Fired Yahoo CEO says "They f'd me over"

Photo: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Outgoing Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, fired over the phone by board chairman Roy Bostock, is famous for using foul language. Following her departure, she did not disappoint.

"These people fucked me over," she says, in her first interview since her dismissal from the CEO role late Tuesday. ... "I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" adding, "'Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'"

Carol Bartz exclusive: Yahoo "f---ed me over" [CNN Money]

• [Kaffenated]

  I’ve always found Carol Bartz to be peculiarly interesting – kind of like rubbernecking an accident happening.

  I think Carol tried to borrow Steve’s Reality Distortion Field and got it all “Bartzed” up….in
  her case, it works in reverse by only causing illusions to the person attempting the RDF maneuver (namely Carol herself). Some people call that schizophrenia.

  Carol, at the very least – that was a mutual f@ck…and you are a bad one.

• [Rebecca DeLaTorre]

  She’s worried about Bostock not being classy? The irony is thick with this one.

• [awjt]

  Well, join the crowd, Carol.  Yahoo fucked EVERYONE over by sucking so bad.

• [Drew from Zhrodague]

  Welcome to the dotcom world, Carol. My schadenfreude-sense is tingling.

• [mbaren]

  She seemed very nice when I drunkenly introduced myself to her back when she ran Autodesk.

  • [taj]

    ” I drunkenly introduced myself to her back ”

    man, you must have been drunk!  ;-)

• [mccrum]

  She seems like a straight shooter with upper management potential.

• [Brainspore]

  Back up. Yahoo actually had someone running the company for the last several years?

• [zombiebob]

  I find Yahoo absolutley useless, their new email system sucks the big one. Only good thing about Yahell? Their groups, which still suck in their own way. 

• [MDwebguy]

  I don’t know this woman from Eve (which may be part of Yahoo’s problem), but she seems a little bit Fruit Loops in the jazz hands photo.

  • [Guest]

    Way to spout ablist slurs about someone based upon a photo. 

    • [C W]

      Toucan Sam is differently-abled?

    • [Guest]

      ablist slurs? I enjoy your POV, but I’m not following that one. To which are you referring?

      • [Jack Myers]

        I caught heck from her for using the word ladies when referring to a
        bunch of ladies. Perhaps it was his use of the word woman when referring
        to someone who is in fact a woman.  Not sure.  Since she’s not disabled
        there actually is no ablism involved.  Unless she is physically
        disabled in some way?

        • [Guest]

          I think maybe she took offense at the term Froot Loops, assuming it referred to crazy people, rather than how I percieved it, as a comparison to a colorful and promising yet ultimately soggy breakfast cereal.

          I guess we just can’t help what some people read into our statements.

• [satn]

  Oh crap, a CEO got treated like all her employees do when they need to lay off a couple hundred people to boost the stock.

  Now if only all management were treated the same way, maybe they wouldn’t be such insufferable and delusional pricks.

• [hassenpfeffer]

  She was on the BOD of NetApp when I worked there. Straight shooter. Straight from the pit of my stomach to the toilet bowl.

• [UnnecessaryUmlaut]

  Funny, Yahoo! should be saying this about Carol. Actually they did. By firing her.

• [SerfCity]

  Hopefully Carol is eligible for unemployment insurance and can sign up for food stamps now that she is jobless. 

• [vonbobo]

  A millionaire complaining about getting fired?

  Whining, complaining, cussing, and failing. Nice job on the hire there, failhoo.

  • [Lobster]

    Right, she whined, complained, cussed and failed.  Recent history would indicate that earns a millionaire CEO a pay raise, not a firing.

• [phisrow]

  Her severance package, in addition to a variety of byzantine stock options(which are of slightly uncertain, but definitely nonzero, value and should avoid some of those little-people payroll taxes), contained 3 million USD, lump sum.

  Based on publicly asserted average salary figures, that is 30 years worth of what the average Yahoo software engineer is pulling in(and I’m guessing that his tax structure isn’t quite as advantageous).
  That, plus the initial hiring bonus, plus the million a year while she was there, despite the performance that was, at best, “treading water”, and quite possibly a good deal worse.

  Somebody is getting fucked over; but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know who it is…

• [voiceinthedistance]

  Doesn’t RIM have an opening for a third CEO?

  • [retepslluerb]

    Well, once HP spins of Palm WebOS she can lead that one to greatness.

  • [phisrow]

    At RIM, we call having three CEOs a “Mismanage à trois”.

• [Lobster]

  Guess she’ll have to comfort herself by weeping into handfuls of her millions and millions of dollars.

