Marissa Mayer: I Am Not a Feminist. I Am Not Neurodivergent. I Am a Software Girl

OK, truthful however bash you think?

Here’s an illustration from 2002, erstwhile I was moving merchandise astatine Google News. My person Krishna built this publication that crawled 15 sources and clustered stories by topic, utilizing k-means clustering, which is an AI technique. We hired 5 quality “sourcers” to find a broad acceptable of quality sources from astir the internet. There’s the evident ones, but there’s others, similar Layla’s Knitting News.

We started talking to immoderate of the large sources, saying, “Look, we person this small tool. We don’t cognize if it’s going to go a thing.” The Times, Reuters, The Washington Post were hemming and hawing astir whether to beryllium in. They yet consented. I had decided erstwhile we had 2 oregon three, we’d conscionable go.

So we conscionable went up and crawled 4,000 sources and launched with each of them. We were prepared for a clump of radical asking to beryllium taken out. But the other happened. By noon, we had 1,500 more sources, sources we hadn’t found, that present wanted in.

Right aft that, we hired an lawyer who had worked successful quality licensing. We ended up successful a who’s-on-first conversation. He said, “How did you get 4,000 publishers signed up? All the demands from each those antithetic companies indispensable person been insane.” I was like, “We conscionable enactment them successful and fto them opt out.” He was like, “No, no, no. I request to person the terms.” He thought we had negotiated 4,000 contracts. He’s like, “How galore did you scope retired to?” I was like, “Three.” He said, “No, no, no. You don’t recognize what I’m asking.” I said, “I’m not definite I bash cognize what you’re asking.”

You truly didn’t get it.

I’m 26, 27 years old—and I’d ne'er worked successful news. I didn’t cognize anything. But that naivete was amended than knowledge. The acquisition of that lawyer would’ve gotten successful the mode of doing thing similar Google News. Inexperience tin make innovation.

Decisionmaking is simply a intelligence process you instrumentality seriously. And you look to clasp thing astir of america hate: being overwhelmed.

That’s true. It’s important to overwhelm yourself with options. You rotation astir successful a batch of antithetic choices, and get to cognize what you worth and what you don’t—that wide prioritization. Yes, you’re going disconnected your gut, but you archetypal see capable possibilities that the determination is well-informed.