Marissa Mayer Has No Concept Of Money

With Marissa Mayer at the helm, Yahoo! is sinking into deeper and deeper trouble. While it is undeniable that Mayer did inherit Yahoo! in a bad state, there’s something more troubling that has come to attention recently: it seems as though Mayer has no concept of money.

This is no surprise, given that Mayer came from Google — a company with a fountain of wealth built on the basis of its search business. When working at Google, you could waste billions frivolously and not have anyone bat an eyelid. In fact, Google is so rich that it changed its entire company name so it could waste more money without worrying its investors! (Hello, Alphabet!)

But Yahoo! is not Google, and Mayer doesn’t seem to have realized that. Or else…

1. Why did Mayer green-light the plan for Yahoo! to take on the floundering Community television series, when she knew that it’d be next to impossible for them to make money on it? (This mistake cost Yahoo! $42 million.)
2. Why did Mayer personally push for Yahoo! to live-stream the NFL Buffalo Bills v. Jacksonville Jaguars game? The game was so undesirable to advertisers that Yahoo! had to make down its asking price for an ad spot from $200,000 to a measly $50,000 (75% markdown!). (This mistake cost Yahoo! $20 million.)
3. Why did Mayer hire Henrique De Castro to be her COO, when he’s widely-known to be a divisive figure at Google? ( Not divisive in a “some love him, some hate him” way, like Steve Jobs, but divisive as in some thought he was mediocre, others thought he was downright incompetent…) Why did she not do her due diligence? (This mistake cost Yahoo! $60 million.)
4. Why did Katie Couric get a $10 million salary for hosting a show no one watches and has no material influence in the real world? (Even Donald Trump, who would rather give up a limb than forgo the chance to be on TV, does not think her show is important!) Why did Couric get a raise from $6 million a year to $10 million? Actually, just answer this one question: why does she even still have a job at Yahoo!? (This mistake cost Yahoo! ~$20–30 million, depending on how long Couric’s contract runs.)
5. Why did Mayer host a Wizard of Oz photo shoot at a time when Yahoo!’s core business is so worthless that basically functions as nothing more than a shell company for a really popular Chinese stock and an independent Japanese media company (Yahoo! Japan)? (This mistake cost Yahoo! $70,000.)
6. Fast forward a year, and Mayer doesn’t think a $70,000 photo shoot suffices anymore. Instead, she decides that only a Great Gatsby-themed holiday party at Pier 48 in San Francisco can satiate her delicate partying taste buds — at 100 times the cost of the Wizard of Oz photo shoot. What’s Mayer’s justification for this? (This mistake cost Yahoo! $7 million.)
7. Why did Mayer get Yahoo! to sponsor the Met Gala when only she and a few other Yahoo! executives attended? Since when is it okay to use what remains of a sinking company’s coffers to up one’s social standing? (This mistake cost Yahoo! $3 million.)
8. Why did Mayer hire Time Inc.’s Martha Nelson to head up Yahoo!’s media unit? Time magazine’s subscriptions have been dwindling, and someone from the “old” world of media publishing isn’t what Yahoo! needs to revamp its media strategy. But that’s not all: Nelson’s salary, when it was disclosed, became a source of mockery — it was way too high, and Mayer should have at least tried to negotiate it down (Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, the biggest name in fashion journalism, is paid less than half of Nelson’s annual — $2 million). (This mistake cost Yahoo! ~$15 million, assuming her contract runs for three years.)
9. Why is Mayer hiring luxurious food caterers like Bon Appetit to feed her employees while her company’s business is cratering? How much of that food going to waste? (This mistake has cost Yahoo! $430 million+ for the four years that Mayer has been in charge.)

Yahoo! should have hired a CEO with an operational/restructuring background. They need a kid who saves up their money and plans what to buy so they can leave the candy shop with the best haul possible. Instead, Yahoo! hired a CEO who used to live in the candy shop.

A CEO with no concept of money.