The only shocker in Julian Guthrie's profile of Marissa Mayer for San Francisco magazine: That the "gorgeously geeky Googler" is well-respected within the Googleplex. Perhaps among the executives Google PR trotted out for the ritual encomiums, but not among the rank and file. One engineering group so loathed Mayer that they threw a party when they were assigned a new boss. A ray of hope for anyone still suffering under Mayer's lash: In this piece, she announces that she may leave the company in two years. If, on the other hand, you can't get enough of Mayer, here's some obsessive biographical detail exerpted from "Googirl," as well as the article's opening shot:
- $5 million, 38th-floor penthouse at the Four Seasons
- Mayer is infatuated with the color purple ... a formfitting deep-purple dress by C.D. Greene with small black mirrors ... the bedroom's violet walls — replicated from one of her favorite cashmere sweaters — ... announce her love of eye-poppingly bright colors and Marimekko-type patterns
- A social climber who paid $60,000 to win lunch with Oscar de la Renta
- Once dated Google cofounder Larry Page
- Rumored to be worth several hundred million dollars
- As vice president of search products and user experience, Mayer manages 150 product managers, who direct the efforts of nearly 2,000 software engineers
- Her pet dog, an Aibo robot named Rover
- She also has a Craftsman in Palo Alto
- She'd recently bought an array of cookbooks to study the cupcake recipes in each, created a spreadsheet for the ingredients, and then tested the recipes before writing her own
- She made another spreadsheet for frosting.
- The ceiling installation she commissioned from the famous glass artist Dale Chihuly: 400 pieces of blown glass in the shapes of sea flora and fauna.
- A wall-size light panel with 576 individually placed Ping-Pong balls, which Mayer made over eight weekends spent home alone, inspired by the light display she'd seen at a 2005 U2 concert.
- Original works by Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, and Roy Lichtenstein.
- Mayer had 12 job offers: Carnegie Mellon, McKinsey, Oracle.
- For the first month at work, she was a closet InfoSeek user, turning her computer screen so no one would see.
- Her high school debate team ... won the state championship her senior year.
- Her all-time favorite foods include duck confit Sloppy Joes, sliders of Angus beef with brie, and macaroni and cheese with lobster.
- dozens of Mayer's favorite Sprungli Luxemburgerli (bite-size macaroons), which she brought back from Zurich, where she was on business a few days earlier. She even sent invitees a Wikipedia link to information about the treat.
- Mayer samples a piece of cake and says, "I'm a huge fan of frosting. Vanilla fudge is my favorite. It gives you brain euphoria."
- Her favorite designers are de la Renta and Carolina Herrera.
FULL COVERAGE OF THE GOOGIRL SCANDAL
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Feb 27, 2008 06:20 PM
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