Gawker: valleywag, workaholics

How Marissa Mayer's Stud Pumps Her Up

Ryan Tate — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:09:40 EDT

Athletics are a sore point of failure for Marissa Mayer; the overachieving Google exec recently placed 7,074th of 7,862 in the Portland marathon and dead last in a ski race. But she and her hunky groom ran a half marathon in San Francisco on July 26, and she's getting better (though not that much better).

Zack Bogue, 33, turned in a very respectable performance, placing in the 14th percentile overall and in the 24th for his age and gender bracket.

Mayer, a year older to her lawyer fiancé, wasn't quite up to his pace. She finished a full 17 minutes behind hubby-to-be, in the 59th percentile overall and 52nd among women 30-39. (See results below, via RunRaceResults.com and a helpful tipster.)

But Mayer's run marked a real improvement. Last year she was down in the 66th percentile overall, 57th among her age group.

After a year's training, she's already improved her time by... well, about a minute and a half. At this rate, with continued support from her partner in workaholism, Mayer should be able to live up to her memorable pronouncement that "Good students are good at all things" within just a few decades.

(Top pic via MarathonFoto.com — buy your commemorative copy of Marissa Mayer's race photo today!)

The Workaholic Google Couple That Will Crush Your Spirit

Ryan Tate — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:59:57 EDT

We learn this week in Vogue that Google executive Marissa Mayer and her husband fiancé are insanely addicted to work. Like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner before them, their manic overachieving can and will put you to shame.

While Trump and Kushner just go to real estate events and check their BlackBerries, Mayer and her husband Zack Bogue — "lawyer/investment manager/athlete/philanthropist" — have actually rewired one anothers' cyborg circuitry:

She's also converted him to sleeping an hour less per night... "She woke

Zack up at 5:00 a.m. and wanted to give her speech; I said, ‘Zack, you

signed up for it. Now you know.' " Zack knows and thrives.

When not subjecting one another to sleep deprivation, Mayer and Bogue like to run triathlons and marathons, carry their laptops everywhere so they can work, stay up late so they can work and maintain three homes, to be near wherever the work is. The couple also enjoys encouraging you to give up on your worthless, silly professional life and consider maybe jarring homemade jam on a farm somewhere, or making hummus in a filthy commune or whatever it is the remaining hippies do these day.

Waggable: I'm spending more time with my family

Nick Douglas — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:20:00 EDT

Overheard:

Overachiever #1: I feel like I'm not doing enough. I'm really driven - my friends tell me I need to find balance. Overachiever #2: "Finding balance" is a euphemism for "quitting."

Two-screen two-step

ndouglas — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:48:40 EDT

It's a busy day in People with Two Monitors News.

AOL kingpin Jason Calacanis really loves his new monitors. And I'm not just saying this because he IMed me to brag about them (seriously). [Jason Calacanis]
New York Times writer Ivan Berger also loves his new monitors — and you know what that means. Yep! TREND STORY. (A story that convinced Calacanis everyone will be double-screening next year.) [NYT]
And a scoop from a reader: Microsoft admits that the fancy glass monitors (pictured) shown to the Chinese president aren't real — after all, wouldn't Bill Gates trade up from his big flatscreens? The slick frameless panels are just pieces of Plexiglass with screens projected from behind the desk. Microsoft's calling them prototypes for the Home of the Future, but it's really just that Ballmer can't be trusted near large, loose pieces of glass.

The Treadputer: This cannot possibly be efficient

ndouglas — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:46:44 EDT

Colorado VC Brad Feld is an accomplished guy. On the board of Feedburner, NewsGator, Rally Software...ooh, he has two degrees from MIT (that's two more than most people). He's run six marathons and hopes to run every other state marathon in the next ten years. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say working all day on the "Treadputer" isn't gonna do it.

Says a friend of Valleywag, "In a movie or TV show, if there were a guy with two MIT degrees who loved to run, and read, and believed computers are his friend, and he built a Treadputer ... what would go wrong? Maybe it would be like that fly movie with that guy who always plays a buffed-out nerd. At first his wife thinks it's great — he's happy, he's buffed out, he's more, um, attentive ... but then ...."

The Treadputer [Feld Thoughts]

Google blogger: pressure means love

ndouglas — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 21:25:55 EST

It's unsettling enough to see an official Google blogger anthropomorphize — and then interview — the 300x250 AdSense block. But when she starts projecting onto it, things get creepy. AdSense employee Suzie Dewey has the AdSense ad say:

Like people, ad units get bored if you're not constantly challenging us to do better.

Sure, it's almost a reference to everyone's need for stimulation. But "constantly challenging"? It's hard not to see the good ol' Google achieveaholic poking through.

It's just one of many patches of the "Never good enough for Google" quilt: Larry's angry lecture about 20% time, Marissa Mayer's superhuman schedule, and the constant stockholder pressure could convince anyone to say bye-bye to sustainability and Always. Push. Harder.

Hipper than a square [Inside AdSense]

Marissa Mayer: hologram or android?

ndouglas — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:26:18 EST

Another CNN-affiliated magazine issue, another Marissa Mayer profile. Fortune's new self-written piece on the Google VP's insane schedule (which somehow left time for contributing to Fortune) allows only two explanations for her lifestyle. Either Marissa Mayer is an artificially constructed hologram delivering a carefully performed script, or she is an artificially constructed android running a Google A.I. Each line from Marissa perfectly supports both theories:

She tells Fortune...	...so she's a hologram.	...so she's an android.
"I don't feel overwhelmed with information. I really like it."	Some day her animated head will tell you this as you download Google Desktop. It's like Clippy but more soulless.	Johnny Five needs more input.
"I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight."	The marketing team has seen the first twenty minutes of every Nicholas Cage "workaholic businessman finds the true meaning of happiness" movie. They think they were watching the happy endings.	She could do it in ten minutes, but her keyboard would spontaneously combust.
"With TiVo, for example, I just seem to spend too much of my life looking at the PLEASE WAIT sign."	Carefully dropped consumer-friendly tech brand name.	Carefully dropped implication that Marissa watches only one TV at once.
"I adore my cell phone, but there's just a second of delay when you answer it: Hello, hello?"	Heads will roll because this line went through. Also: Marissa Mayer doesn't have caller ID?	She cannot hide her distaste for human weakness. Why must these water-bags waste seconds with trivial greetings? Why, in fact, were we ever off the phone in the first place?
"This morning I had my list of what I thought I was going to do today, but now I'm doing entirely different things."	"I'm human! I'm human! Really totally honestly!"	"For one thing, I had to go back in time to kill the human who would otherwise prevent a robot-dominated society. Also, I had to pick up some laundry."
"I can get by on four to six hours of sleep."	The range expands — last time she said just four hours. PR adapts (like the Borg).	And by "sleep" she means "recharging fuel cells."
"I have an assistant, Patty..."	"I have a programmer, Patty..."	"I will allow you humans to believe I rely on your puny skills and resources."

How I Work: Marissa Mayer [Fortune]

Jeff Jordan is just another Valley workaholic

ndouglas — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 10:25:48 EST

PayPal president Jeff Jordan (the man afraid of Google) made sure the Wall Street Journal saw him as a hard worker — or a sick freak:

An avid mountain biker, Mr. Jordan begins his workday at around 5 a.m. at the eBay gym, perched atop a stationary bicycle while tapping away on his BlackBerry.

Berrying while exercycling? How is that even productive? Jordan is either lying to himself or showing off for the reporter. But it's not the worst of the ludicrous ways Valley big shots overwork themselves.

Marissa Mayer only takes red-eye flights, to avoid missing workdays, according to John Battelle's book The Search.
VCs reportedly drive around to parking lots, late at night, to see which startups putting in the hours.
Google caught several interns — and full-time engineers — trying to live and sleep at the Googleplex.
One biotech IT manager wakes at 4 a.m. three times a week to train for over two hours, then skips lunch to lift weights.
Execs and VCs like Steve Jurvetson (pictured above) swim across the bay or bike up mountains, and they admit they make deals during these grueling show-off sports.

Geez, people, slow down. You're making the rest of us feel bad.

PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google [WSJ]
Wheels and Deals in Silicon Valley [NYT in Park Association]