Yahoo! Fires CEO Carol Bartz Over the Phone
Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz has just been shown the door and, according to a note she sent out to staff earlier today, she was given the news over the phone. Ouch.
All Things D today broke the news that Yahoo!'s Carol Bartz has been "removed by the Board from her role as Chief Executive Officer." The company has since confirmed the news with an official press release announcing "leadership reorganization." The executive shuffle will see Carol replaced by CFO Timothy Morse. Timothy will act as interim CEO (and still fulfill his duties as CFO) while Yahoo! conducts a search for a new chief executive officer. Aside from appointing Morse as interim CEO, Yahoo! has also formed a new Executive Leadership Council that will help in the running of day-to-day operations.
In a bold move, Bartz confirmed her departure from the company via a short note sent to staff from her iPad. Here's the note in full, via TechCrunch:
To all,
I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.
Carol
Sent from my iPad
It's not clear how the email got leaked to the press, but we imagine Carol no longer feels the way she once did about her memos finding their way to news desks. Shortly after the first memo she sent out was leaked, Carol was quoted as saying she would "drop-kick to f***ing Mars" employees who leak to the press.
Yahoo! brought Carol Bartz on in January of 2009. Prior to her role at Yahoo!, Bartz was CEO of Autodesk. She stepped down from her role in 2006 and became executive chairwoman of the board at Autodesk. She has also served on several other boards of directors, including Intel and Cisco Systems.
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Ugh..."sent from my iPad." Hey, maybe she can work at Apple? All jokes aside, I am curious to what lead to her being fired. I'd assume she just wasn't fit for such leadership and didn't meet up to expectation. Hope it has nothing to do with her being a woman...
Getting a new CEO isn't going to fix your problems, Yahoo!
haha drop kick to mars
This HAS to suck. That chairman isn't man enough to tell her in the face, so he phones her? She must feel really bad now.
Most likely that she didn't give head so the board took it from her (Bad Meets Evil reference)
I didnt like her from the start.
Seemed like she was more interested in trash talking other companies rather than creating value for yahoo.
Great... one less female CEO in the world
SAUSAGE FEAST!
See what happens when women are in charge?
Yahoo has become irrelevant for a long time now. For a time they were quite promising, back in the dial up days Yahoo was certainly a force that could have been a giant even today but bad decisions and refusal to evolve is killing them. They seem to think that a goldmine lasts forever.
I am quite amazed they are still even in business they hold no unique service and lack being even near the best in those that they do provide. Even worse most of the services they do provide was a attempt to just mimic other services. Sorry Yahoo but its time to put you down.
Could have been worse. Could have been by MORSE code.
It doesn't matter who is running Yahoo unless the company has a direction for the future. Being an also-ran for a bunch of web services isn't a recipe for long term success. Yahoo could have been Google, but instead they will probably wind up just fading away and eventually being bought by somebody.
Yeah, I remember when she became the CEO, there was a massive cry here at TH and now we know why..........
So..... iPads are the #1 choice for out of work CEOs?
Yahoo sucks.. My messenger is almost daily spammed with a cam bot.
Yahoo sucks.. My messenger is almost daily spammed with a cam bot.
You should check out their Yahoo Groups. Their spam filters are beyond pathetic.
Yahoo's big mistake was not accepting the offer from Microsoft.
It's a long, slow, painful slide into obscurity for Yahoo now, the only time they will make the news from this point will be stories like this or the big one that will inevitably come that they go bust.
heh ... the only Yahoo! I know is when Google puts up a new awesome logo.
They tried to send it to her through Yahoo mail but her inbox was full of spam ads that "missed" the spam filter. They tried to IM her on Yahoo messenger but it was lost from all the pornbots IMing her. They tried calling her through the voice function on Yahoo messenger but the voice quality was so bad she couldn't understand.
Fired like a common employee, that's fair I suppose.
Yahoo still dominates Fantasy Football. You can't count them out.
...I am curious to what lead to her being fired. I'd assume she just wasn't fit for such leadership and didn't meet up to expectation. Hope it has nothing to do with her being a woman...
Since no reason was given, I too (and all readers) obviously wonder what lead to this. I (and all readers) can make the obvious guesses of lack of fitness, leadership, etc. I (and all readers) obviously hope it has nothing to do with her gender. This is my comment.
I bet she's wishing she never bought that iPad now... she could probably use that money to make rent.
I wonder what unemployment pays for out of work CEO's?
Yahoo's top priority is making sure that the site doesn't go down. They have no other ideas.
The real news here is how long it took for this to happen!
@amk-aka-phantom
so bad in fact that her severance package could not console her....
it might have something to do with her comment that Google has to diversify if it were to survive, i guess she should have been taking some of her own advice
I still support Yahoo. It took me a LONG time to convert to Google as my main search engine, and Yahoo Fantasy teams are still great.
No pop3 access unless you pay for it over here in the UK!
No.
P.s. Sent from My ipad says it all really.
I've never been fond of her, but I do feel extremely sorry for her. Being fired over the phone is ridiculous.
I didnt like her from the start.Seemed like she was more interested in trash talking other companies rather than creating value for yahoo.
All that and not performing at her job, for 30 million a year!
You know the only reason why these people get these so called jobs is because they have "connections" not because they earned the job or deserve the money that comes with it.
I hope Yahoo sues her from breach of contract= failure to perform. So they get all hundreds of millions back.
well, i guess it beats just unfriending them on facebook
Never did like her for some reason. Kinda sad that that's how she got fired though. As far as I can imagine.. They must have really not liked her, to do it in such an unformal way.