Marissa Mayer quotes: on geekery, Google, the Green Bay Packers, and more.
“To me, the future is personalization.”
“Find something you’re passionate about and just love.”
“If you can find something that you’re really passionate about, whether you’re a man or a woman comes a lot less into play. Passion is a gender-neutralizing force.”
“Pick something and make it great.”
“Whenever you have a daily habit, and are really providing a lot of value around it, there’s an opportunity to create a great business.”
“Work for someone who believes in you, because when they believe in you they’ll invest in you.”
“It’s important to be transparent so everyone can understand what you’re thinking and why you’re motivated, because that ultimately helps give the organization stability. There needs to be a platform for people to decide, do we share your philosophies and backgrounds and make the same decisions you do, or do we not? If there is one thing that makes an organization stable, it’s when there is a consistency of thought and decision-making.”
“Success is never getting to the bottom of your to-do list.”
“I think the most interesting thing is what happens next.”
“Reality is but a poor excuse for not having an imagination.”
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. I always surrounded myself with the smartest people I could find, because they make you think about things harder.”
“It’s amazing when you take a lot of smart, motivated people and give them access to a huge amount of information, how well-informed their choices are about what they want to work on and what needs to be done.”
“It is wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people. It challenges you to think and work on a different level. If you play with better players, you learn a lot: perspectives, intellectual arguments, new ways of thinking about things.”
“I realized in all the cases where I was happy with the decision I made, there were two common threads: surround myself with the smartest people who challenge you to think about things in new ways, and do something you are not ready to do so you can learn the most.”
“Good students are good at all things.”
“Innovation is born from the interaction between constraint and vision. Creativity thrives best when constrained.”
“That’s how we’re going to stay innovative. We’re going to continue to attract entrepreneurs who say, ‘I found an idea.'”
“People are more productive when they’re alone, but they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together.”
“Really in technology, it’s about the people, getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment and helping to find a way to innovate.”
“I definitely think what drives technology companies is the people; because in a technology company it’s always about what are you going to do next.”
“Employees, especially young people, want more than a paycheck.”
“Talent is what drives technology companies.”
“Your rhythm is what matters to you so much that when you miss it, you’re resentful of your work. So find your rhythm, understand what makes you resentful, and protect it. I have a theory that burnout is about resentment. And you beat it by knowing what it is you’re giving up that makes you resentful.”
“If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.”
“Shifting toward management meant greater responsibility and influence, but it also meant giving up programming day-to-day in my role, which was hard because it took me out of my comfort zone. I like to get myself in over my head.”
“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of, ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”
“Do something you’re not ready to do. In the worst case, you’ll learn your limitations.”
“You have to ruthlessly prioritize.”
“New beginnings—professional, personal, or come what may—are always uncomfortable, but being open to them is the only way to grow. In the end, we are all capable of so much more than we think.”
“This is one of my favorites. People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: ‘We know you said it was impossible, but we’re going to do this, this, and that to get us there.'”
“Walmart is an amazing story of entrepreneurship and, as one of the world’s most powerful brands, touches millions of lives every day.”
“If you need the user to tell you what you’re selling, then you don’t know what you’re selling, and it’s probably not going to be a good experience.”
“The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.”
“We believe that if we focus on the users, the money will come. In a truly virtual business, if you’re successful, you’ll be working at something that’s so necessary people will pay for it in subscription form. Or you’ll have so many users that advertisers will pay to sponsor the site.”
“Communications is the biggest driver of frequency of use of anything. Think about how many times a day you check your email on your phone or text someone or message someone.”
“Creativity loves constraint. Simplicity is king on the small screen.”
“You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms.”
“I’ve always liked simplicity. I like to stay in the rhythm of things.”
“I don’t believe in balance, not in the classic way.”
“My first week at Stanford, I bought a computer, and it was the first computer I ever owned. I had to be taught how to turn it on and even how to use a mouse, even though, for a lot of people, a mouse is very intuitive.”
“I was Google’s first woman engineer. I didn’t want to lose my sense of myself in my profession.”
“People ask me all the time: ‘What is it like to be a woman at Google?’ I’m not a woman at Google, I’m a geek at Google. And being a geek is just great. I’m a geek, I like to code, I even like to use spreadsheets when I cook.”
“Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter.”
“It’s really wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people.”
“I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous.”
“If I had been more self-conscious about being a woman, it would have stifled me. I refuse to be stereotyped.”
“I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that, I certainly believe in equal rights. I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so, in a lot of different dimensions. But I don’t, I think, have sort of the militant drive and the sort of the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that.”
“It was a very well-rounded childhood with lots of different opportunities. My mom will say she set out to overstimulate me—surround me with way too many things and let me pick. As a result, I’ve always been a multitasker; I’ve always liked a lot of variety.”
“Vince Lombardi says, ‘You know, in my life there are three things: God, family and the Green Bay Packers, in that order.’ For me, it’s: ‘God, family and Yahoo, in that order.'”
“I could imagine, some number of years from now, starting my own company. But not yet. Not for a while.”
“There are amazing opportunities all over the world for women, and I think that there’s more good that comes out of positive energy around that than negative energy.”
“I’ve come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization. Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important.”
“I pace myself by taking a week-long vacation every four months.”
“Well, I have one of the best jobs in the world.”
“You can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you.”
