Marissa Mayer

For some people, what really matters to them is sleep.

I had to think really hard about how to choose between job offers.

Its about getting the best people retaining them nurturing a creative environment helping to find a way to innovate.

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.

Search is an unsolved problem.

When you need to innovate, you need collaboration.

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.

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.

The turning point for me was realizing that I would learn more at Google, trying to build a company, regardless of whether we failed or succeeded, than I would at any of the other companies I had offers from.

Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter.

I think that ultimately over time we really should strive for a place where most information is available online and is searchable.

I took a computer-science course to fill a prerequisite at Stanford, and I realized that every day was a new problem, and every day you got to think about how to solve something new, how to reason through something new, how to develop an algorithm to solve for something you hadn't worked on before.

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.

When you're coming into a company and, you know, have to do a transformation, what you really want to do is look at the company and say, 'Okay, here are the parts that the company does well. How do we get those genes to hyper-express? The genes that are getting in the way, how do you turn those off?'

Our theory is, 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.

Well, I have one of the best jobs in the world.

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 was Google's first woman engineer.

I think it's very comforting for people to put me in a box. 'Oh, she's a fluffy girlie girl who likes clothes and cupcakes. Oh, but wait, she is spending her weekends doing hardware electronics.'

Good students are good at all things.

I didn't want to lose my sense of myself in my profession.

Walmart is an amazing story of entrepreneurship and, as one of the world's most powerful brands, touches millions of lives every day.

The internet creates more of an appetite for media - it doesn't replace physical books, radio or TV.

I think what's really amazing is that given the scale of the web and getting the compute power we have today, we're starting to see things that appear intelligent but actually aren't semantically intelligent.

I was always good at math and science, and I never realized that that was unusual or somehow undesirable.

I could imagine, some number of years from now, starting my own company. But not yet. Not for a while.

It's really wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people.

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.

I don't believe in balance, not in the classic way.

Yahoo!, over the years, had been the king of the banner ad.

Product management really is the fusion between technology, what engineers do - and the business side.

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.

I really believe that the virtual world mirrors the physical world.

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.

Search occupies this wonderful moment in a user's day where it doesn't even really break along demographics, right?

Eric Schmidt from Google is one of my favorite mentors. And Eric would always say this very humbling thing that's really true, which is, he would say, 'Good executives confuse themselves when they convince themselves that they actually do things.'

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.

I didn't set out to be at the top of technology companies. I'm just geeky and shy, and I like to code.

With data collection, 'The sooner the better' is always the best answer.

One of the interesting applications of symbolic systems is artificial intelligence, and I spent some time thinking about how to create a brain that operates the way ours does.

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.

When people think about computer science they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night.

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 want Yahoo to be the absolute best place to work, to have a fantastic culture.

When I came to Yahoo! in 2012, I came because I really wanted to work hard. I thought it was a great challenge.

You can't have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you.

Employees, especially young people, want more than a paycheck.

I refuse to be stereotyped.

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.

For many people, Google is the most important tool on the Web.

I really like even numbers, and I like heavily divisible numbers. Twelve is my lucky number - I just love how divisible it is. I don't like odd numbers, and I really don't like primes. When I turned 37, I put on a strong face, but I was not looking forward to 37. But 37 turned out to be a pretty amazing year.

I think that for me, it's God, family and Yahoo - in that order.

I've always liked simplicity.

For me the core principles of privacy online are transparency, choice and control.

I don't need much sleep.

When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night.

I pace myself by taking a week-long vacation every four months.

If I had been more self-conscious about being a woman, it would have stifled me.

I really love color.

I think, you know, a fellow CEO said to me that the interesting thing about being CEO that's really striking is that you have very few decisions that you need to make, and you need to make them absolutely perfectly.

I like to stay in the rhythm of things.

What you want, when you want it. As opposed to everything you could ever want, even when you don't.

I don't feel overwhelmed with information. I really like it.

There are probably industries where gender is more of an issue, but our industry is not one where I think that's relevant.

Well, I think the social networking is really interesting.

I really wanted to be a doctor, until my freshman year of college when I realized that while I was good at chemistry and biology, I really wasn't feeling challenged by it.

I love technology, and I don't think it's something that should divide along gender lines.

The interesting thing is when you look at what people want to do on their phone, it's mail, weather, check stock quotes and news. That's Yahoo's business. This is a huge opportunity for us because we have the content and all the information people want on their phones.

I think that there is a generational change, where new generations that have grown up always having access to the internet have a somewhat different view in terms of personal information and what needs to be kept private.

The thing that surprised me and really puzzled me is that the job is really fun. Yahoo is a really fun place to work.

I loved Stanford and symbolic systems. For me, I came to Stanford assuming I would be a doctor and got really deep into chemistry and biology, but I noticed everyone who was on the same track as me was taking the exact same classes. I wanted to do something more unique.

Beyond basic mathematical aptitude, the difference between good programmers and great programmers is verbal ability.

I like to get myself in over my head.

The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.

Our mission is making the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. Which people come to work at Yahoo to build on that mission? Those who are inspired by that, and you can feel that passion in the products.

Blackberry is a great product and really useful. But I think that Yahoo!'s future is going to be rooted in mobile apps. And we know that we need to have apps on some of the core platforms, and so iOS and Android, probably the two most important platforms for us.

If you push through that feeling of being scared that feeling of taking risk really amazing things can happen.

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.

To me, speed is really about convenience.

Management is defense. You basically say, 'This is the direction; this is where we're heading,' and then it's my job to get everything else out of the way. All the other things that can become a distraction keep us from executing well. Get those out of the way, because the team ultimately needs to run in that direction and execute well.

I think Google should be like a Swiss Army knife: clean, simple, the tool you want to take everywhere.

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.

I had no idea how to eat sensibly.

Will the social networking phenomenon lessen? I don't think so.

I think like my dad, but I have a huge kinship with my mom.