Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang announced his departure yesterday in a fluffy memo to his employees. The reader’s guide:
the board of directors and I have agreed to initiate a succession process for the ceo role of yahoo!.
The board got its head out of its ass long enough to fire me. Given their track record, I’m as shocked as you are.
once a successor is named, i will return to my previous role as chief yahoo and continue to serve as a director on the board.
Once a successor is named, I will return to complete irrelevance and hopefully crawl under a very large rock.
we have created a more open, competitive yahoo! and we believe the time is now right to transition to a new ceo who can take the company to the next level.
Zeus have mercy on the poor sod who comes in to fix the mess I’ve made.
the fact remains that yahoo! is now a significantly different company
Since, you know, I erased $30 billion in shareholder value by rejecting the Microsoft deal and then drove a hundred and twenty-five of my top executives to quit.
that is stronger in many ways than it was just 18 months ago.
And by “stronger”, I mean “more colorfully fucked”.
while this step will be an adjustment for all of us
I’ll be adjusting to golf, you’ll be adjusting to unemployment.
i will continue to do everything i can to make yahoo! fulfill its full potential.
So long, suckers.
Honesty
November 14, 2008 at 6:31 am
On a mailing list for an organization’s system administrators, earlier today:
Tom: Sorry about all the hassle I inadvertently introduced. I guess we will need to work on idiot-proofing, because I seem to be a higher caliber of idiot than has previously used the system.
Most public relations flacks stop inundating me with unwanted press releases after I kindly ask them to. But others… others just don’t learn. And sometimes, like today, those others send me PR mails about sappy poems for pregnant women. (Seriously.) And then I have to write them e-mails like this:
My dear Karen,
On Sep. 26, in response to your e-mail, I sent you a link to my policy on unsolicited PR e-mails.
Your latest love letter, however, troubles me deeply. It’s not that it’s again unsolicited, or that it still contains no way to opt out of future communications, or even that it contains bad English — “all expectant mother’s should have” is not, in fact, a possessive construction, but a simple plural. That much is roughly par for the course. No, the troubling part is that you’re sending me a letter about poetry for new moms. Are you trying to say I look fat in these khakis?
Surely you didn’t write to discuss the book’s themes — the miracle of life, God’s plan for the family, or the birth of an angel — given that I believe neither in miracles, nor gods, nor angels. (With the exception of Angel, the brooding vampire with a soul and a heart of gold in Joss Whedon’s Emmy Award-winning TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Have you watched it? Angel’s badass.)
So I suppose the fact you sent me this letter is in itself a kind of miracle: a miracle of unbelievably, mindbogglingly, hilariously bad targeting. Don’t you guys have databases for this stuff?
Karen, clearly our illicit and torrid e-mail affair left a lasting impression on both of us. It seems like only last month that I whispered sweet nothings — of the “please send me nothing more” kind — in your inbox. But you know things were never meant to be between us. You have to be strong and move on. I have.
Maybe if we had tried couples counseling in time?
Love always,
Ivan.
No word yet from Karen. I think I broke her heart.
