Marissa Mayer's daily schedule explained
Marissa "I'm a human, honest" Mayer finally relented and gave an interview to BusinessWeek. Not counting the other ones.) This month's puff piece lists the Google VP's daily schedule. Let's take a look.
8:00 a.m. Wake-up, get ready for work
Okay, that should get her out the door at about 9 and into work around 9:30, right?
9:00 a.m. Arrive at work,
— what? —
take conference call about a new technology
"A new technology"? The whole "inside look" schtick breaks down when BusinessWeek protects Google's trade secrets.
10:00 a.m. Meeting with Udi Manber, VP of engineering to discuss search, engineering staffing, etc.
For "etc." read "what year it'll be Udi's turn to hog all the press."
10:30 a.m. Meet with Associate Product Managers to brief and prepare for upcoming international business trip
"For the trip, I need all red-eye flights, so I can recharge my batteries on the plane. I, um, meant 'recharge' as a metaphor for sleep. Yes. I'm a human."
Lunch is for suckers. Seventeen hours to go, after the jump.
12:00 noon Product review with Larry and Sergey; review product direction and strategy and potential future collaborations
"First we collaborate with the Chinese. Then let's collaborate with North Korea. We'll leave collaborating with the Nazis to Yahoo."
1:00 p.m. UI (User Interface) review to review/approve user interface designs/changes for multiple products
Google UI background: General UI professional consensus is, Google sucks at UI. (Personally, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button makes up for everything.)
3:00 p.m. Meet with a new member of my team to welcome him and discuss career goals/trajectory
"No, your goal can't be to have my job in two years. Because I want my job in two years."
3:30 p.m. Meeting with Google Video product manager
For coffee, actually — that manager's just chilling until YouTube tanks and the market belongs to Google again.
4:00 p.m. Google Product Strategy meeting with Eric, Larry, Sergey, and other executives to go over weekly site traffic and a few special topics
This week, the team tries an innovative strategy — instead of giving Eric legos to play with during the meeting, they give him Tinker Toys. He builds an elephant with wheels.
5:00 p.m. Executive strategy meeting on Google China
"Can we do this?" "No." "How about this?" "No." "And this?" "They cut a man's feet off for trying that." "Gross." "Don't worry, if you search for it, it's censored."
6:00 p.m. Office Hours
The much-vaunted "open office" for engineers, where bringing brownies increases a project's chance of approval by 50%.
8:30 p.m. Catch up on the day's e-mail
To: Mom
From: Marissa
Re: The only time I see you is in BusinessWeek
Message: Not true. You saw me in Fortune this spring.
11:15 p.m. Visit to the Google Gym to run
Best place to work off the extra high from the rare Peruvian needle drugs.
12:00 p.m. Go home
Actually, BusinessWeek, that's a.m., but it's so bizarre we can forgive you for messing it up.
12:30 a.m. Watch TV, do e-mail
Marissa has her TV specially compressed to 4 minutes per show. It's amazing what she can still process. Well, it would be amazing, if she were human.
3:00 a.m. Go to bed
Oh sure, like you don't maintain a high-energy work lifestyle on 5 hours of sleep a night.