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"Marissa Mayer was originally planning a six-month maternity leave, but shortened that to two weeks after she got the CEO job at Yahoo, she revealed in a blog post on Friday.\nMayer's contribution, on Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In blog, tells the inside story of her frame of mind when Yahoo came calling:\n\nOn June 18th, I got the call.\n\u201CI\u2019m doing a CEO search. It\u2019s a Fortune 500 company. It\u2019s in the consumer Internet space. It\u2019s in Silicon Valley \u2014 you wouldn\u2019t even have to move. It\u2019s the perfect job for you. The board is asking for you by name. Are you interested? It\u2019s Yahoo.\u201D\n\nMayer writes that she had gotten similar calls before, but was intrigued because she was a Yahoo fan: \n... this time it was Yahoo, and that changed everything. I started using Yahoo before it was even called Yahoo. Yahoo defined the Internet. They helped get Google started. Yes, they had their ups-and-downs \u2014 but, the potential was huge. The alignment with my experience and career was uncanny: search, email, homepage, news, finance, maps, social, mobile and more.\nOne hitch, though. Mayer was 28 weeks pregnant and looking forward to a \"glorious six-month maternity leave\" after 13 years at Google. \nHowever, if I took the new job, a long leave couldn\u2019t happen. The responsibilities were too big, and time was of the essence \u2014 it just wouldn\u2019t be fair to the company, the employees, the board, or the shareholders for me to be in the role, but out for an extended period of time.\nDespite the truncated maternity leave, Mayer reports that everything is working out fine: \n\nI\u2019ve now been at Yahoo for eight months, and I\u2019m having a ball \u2014 there are great people and terrific ideas. It\u2019s hard work, but I love to work hard. At the same time, starting a family with my husband has been all I hoped it would be and then some \u2014 joyful, intense, challenging. At five and a half months old, Macallister is tremendously fun \u2014 a big personality already. I live to spend time with him \u2014 be it to teach him sounds and songs, play a game of peek-a-boo (his latest obsession), or be his sidekick as he explores the world around him.\nI\u2019ve come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization. Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important. I\u2019m very close to my own mother; she has always been my most important role model. I\u2019m grateful to her and to my father for a lifetime of their love, attention, teaching and sacrifice. Over the past five short months, my appreciation has grown for all parents, especially those balancing work obligations, because I know they have that same clarity of dedication and purpose.\n\nOf course, not everyone will be sympathetic to Mayer's situation. She has already been criticized for building a nursery for her child in the office while famously forbidding other Yahoo employees from working from home. \nImage via Getty, Johannes Eisele"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/03/29/marissa-mayer-lean-in/>