Marissa Mayer: I'm Not Neurodivergent,Just Geeky

In a wide-ranging interview with Wired, former Yahoo CEO and Google exec Marissa Mayer reflects on her former jobs, her optimism about new startup Sunshine, and her own personality. Some highlights:

• Yahoo: Mayer resigned from the top post in 2017 amid the company's struggles. What went wrong? "Yes, taking all those Yahoo products and putting them on mobile was a good idea, but it needed to happen five to eight years earlier than it did," she says. Mayer tells Virginia Heffernan that Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang told her near the end of her tenure that Yahoo's product line had "never been in better shape." That, she said, is "a compliment I hold dear. But it was just too late."

• Optimism: Mayer's new app, Sunshine, lets "people collectively plan events and upload photos to a shared album," among other things, per Wired. Mayer says she wants it to be "upbeat and enlightening," adding: "I'm generally an optimistic person." She ascribes to the view that the number of bad actors online is a tiny fraction of those using the internet, even if it doesn't always feel that way.
• Detail-oriented: Heffernan notes that Mayer is a self-described geek and wonders if she sees commonality with those who are neurodivergent. "No," says Mayer. "I studied cognitive science, so I've done lots of tests on myself. Nothing spikes. I don't think I'm particularly neurodivergent. I just really like details."

(Read the full interview.)