I've worked for and with Meg. She's brilliant. She's a very good manager when it comes to taking a successful business and making it a lot more successful.
She's not so good at taking something that is new or failing and making it good. She definitely made eBay much bigger than it would have been without her, but it was already successful and growing when she joined. She ran HPE into the ground because it was already failing.
She didn't succeed with Quibi because she doesn't know about how to find market fit.
She was good at setting a vision, expressing that vision, and making sure it was being followed and getting her direct reports to move things in the direction she wanted.
As far as brilliant, I'm referring to raw intelligence. You could tell her new information and she would instantly digest it and apply that to new areas. Also, if you were in a meeting with her once, she'd remember you and what you talked about. If you mentioned that you had kids for example, the next time she saw you months later she'd ask how your kids are, for example.
Sounds like a great COO, someone who can drive and improve existing operations, but not someone who can come up with a vision or, as you said, finding a market.
I'm curious how you would distinguish that from her presence having zero effect, positive or negative, on a company. I don't see how you can possibly know that she made eBay much bigger than it would have been without her. It seems to me just as likely that it would have been the same, and that HPE and Quibi were both doomed no matter what. On what basis is she brilliant, a good manager, and makes a successful business more successful?
The good CEOs I've worked under, had a clear vision for the company and were good at selling that vision both to investors (private and public/stock market) and to the rank and file during monthly or quarterly all-hands. Did she do that?
I'll agree it's hard to say one way or another since there is no opposite case to test against.
But she was good at setting a vision, expressing that vision, and making sure it was being followed and getting her direct reports to move things in the direction she wanted.
As far as brilliant, I'm referring to raw intelligence. You could tell her new information and she would instantly digest it and apply that to new areas. Also, if you were in a meeting with her once, she'd remember you and what you talked about. If you mentioned that you had kids for example, the next time she saw you months later she'd ask how your kids are, for example.
Thank you for clarifying. I agree that makes it sound like she was a good manager. I'm curious, why did she take positions at companies unsuited to her strengths?
> She's a very good manager when it comes to taking a successful business and making it a lot more successful.
Bit of a leap to conclude that right just based on eBay?
eBay would've had astronomical growth under a dog as CEO. As you mentioned:
> She definitely made eBay much bigger than it would have been without her, but it was already successful and growing when she joined.
And that's her one success story. She's had plenty of other opportunities to demonstrate management competency. I think there's a cognitive fallacy where we assume someone is good because they were there and we lived through things with them.
But as others have said, just look at her wikipedia:
I think we should challenge ourselves when defending people just because they were there and they didn't fail.
I don't care how brilliant she was at delegating to managers across categories, etc., the world needs space for better leaders than e.g. those who support Prop 8 (were anti-gay marriage) etc. Like if you don't have empathy there, then it's unlikely you're going to be a better manager than, again, my dog.
A manager needs to be a leader. Perhaps she can delegate and she has an MBA from HBS and she's well-connected in Silicon Valley (I remember her connections to Scott Cook at Intuit, etc. - so much bad shit happened under their watch though, poaching, etc.).
But I don't think any of her behavior (unless you have concrete examples) makes her "brilliant" or a "good manager" - unless the standards are pretty out-of-date. We really should not be defending people who don't evolve (and who are financially very taken care of and have every opportunity to earn trust again, but don't).
UPDATE. I see some examples now in the other comments. Personally I'm not convinced. But that's just me.
> Like if you don't have empathy there, then it's unlikely you're going to be a better manager than, again, my dog...
> ...much bad shit happened under their watch though, poaching, etc.
If empathy is important to you, please consider not using the term "poaching". Employees are not animals that belong to an employer based on an imaginary hereditary right. They have the choice (and often exercise it) of employment at a new place based on the relative attractiveness of both opportunities.
I think the word poaching has taken on new meaning when used in that context though. I don't remember the last time someone used poaching when talking about actual animals. I don't hang around many hunters.
Poaching has a much broader meaning than the one you describe. It's simply taking someone's property without permission. With modern employment contracts (non-competes/no outside work/drug tests...) I believe the comparison to property is quite apt.
I don't think I understand. Under what circumstance does a company A recruiting away employees from company B count as "taking away B's property without permission"? There is no permission needed by law to offer a better employment contract to, well, anyone.
To be clear, I'm not a fan of her personal politics in the slightest, and in fact that plus her love of stack ranking would prevent me from wanting to work for her again.
But I'm saying she does at least have some wins on her track record to justify hiring her.
It’s just interesting how our former leaders might be seen in new light (but yeah not to take away from the solid wins they did have and I think it’s awesome she remembered people’s names and details - the average CEO in the generation before would’ve been hard pressed to do that). Perhaps it’s good that the bar gets higher and higher.
I was talking to my wife about this. And actually read her what I'd written (a Hacker News first for me). And she helped me see that I come off as sort of a woman-CEO-bashing programmer dude.
And yeah, I don't think any of us want that. It's fascinating though how we (not the OP, but perhaps myself and others) so easily jump on the criticism bandwagon for Marissa Mayer, Ellen Pao or now Meg Whitman. I don't think we do that for male CEOs as much.
Anyway, just noting it for those reading this later. Poor choice in wording in the above (I actually love my dog a lot - but the wording probably comes off as insensitive). Which was not the intention, but a good learning moment for me.
I didn't know that Whitman had supported Prop 8, probably a cynical political calculation during her run for governor. To her credit, she reversed course and quite publicly supported its repeal.
I don't think EBay was destined by the gods for greatness. There was zero barrier to entry and they weren't the first. They weren't even the first coming from General Magic where Omidyar had worked. I'm inclined to give her credit for EBay but evidently nothing else.
Steve Yegge's classic "eBay Patents 10-Click Checkout" [1] was published a few years after Meg's eBay tenure, and sums up the lousy UX they never tunnelled out of.
Meanwhile, every history of Amazon points out how their third-party seller project stole eBay's opportunity by focusing on customers first and building a unified product hierarchy.
eBay managed to hold on by being the first 2-sided marketplace to gain traction, enjoying a huge moat much like CraigsList. Over time, it squandered the opportunity.
Meg may know how to keep a company in operation, but she's never shown she can lead a product from scratch. That's just a giant risk to take with $billions of funding at stake.
Meg Whitman is well-established in Silicon Valley and considered to be a a safe pair of hands, which is crucial to have when hunting for investor dollars.
Interesting.
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