the wicked
by rantywoman
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/12/she-cant-sleep-no-more/
It will not shock anyone reading this that the realm over which Marissa Mayer presides is often more oriented toward images of women than the needs of women, and that a particularly sexist work realm is very happy to promote female CEOs as representative of its enlightened future. Cutting edge technologies, instead of being designed to make the grunt work of life easier, are merely commodifying increasingly intimate parts of our existence. Technology hasn’t been oriented toward letting us sleep eight hours and still make a living, but has served to make an inhumane work ethic look progressive, innovative, feminist. Silicon Valley culture and the cult of the CEO encourage the belief that everyone’s realm of empowerment is in the unsleeping pursuit of success, bonus if your baby proves that nothing will stop you.
Do you buy it? Mayer won’t sleep until you do.
Marisa Mayer deserves to have her BS back at her in spades.
Oh, for Yahoo go under (does it serve any real purpose?), she loses her job, can’t get another, loses her millions, ends up with a few more kids, goes back to work and isn’t allowed to work freelance, part-time or using technology (even though the whole POINT of google and yahoo – her very job in fact – is that everything can be done online), has to take a low-paid job in an all-male workaholic culture and can’t ride her bike or walk to work – because god Forbid! there aren’t enough, in her words, “cars in the parking lot”.
She has already said (quote) she doesn’t care about “family time” like other people, so probably she won’t miss her kids and her kids will be better off without a self-absorbed, narcissistic, egotistical “parent” – and I use that word loosely – like herself bringing them up. The irony is that most likely he (or they if she selfishly has more kids) will receive the parenting and love and “family time” they require from women who wouldn’t be able to work at Yahoo given its non-family policy.
Yes I heard about her ending the “work from home” days.
It’s not so much that – after all “work from home” is pretty broad – it really means working remotely. The “home” also implies weakness or lack of commitments (lying in bed? chatting with friends?) when in fact studies have shown that it increases output from staff and lowers overhead – win/win – provided of course that the manager (which in this case would have been Marissa Mayer) is on board. My issue is that she is short-sighted, self-absorbed, incapable of seeing the opportunities that have been given to her, and would appear to be motivated by a private agenda. Let’s be clear – we are not talking about a local shop or a organic flower stall, or even a company like Pixar – we are talking about a company that exists (and makes its fortune) virtually/online. To then state that employees can’t work remotely (whether that be from home, while travelling for work, in a study/office space, etc) is fundamentally wrong and backward to the whole Point of the company.
Another issue is that yes, there will be women without kids – that will not have the same scheduling issues/problems as parents (e.g. small kids and their needs) -but then again 1) people don’t “work from home” because they hate going in to work, it’s usually because it’s the ONLY way they can work 2) if – as a women without kids – you can work in the office, to begrudge people working in other formats seems pointless. (why?) 3) it has been proven – again and again – that without some kind of work from home/remote possibility many many women can’t work – and these are Bright, creative women that should have the opportunity. They are not asking for a free ride they are simply asking to be able to – in some cases, where possible – work with some flexibility (and this doesn’t need to refer to less hours and in fact, usually doesn’t) and that this is something looked down upon – ESP by a virtual online company is madness. I have worked both remotely and in an office and I can tell you I work more hours when working “from home”.
What also gets me is Marisa Mayer is herself an example of a bright women. One wonder how she would have coped if the timing in her life had been slightly off – and when she was a young Google employee she had a child then. What then? I seriously doubt she would be where she is today (which is all thanks to Google) if she had had a child much younger and she wasn’t given some options apart from work and leave her child with a full-time carer (which is insanely expensive and means you aren’t able to be a parent when they need you most).
And – on top of which, she has even Proved that it’s not possible to be a f-time involved mom and work f-time, especially not when you have babies and small kids – or she wouldn’t have built her state of the art nursery next to her office.
She is the worst kind of person – one without integrity. her stupid smug face has has single-handedly put me off Yahoo for life.