Absolute Best Place to Work."' Business In.sider, Au,grtst27, 2012, www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-sent-a-late-night- email-promising-to-make-yahoo-the-absolute-best-p1ace-to-work -2012-8, accessed September 1g, 2012.

Jan.,2,2669

,Jan. 2. 2009

Jan'.4 201.0

,J,aln,,3,201 | '

lJan,3, 20,12 t.

rSept. 4;2012:,