Friday 29 May 2015

30-MAY-1975 :- Birth Of Marissa Mayer , American Computer Scientist.

Marissa Ann Mayer 
(born May 30, 1975) is the current president and CEO of Yahoo!, a position she has held since July 2012. Previously, she was a long-time executive, usability leader, and key spokesperson for Google. In 2014, Mayer was ranked sixth on Fortune‍ '​s 40 under 40 list, and was ranked the 16th most-powerful businesswoman in the world that year according to the same publication.
After graduating from Stanford, Mayer received 14 job offers, including a teaching job at Carnegie Mellon University and a consulting job at McKinsey & Company. She joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20 and was the company's first female engineer. She started out writing code and overseeing small teams of engineers, developing and designing Google’s search offerings. She became known for her attention to detail which helped land her a promotion to product manager, and later became Director of Consumer Web products. She oversaw the layout of Google's well-known, unadorned search homepage.
In 2002, Mayer started the Associate Product Manager (APM) program, a Google mentorship program aimed to recruit new talents and cultivate and train them for leadership roles within the company. Each year, Mayer selected a number of junior employees for the two-year program, which would see them take on a number of extracurricular assignments and intensive evening classes. Notable graduates of the program include Bret Taylor and Justin Rosenstein. In 2005 she became Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. Mayer held key roles in Google SearchGoogle ImagesGoogle NewsGoogle MapsGoogle BooksGoogle Product SearchGoogle ToolbariGoogle, and Gmail.
Mayer was the Vice President of Google Product Search until the end of 2010, when she was demoted by then-CEO Eric Schmidt to head the Local, Maps, and Location Services. In 2011, she secured Google's acquisition of survey site Zagat for $125 million. While Mayer was working at Google, she taught introductory computer programming at Stanford and mentored students at the East Palo Alto Charter School. She was awarded the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award from Stanford.
On July 16, 2012, Mayer was appointed President and CEO of Yahoo!, effective the following day. She is also a member of the company's board of directors. To simplify the bureaucratic process and "make the culture the best version of itself", Mayer launched a new online program called PB&J. It collects employee complaints, as well as their votes on problems in the office; if a problem generates at least 50 votes, online management automatically investigates the matter. In February 2013, Mayer oversaw a major personnel policy change at Yahoo! that required all remote-working employees to convert to in-office roles. Having worked from home toward the end of her pregnancy, Mayer returned to work after giving birth to a boy, and had a nursery built next to her office suite—Mayer was consequently criticized for the telecommuting ban.
In April 2013, Mayer changed Yahoo!'s maternity leave policy, lengthening its time allowance and providing a cash bonus to parents. CNN noted this was in line with other Silicon Valley companies, such as Facebook and Google. On May 20, 2013, Mayer led Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr in a $1.1 billion acquisition. The acquisition was just one in a series of major purchases that have occurred since Mayer became the CEO of the company. In July 2013, Yahoo! reported a fall in revenues, but a rise in profits compared with the same period in the previous year. Reaction on Wall Street was muted, with shares falling 1.7%. In September 2013, it was reported that the stock price of Yahoo! had doubled over the 14 months since Mayer's appointment. In November 2013, Mayer instituted a performance review system based on a bell curve ranking of employees, suggesting that managers rank their employees on a bell curve, with those at the low end being fired. Employees complained that some managers were viewing the process as mandatory.
In 2014, Mayer was heavily criticized for many of her management decisions in pieces by The New York Times and The New Yorker.

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