A baby or more money: Can I have both?
After the child was born, Mayer and her husband took up residence in the penthouse suite of San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel. [...] Yahoo (along with most other American corporations) was under fire for failing to provide adequate leave time for expectant parents. In other words, you can take your silly old parental leave if you want, but the real forward thinkers in this organization will be chatting up investors until just before the episiotomy. Some people were unkind enough to suggest that it was easy for someone with a net worth of $300 million and a support staff of 26 (real number not known) to make such a decision. Shall I fully participate in an often life-altering process of love and nurture and concern, or should I go all out to ensure maximum return on the investment of some creepy old Libertarians who live in Los Altos Hills? Do I serve humanity in its hour of need, or do I stay home to protect and care for my infant son? Yahoo is just a company trying to ride the tech boom like every other company, looking to make a bundle before the bundle business dries up. [...] like: unique opportunity for fulfilling life experience and deep unconditional love, or Yahoo? People are weeping at their desks so that Amazon can produce ever more efficient ways to buy grill forks. Consumers, like the sentient slime of science fiction novels, are coddled by bots and programs designed to extract maximum cash in whiffs of pink perfumed smoke. Mayer might have said, “I plan to approach the pregnancy and delivery as I did with my son three years ago, except this time I’ll be getting up every time the babies cry and singing desperate lullabies at odd hours and walking slowly through the park, and I urge each of you to do exactly the same, and don’t worry about Yahoo at all.” Wouldn’t that be lovely? A nice smell of grilling fish in the evenings, the light of the long winter evening reflecting off the lake, the sound of the bluethroat calling in the trees.