• [townandgownie]

  And immediately after, Yahoo has announced it is putting itself up for sale. So sweet. Maybe Google should buy them – do they have any patents?

  • [grimc]

    Yahoo what?

• [Anthony]

  I can appreciate cussing and straight shooting.  I just prefer it from someone who knows what they are talking about.

• [bcsizemo]

  I thought most CEO’s got the boot after like 3-5 years?  Wasn’t that the plan anyway? 
  1. Hiring bonus
  2. Grossly over paid salary.
  3a. Make some good decisions, ride high for the next couple years.  + more stock options
  3b. Make some bad decisions, leave in 2 years.
  4. Get in fight with board over direction of company.
  5. Get fired with fat severance package and stock options galore.
  6. PROFIT!!!!

  There isn’t even really a ???? there….unless you are approaching omnipotent status of Lord Jobs or Mr. Gates then that is pretty much the cycle right?

  • [Lobster]

    Lord Jobs and Mr. Gates are the exceptions to the rule: they actually earn what they’re paid.

• [Ryan Griffin]

  Ya Who?  Hmm…let me Google that..

• [Jack Myers]

  To restate what was so well said above, “someone was actually running Yahoo?”  I have only my five years of working tel-com IT/Help Desk to base my opinion on.  In that time Yahoo was an unmovable beast who absolutely refused to cooperate, communicate, or fix any issue of any kind in under a year.  Yahoo was the worst company to deal with that I’ve ever encountered.  They suck.

• [MrEricSir]

  She’s the one who “f’d” Yahoo over, not the other way around. They shouldn’t give her a dime of her bailout package.

• [C W]

  “Those pissants can’t treat me like i treated them! This is a fucking outrage! I want someone else’s head on a goddamned platter, not mine!”

• [Spriggan_Prime]

  The best thing about Yahoo is their answers pages. Occassionally when searching for an answer to a question I love to read the hilarious answers the preteen ‘experts’ pull out of their imagination to rationalize the world around them. While never useful they are always entertaining. God I love you Yahoo Answers.

• [Halloween Jack]

  “I wish the Yahoo people the best,” she adds, “because it’s a fantastic franchise.”

  Oh, bullshit. There have been numerous stories (like this one ) that have well documented Yahoo’s shortcomings. The first thing that Bartz can do, after donating some of that purple clothing to Goodwill, is stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

• [Spriggan_Prime]

  Way to call someone out over nothing. It’s our human right to call crazy as we see it. You need to stop slinging around isms so easily. Ease up a bit.

• [awjt]

  Maybe she and Charlie Sheen can get together, bang a few times and then shoot each other in the hands.

• [That_Anonymous_Coward]

  All I do it point out how her hands are up and how that Gumby fellow had his hands up when he tried to ineptly rob the place.

• [AirPillo]

  I kind of wonder how there even still is a Yahoo. I can’t remember a time when Yahoo offered any product or service other than fail. Are they just all subsisting on a thin broth made by boiling Flickr for 48 hours over a low flame?

• [Rephlex]

  She should go Bowling with Gordon Ramsey.

  • [F_C_King]

    No bullshit – I’d watch that show.

• [Jack Myers]

  I’m curious to see where she winds up. I bet Fox News hires her.

• [cdh1971]

  i can haz f’ing cheezburgrz?

  Sorry…it’s what came to mind when I saw the pic and read the blurb.

• [professor]

  I generally find that the comments section in Yahoo News is simply proof that democracy is a failed concept…

• [Emo Pinata]

  Yahoo is still mildly useful as a news aggregator, but that’s it.

• [leoeris]

  One in 25 business leaders are psychopaths.

  • [airgigorluck]

    Is it not more like 1 in 5. You have to be a complete sociopath to get there. Unless you are Lord Jobs obviously. Sorry Lord

• [Rudy Moore]

  From the photo, I prefer to think of her enjoying Pootie Tang’s new single.

• [hadlockk]

  It sort of looks like Bartz was installed at Yahoo after a failed buyout by Microsoft in the same way they put Stephen Elop in charge at Nokia rather than deal with yet another decade long anti-trust lawsuit. Bartz’s first to acts on the job were to dump their internal search and advertising departments and contract that out to Microsoft’s Bing technologies. No, really, look it up. I suspect the board finally realized that the jig was up and this week was the best time to get rid of her. Yahoo went from a leader and innovator with Jerry Yang to a soulless corporation with no vision for the future, only maintaining profits with Bartz. You can’t run an internet behemoth like a cost slashing retail chain or soft drink company CEO, Steve Jobs has proven that.

• [Mark Richards]

  And how many people has she f’d over?