What type is Marissa Mayer?

[highlander]

 

[baccheion]

Must be a perceiver. I've read too many times that she's always late for meetings, has a loose management structure, etc. And she's a self-proclaimed introvert. So, she's at least IxxP. Until I read that she thinks of herself as an introvert, I always thought that she was an ENTP. Since the only options for being a feeler include being the oh so sensitive INFP and the not so far behind ISFP, she's probably a thinker. So that leaves IxTP. The closest option on your poll is INTP, so I guess I'll go with that.

 

[violet_crown]

BAMF

 

[highlander]

Must be a perceiver. I've read too many times that she's always late for meetings, has a loose management structure, etc. And she's a self-proclaimed introvert. So, she's at least IxxP. Until I read that she thinks of herself as an introvert, I always thought that she was an ENTP. Since the only options for being a feeler include being the oh so sensitive INFP and the not so far behind ISFP, she's probably a thinker. So that leaves IxTP. The closest option on your poll is INTP, so I guess I'll go with that.

I'm late for meetings.

INTP would be very unusual for a CEO but I can see the rationale.

I don't see a reason why an ENTP couldn't be shy.

 

[highlander]

Some interesting stuff in here. She seemed to have a penchant for organization and leadership at an early age.

http://www.businessinsider.com/mari...utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer&page=2

For example

"In high school, Mayer took a leadership position in every club she joined. She became president of the Spanish club, treasurer of Key Club, and Captain of the debate team.

One of her closest friends from Wausau, Abigail Garvey Wilson, says, “When Marissa became captain of the pompom squad, she wasn’t in with that clique of girls, but she won them over in three ways.”

“First: sheer talent. Marissa could choreograph a great routine. Second: hard work. She scheduled practices lasting hours to make sure everyone was synchronized. And third: fairness. With Marissa in charge, the best dancers made the team.”

In 1993, Mayer applied to, and was accepted into, 10 schools, including Harvard, Yale, Duke, and Northwestern. To decide which one she would go to, Mayer created a spreadsheet, weighing variables for each.

She picked Stanford. Her plan was to become a brain doctor — a profession that doesn’t draw much on the leadership traits Mayer was quickly developing.

But soon enough, Mayer would find herself once again overcoming her shyness by taking charge of a room full of peers, pushing them to work for hours.

Soon enough, she would find herself at the front of a Stanford classroom, interacting with people in the way that came most natural to her — teaching them."

 

[highlander]

More stuff from that article.

"Mayer’s teacherly leadership streak came out in a big way when she took Philosophy 160A, then considered a “weed-out course” for prospective symbolic systems majors.

During Philosophy 160A, the students break into study groups of a half dozen or so students, and the groups are assigned problem sets. Mayer’s group — just like all the others — put off doing their problem sets until the day before they were due.

So that semester at Stanford was full of all-nighters for Mayer and her Philosophy 160A group.

Mayer ended up in a group that included Josh Elman, now a venture capitalist. Looking back on those study sessions, Elman remembers “times when people in the group were bouncing off the walls.”

He says, “Marissa was always like, ‘OK, back to work. Let’s get this done.’ She was focused on making sure we got the right answer quickly.”

“It felt like she was the smartest student in the room — and the most serious. You always knew those two things about her. Very smart. Very serious.”

The social dynamic of the group was typical for Mayer. As usual, she commanded the room — organized the group’s work in an all-business fashion — but was otherwise shy, and somewhat reclusive.

In the years ahead, this combination — Mayer’s willingness to be authoritative and demanding the way a teacher would, with a “painful” fear or reluctance of being personal — would cause problems for Mayer.

One Stanford classmate interpreted Mayer’s shyness as being “kind of stuck up.”

“She would do her work and then leave. When other people would stay and hang out and have pizza, she’d just be out of there because the work is done.”

Indeed, Mayer doesn’t seem to have had a very active social life in college.

One person who lived in her dorm said she appeared to always be “down to business” and “not much for socializing.”

“She wasn’t one of those people into making new friends around the dorm. She was always doing something more important than just chilling.”

The simplest explanation for Mayer’s social behavior at Stanford remains that Mayer was, as she has said many times, “painfully shy.”"

 

[highlander]

"When it came to developing Google products, Mayer had a bigger challenge.

Mayer has never been someone who easily relates with others. That’s why people call her robotic or “stuck up.” This trait is why people sometimes walk out of meetings with her feeling deeply insulted by a perceived slight.

But being in charge of how Google products should look, Mayer’s job was, basically, to relate with Google’s millions of users. How would she do that?

In the end, it proved to be an advantage for Mayer that empathy doesn’t come naturally to her. It forced her to be intentional about figuring out what users want and how they behave.

She came up with two clever methods of relating.

Google Marissa Mayer
Mayer at the height of her power at Google.

The first is that she would recreate the technological circumstances of her users in her own life. Mayer went without broadband for years in her home, refusing to install it until it was also installed in the majority of American homes. She carried an iPhone at Google, which makes Android phones, because so did most mobile Web users.
Mayer’s second method was to lean on data. She would track, survey, and measure every user interaction with Google products, and then use that data to design and re-design.

Mayer’s design-by-numbers approach to product development was not always popular.

Famously, a lead designer named Doug Bowman quit Google over it.

In a farewell blog post, Bowman wrote: “… a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.”"

 

[JocktheMotie]

STJ, leaning towards introvert.

 

[baccheion]

Yea, the description makes her sound very Te. But then again, most people think I'm a stuck up, robotic, disciplined, all business ISTJ when I'm working with groups (I'm an INTP). If she ended up being an INTJ, I wouldn't be surprised. So maybe her loose leadership style and frequent lateness (this rules out SJ in my opinion) was deliberate, rather than an extension of who she is? Either way, it's quite a change from the description of her written in that "unauthorized biography."

 

[Coriolis]

My initial estimate was ESTJ. I can see the arguments for other types, but not enough to rule that one out.

 

[highlander]

My initial estimate was ESTJ. I can see the arguments for other types, but not enough to rule that one out.

Well I think she is a TJ for sure. STJ seems plausible.

 

[highlander]

STJ, leaning towards introvert.

I added STJ options to the poll.

 

[lulabelle]

marissa says she is an introvert. i think she's ISTJ

 

[highlander]

I agree with ISTJ