New CEO of Yahoo! pregnant and due in October!

One of the main topics buzzing around the web over the last few days is the news of Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer who was appointed and announced the same day that she was pregnant and due in October! It's great that Yahoo! is open to the idea of hiring a pregnant CEO and kudos to her for considering taking up such a challenging job at this time in her life. 

One thing which bothered me though is that she has announced that she will be taking a very short maternity leave and will most likely be working through most of it. I don't want to judge but as somebody who's 9 months pregnant and looking at getting back to work after 12 weeks of maternity leave, it's hard not to judge whether she's doing the right thing or not. Sure, it might be easier for her - she's rich and she can hire a bunch of people to take care of her baby. Her working is going to come at the expense of missing time with her baby and she's probably ok with that. Something's always gotta give - it's either going to be her job or time with her baby. That trade-off is something very personal and something every mother is going to have to make.

The thing that bothers me is also that she's going to set the expectation that other women in tech are going to be expected to do the same. It's already a tough environment out there for women in tech and this is going to make it even tougher for women in tech to have families and not let it affect their career.