Friday 15 November 2013

Weekend reading: The Truth About Marissa Mayer

This post will be very short from me as I thought I would post up something incredible that I read recently.  It is a biography of Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo and covers her life from growing up to college and her stellar career at Google and then the transition to being CEO of Yahoo.

The link to the article is here and I really recommend you spend the time reading it.

A few comments about the article

I really like it when a good piece of investigative journalism is done.  With our shorter attention spans, the trend towards more news, not more in depth news and the days of 140 character updates news, information seems to be focusing on the highlights and not the details.  This article is different though - it is seriously long and well researched.  I confess that I first looked at it the length of it intimidated me slightly and I thought I would read the first few paragraphs (at work) and then print it to read at home.  I got so engrossed in the article that I spent the next 30 - 45 minutes reading it from start to finish.

I like it when a biography is more than a puff piece.  All too often biographies are either puff pieces or hatchet jobs.  This seems to be exacerbated when the person is particularly powerful like a billionaire or the CEO of a powerful
company.  Try finding a detailed look at the strengths and flaws of someone like Warren Buffett...they are pretty rare.  This article is so much more than a puff piece.  It looks at her flaws and her strengths, what she has contributed and the people she has screwed.  It is one of the reasons that I was so fascinated by the article.

If you are particularly ambitious...this should get your juices going.  If you are a particularly ambitious person looking to make your way in the world of business then this article is great for you.  You will have noticed that when read most biographies it normally talks about a persons achievements but not really what it took to get there.  It does not talk about having to make hard decisions or having to work long hours.  It doesn't talk about the realities of politics in organisations.  This piece does all that.

I will not spend too much longer talking about how much I liked this biography because I really do recommend you read it.  Let me know what you think about it.

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