Mayer: Larry Page identified early Google product managers before role existed
Marissa Mayer · How to make the star employees you need (with Lumi Labs' Marissa Mayer) · Mar 29, 2023 · at 13:43
Former Google executive Marissa Mayer recounts how Google co-founder Larry Page recognized the need for a product management discipline after touring other established tech companies.
0:00 / 0:31
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“He was like, all these companies, they kind of look like we do, except they all have this thing called product management, which we don't really have. But what we do have is we have Salar, Susan, and Marissa. Who all tend to do things kind of all across the company and their job titles don't really fit what they do. And he's like, and so they're kind of our product managers.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Marissa Mayer
Mayer bet she could train new grads faster than hiring senior PMs
“I want to bet that I can hire new people right out of school and train them to be great product managers at Google faster than you can hire the people you prefer who are more experienced and senior.”
Mayer: Yahoo's core business turnaround would have succeeded with one more year
“Cause I do think if we had with that team, with that base of revenue, with our plan, I really think we would have, if we had had another year, And we'd had 10 quarters of beating plan, and we really could have gotten there.”
Mayer: Yahoo should have pursued the Alibaba spin-off instead of selling
“In hindsight, I, you know, and again, hindsight is twenty-twenty, I think it would have been helpful to continue to pursue the spin. I'm optimistic that it would have been ultimately tax-free, though it may have caused an overhang. You know, that said, at that…”
Mayer: Yahoo beat street expectations and internal plan for six straight quarters
“I mean, it's a little known fact, but for the last six quarters of Yahoo's existence prior to the sale, not only did we beat the street, we beat plan.”
Mayer: In 1999, Google struggled to recruit against more promising startups
“We actually had the job description for four months, and we failed to find anyone. Interviewed a bunch of people, but, you know, frankly, at that point, like, everyone else's startup was more promising than Google. Like, it was very hard to extract people from…”
Mayer: Internal PM rotations offer multi-company breadth without switching employers
“Google's a really unique place because you can try three or four different formats of product management in one place. You can do nascent products, you can do mature products, you can do, you know, mobile, right? There were all these different types of product…”