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Marissa Mayer wouldn’t hire Gwyneth Paltrow because she never graduated from college

by Matthew Yglesias
DALLAS, TX - NOVEMBER 20: Gwyneth Paltrow attends the goop pop Dallas Launch Party in Highland Park Village on November 20, 2014 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Layne Murdoch Jr./Getty Images for goop)
DALLAS, TX - NOVEMBER 20: Gwyneth Paltrow attends the goop pop Dallas Launch Party in Highland Park Village on November 20, 2014 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Layne Murdoch Jr./Getty Images for goop)
DALLAS, TX - NOVEMBER 20: Gwyneth Paltrow attends the goop pop Dallas Launch Party in Highland Park Village on November 20, 2014 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Layne Murdoch Jr./Getty Images for goop)
Layne Murdoch Jr./Getty Images

Marissa Mayer is a higher education snob. So much so that she wouldn’t hire Gwyneth Paltrow as a Yahoo Food contributor on the grounds that the actress never finished her degree at UC Santa Barbara. Or so says Nick Carlson in a long New York Times Magazine article on Mayer’s efforts to turn Yahoo around:

Even though the actress Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling cookbook and popular lifestyle blog, Mayer, who habitually asked deputies where they attended college, balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for Yahoo Food. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college.

Mayer graduated from Stanford in 1997. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Reed, Harvard, and Harvard respectively.

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