Busy, busy, busy! Earnings everywhere so I’ve taken the liberty of translating Yahoo’s pretend turnaround plan.
The plan is to fire 15% of the staff and do more of the same. And Board Member Chuck Schwab is resigning effective today. Because he doesn’t need this bullshit in his life.
Additional notes below. The financial details don’t matter. Yahoo is not an earnings story.
Wednesday AM update: Had a chance to pour over the transcript and talk to some investors. To say there’s a lack of confidence in management is a wild understatement. Marissa Mayer is connected like Kaiser Souzia in Silicon Valley. No one wants to say anything negative about her for publication. Smart, connected and vindictive is a terrifying combination.
Which is too bad because she’s a demonstrably terrible CEO and it’s not clear she understands why. Last night she complained that the press had been unfair about Yahoo’s holiday party, claiming it cost a third of the published $7 million rumors.
It’s not the expense of the party, Marissa. It’s the optics. You sat like a Mall Santa while employees waited for a brief photo opp. I don’t begrudge tremendously successful people the chance to act like Marie Antoinette or Nero. I just don’t want anyone that tone-deaf running my consumer-media-search-whatever company.
Yahoo spent 2015 trying to spin-off Alibaba tax-free through a ridiculous loophole. It didn’t work. As was made apparent last night, there wasn’t an actual back-up plan. Calling this a turnaround nearly 4 years into the gig is just weird.
The party, the insulting gibberish passing for strategy, a lack of basic human empathy. It’s all standard. Marissa isn’t royalty. She’s just paid like it. The board which agreed to her 9-figure severance package is left to defend their terrible decision or, like Schwab, simply resign with old school discretion and I assume tremendous relief to have this mess behind him. Investors should consider doing the same.
Do I get to keep my email account
My email account; that’s been my concern right along.
Love the translation! I’d like this format for all business plans but that might make all investing too scary.
I’m still not sure if Yahoo Small Business actually got spun off to this new company called Aabaco or not.
$GOOG still celebrating the day she left by taking company to new highs.
The whole velvet rope thing is too much. She going to be on Squawkbox at 9am ET (I think). It’s like she is using her position at Yahoo is play out her deepest fantasies. She seems very self focused, reminds me of a certain Tyco CEO. Not sure how this ends well.