Report: Yahoo Executives Fleeing Company over CEO Marissa Mayer’s Management Style

AP Photo/Michel Euler
AP Photo/Michel Euler

Business Insider UK has published a report on Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer and her recent public comments about the departure of several senior executives at the company.

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made public comments earlier this month that appeared to bash recently departed executives, some of those executives were surprised and upset, people close to the matter told Business Insider.

Some even felt it was dishonest.

The company’s management team has been changing quite a bit recently, the article states:

Mayer’s executive bench has been bolting as Mayer struggles to grow revenue or develop new hit products. The two most recent departures were Jackie Reses and Kathy Savitt. Both were handpicked by Mayer. Reses ran mergers and acquisitions and human resources and was one of Mayer’s key lieutenants. She left this month for Square. Savitt, the company’s marketing boss, left last month for STX Entertainment.

Apparently Meyer’s management style and habit of publicly throwing people under the bus has gained her few friends:

Many of the execs are quitting because they have grown weary of Mayer’s tight-fisted management style and have great job offers elsewhere, people close to the situation said.

“She should have simply said that people leave for a lot of reasons and that Yahoo has a deep bench of leaders and is feeling really good about its future,” one person said.

The end result of all this seeming to be poor performance, bad feelings, and a She-E-O (as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos termed it) willfully ignoring the writing on the wall in favor of just staying the course:

The management changes come as Yahoo’s turnaround effort remains stuck in the mud, with revenue in the most recent quarter up a scant 2% from the same period in 2012, when Mayer first took the reins. And with Yahoo getting closer to spinning off the Alibaba shares, Wall Street will soon focus more on Yahoo’s struggling core business. Some people have speculated that Yahoo could become a target for a private-equity play.

Meanwhile, Mayer, who has a reputation for a very controlling management style, is by some accounts becoming increasingly demanding and challenging to work with.

“The world is crashing in on her, and she’s feeling the pressure,” one person said.

Another told us, “She doesn’t listen to what others have to say.”

Yahoo has made some questionable decisions in recent years, such as purchasing perpetual SJW outrage mill Tumblr and blaming shows like Community for not being able to singlehandedly tentpole an entire media venture. While I won’t blame one woman for all the issues of one company, the way Yahoo blamed one television show for ruining their entire attempt at trying to go toe-to-toe with video streaming giant Netflix, when you don’t have the trust of your lieutenants it’s pretty difficult to steer your ship.

Follow Will Ross on Twitter @SawmillLoris.

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