Hypocrisy in Yahoo CEO’s show up to work or quit edict?

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In my last post on the Yahoo CEO’s (Marissa Mayer) new “show up to work or quit” edict I voiced my support.  I do support re-humanizing human interactions.

However, after talking with a student here at CSUS, face to face by the way, I found out the Yahoo CEO  had a nursery built at the Yahoo facility for her newborn.  Yes, she used her money to do it.  But it is still in the company building.

So, if other Yahoo employees have money to build a nursery in the next cube, would they be allowed?  I doubt it.  Therein lies the hypocrisy.  Face to face time is important, the CEO is living it.  Family is important.  The CEO is bringing the family with her to work.

But what is Marissa Mayer doing to facilitate work-life balance of those less fortunate employees who can’t afford to build a nursery at work and are no longer allowed to work from home?

Let me quote one of the comments on the article:

Here’s the problem I have with her and her actions. She was elected to the CEO position in July of 2012, and immediately announced upon her acceptance that she was pregnant. She stated that the board knew in advance, and they very well may have. She then announced that she didn’t plan to really take a maternity leave, and spent the weeks she took off before and after the birth of her child working from home. So, in the span of less than a year, this high profile woman in a tech field has dismissed maternity leave as unnecessary – assuming that you consider working from home as actually working (which I suspect at least to some large degree it was). After then taking advantage of the option to work from home during her maternity non-leave, she has now decided that no one else should be allowed to do the same. She, of course, doesn’t need to as she has utilized company resources (office space and utilities) to create her own personal daycare at her office. Clearly, the only concern Ms. Mayer has is for herself.

I will conclude with stating I support face-to-face interaction and work/life balance.  I hope Yahoo’s new CEO figures out how to make that happen for everyone and not just herself.

A not-so-funny pictorial description of the AIG bailout

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Thanks to the MBA220 students for their submissions on this one.  I have modified and combined a couple of the submitted pictures here.  If anyone would like to animate this AIG PowerPoint and save it as a movie (I believe it can be done with powerpoint) I would appreciate it.

Fisman: CEO right: Face time needed at Yahoo

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So, as humans we still need to interact face to face? See this article.  Here’s a quote:

More recent time use studies by researchers at Harvard, the London School of Economics and Columbia have found that little has changed. Despite the IT revolution, business leaders still spend 80% of their time in face-to-face meetings.

So, as educators we should be mindful of the push for online content.  A measured approach towards online incorporation is needed to ensure we are training business leaders and not solely customer service representatives.

But then again, somebody has to be a customer service representative, right?  Oh, I don’t have all the answers.  In the end, I applaud the effort to re-humanize the work environment.  May it be successful.

Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?

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This is another article on the downside of “too big to fail.”  After attaining “too big to fail” status, creditors know these banks will be bailed out by the U.S. government if and when they fail.  As such creditors to these large banks have reduced risk exposure.  According to the article, this amounts to about 0.8 percentage points or $83Billion a year that the top 10 banks save every year as a result of their “too big to fail” status.

Why not break these big banks up rather than letting them become too big and failing?

The article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html

 

WSJ: Value Stocks Are Hot—But Most Investors Will Burn Out

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I, as well as Warren Buffett before me, and Benjamin Graham before him, emphasize book value.  This article provides evidence that value stocks outperform growth stocks, but only if you hold firm:

20130215_Why_most_value_investors_will_burn_out

On value indexes vs. others…

…the Russell 1000 Value Index, a yardstick of cheap stocks with sluggish expected earnings, is up 19%, compared with 11% for pricier “growth” stocks and 15% for the full Rus- sell 1000 index of big U.S. stocks.

On long run performance…

Since 1926, value stocks have outperformed growth stocks by an average of four percentage points annually

On book value…

The bargain stocks in the best-known Fama- French index were selected on a different measure: book value, a basic yard- stick of corporate net worth. Many stock pickers don’t pay much attention to book value anymore.

Potential Facebook revenue stream or distraction from underlying economic problem?

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A recent article by The Economist describes how microlenders are using social media to assess creditworthiness.  However a prior article also by The Economist suggests microlending has been discredited.

The real problem, as outlined in Aftershock by Robert Reich, is that lending has expanded because wages of the 99% have remained stagnant or declined. More efficient lending and credit analysis is not what this world needs long term. What we need is wages of the 99% to rise so they do not have to borrow so much.