by Kevin Coupe
Worth noting this morning...the Los Angeles Times recalls an interview that it did in early 2011 with Marissa Mayer, Google's first female engineer and just its 20th employee, who yesterday was named Yahoo's new CEO at age 37.
In that interview, the Times writes, Mayer "revealed that much of her work ethic came from her time as a grocery clerk when she was in high school. At that job, she said, she learned from others who had been working there for 20 years and could check out 40 items a minute.
'At the grocery store, you have to remember to charge $4.99 a pound for grapes and 99 cents a pound for cantaloupe by typing in a number code,' said Mayer, who said she averaged between 38 to 41 items a minute. 'The more numbers you could memorize, the better off you are. If you had to stop to look up a price in a book, it totally killed your average'."
There's another quote from the story, about Mayer's career philosophy, that is worth considering: "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."
Eye-opening stuff.
Worth noting this morning...the Los Angeles Times recalls an interview that it did in early 2011 with Marissa Mayer, Google's first female engineer and just its 20th employee, who yesterday was named Yahoo's new CEO at age 37.
In that interview, the Times writes, Mayer "revealed that much of her work ethic came from her time as a grocery clerk when she was in high school. At that job, she said, she learned from others who had been working there for 20 years and could check out 40 items a minute.
'At the grocery store, you have to remember to charge $4.99 a pound for grapes and 99 cents a pound for cantaloupe by typing in a number code,' said Mayer, who said she averaged between 38 to 41 items a minute. 'The more numbers you could memorize, the better off you are. If you had to stop to look up a price in a book, it totally killed your average'."
There's another quote from the story, about Mayer's career philosophy, that is worth considering: "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."
Eye-opening stuff.
- KC's View:
