Marissa Mayer has been Yahoo!’s CEO since 2012. Now, as the company tanks, she’s trying her hand at comedy.
In response to wide-ranging employee concerns about their future at the struggling corporation, Mayer joked that there would be “No layoffs… this week!” The joking-but-maybe-not comment was a response to a question by a worried employee during a “Friday FYI” company-wide meeting.
Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos has chronicled Mayer’s time with the once-successful company. And while Mayer — who once insisted that layoffs were just “remixes,” much in the same way that circumcision “remixes” one’s genitals, perhaps — is preparing to make her case at next week’s quarterly earnings call, more and more of her employees are joining shareholders in hoping she’ll just go away.
Those employees will be left in dire straits regardless, at this point. SpringOwl wants to “remix” three quarters of the company’s 12,000 employees, but at least 10 per cent are on the chopping block. SpringOwl estimates that around $2 billion — yes, billion — could be trimmed from the company’s annual spending, by cutting out some of the most egregious expenses.
That’s going to be a hard pill to swallow for a CEO who spent $17 million to stream a single NFL game, and provided $108 million in free food to employees last year while the company starves. Perhaps that’s why even the activist investors at Starboard Value “have lost all confidence in management.” And that whole Tumblr thing, you know.
And while it’s easy for Marissa to awkwardly joke about Yahoo!’s extraordinary descent while she sits on the hundreds of millions they’ve paid her for her treatment of the ailing company, no one else is laughing.
Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.