Yahoo! CEO ‘f–ked over’ by Board

Perhaps it has something to do with the rise to business prominence of the ADD (attention deficit disorder) generation. This was, after all, the generation that was made to believe that they were necessarily entitled to a “rewarding career” where it was mainly their “creative potential” to contribute to “shareholder value creation” that would be tapped by businesses trading within the “New Economy” over what has supposedly become a largely “flat” landscape of “disaggregated” business concerns.

Whew!

Holy turn-of-the-century consultingspeak Batman!

Pity therefore that quintessential child of the dawn of the age of this “New Economy” — the grampa of Webonomics: Yahoo!. (Sorry, I’m not even sure if I should put a period after the exclamation point or just leave the exclamation point to serve a double purpose of both completing the Yahoo! name and announcing conclusion of the previous sentence.) The classiness of the beleaguered Web giant suffered a double-epic fail after its Board fired former CEO Carol Bartz by telephone after which Bartz herself, in an interview with Fortune told all how they “f–ked [her] over”. She also went on to refer to her fellow Board members as “doofuses” in the same interview.

Unfortuntately for Bartz she is reportedly subject to a non-disparagement clause in her contract with Yahoo! which means that her public outbursts may end up costing her up to $10 million in entitlements.

Perhaps being flippant in the colourful campus-style offices of these Web companies was encouraged. But then when things turn ugly, everyone’s case eventually falls into the hands of the lawyers and accountants who trade in the black-and-white paperwork of the real world. And these guys don’t normally have much of a sense of humour — specially when one considers how their services are usually employed when real money is at stake.