> I'm wondering why people focus on financial compensation so much? Why does how much someone was paid justify more or less bashing, as the case might be?
The payment and bashing might be slightly related, but I tend to think it's a minor factor. People focus on financials so much because that's what the western culture is built upon. The American Dream, if you will. However bashing, complimenting, or mentioning someone at all comes with fame. I'm fairly certain people would talk a lot about Marissa Mayer regardless of whether she got paid anything. The ratio of criticism-to-compliments tends to go hand-in-hand with the person's perceived success-to-failure ratio. Marissa Mayer wasn't that successful, and thus she'll mostly get criticism.
> The ratio of criticism-to-compliments tends to go hand-in-hand with the person's perceived success-to-failure ratio.
Intuitively this seems accurate. Wondering if you know of actual research regarding this though?
To add to that, I think people have a hard time assessing relative success. Imagine being dropped in as the captain of the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg. If you manage to delay the sinking for an extra hour, which allows more people to escape, you are successful even if most people do drown. You're successful relative to some expected value. But drive-by armchair analysts will just see that the ship sunk and a bunch of people died and blame you.
Obviously this situation is much more complicated, since opinions will differ about whether Yahoo was in fact inevitably sinking, or whether a different captain could have helped it survive.
The payment and bashing might be slightly related, but I tend to think it's a minor factor. People focus on financials so much because that's what the western culture is built upon. The American Dream, if you will. However bashing, complimenting, or mentioning someone at all comes with fame. I'm fairly certain people would talk a lot about Marissa Mayer regardless of whether she got paid anything. The ratio of criticism-to-compliments tends to go hand-in-hand with the person's perceived success-to-failure ratio. Marissa Mayer wasn't that successful, and thus she'll mostly get criticism.