2011黯然离场的高管

风雨飘摇，雅虎女掌门遭遇电话解职

    不管雅虎（Yahoo）前任首席执行官卡罗尔•巴茨在任期间表现如何，她的离职确实具有戏剧性。巴茨声称，雅虎董事长罗伊•博斯托克为回避正面冲突，在电话中向她宣读了律师声明——就算实在找不到人有胆量当面把坏消息告诉巴茨，这种做法还是上不了台面。巴茨告诉《财富》杂志，雅虎的人“耍了她”。

    显然巴茨的雅虎时代已经谢幕，她的员工支持率已从2009年1月初上任时的90%跌到了电话解雇们之前的24%。

    很长一段时间以来，雅虎一直在努力寻求出路，谷歌（Google）等搜索引擎竞争对手已经在多领域轻松超越雅虎。近期，雅虎宣称其部分持股的阿里巴巴集团（Alibaba）擅自转移前途无限的在线支付平台支付宝股权，双方闹得沸沸扬扬，雅虎也深受打击。银湖投资（Silver Lake）等私募股权公司，甚至微软（Microsoft）有意收购的传言也不能给人信心，让人相信雅虎能凭借自身力量走出当前困境。

    不过，这次不太体面的离职并不会扼杀巴茨的职业生涯，因为如今已经没人有能力驾驭雅虎这艘超级巨轮。

Phoning it in

    Think what you'd like about her time at Yahoo, but former CEO Carol Bartz certainly left the company with a bang. Board chairman Roy Bostock skirted an in-person confrontation and, Bartz says, read her a lawyer's statement over the phone -- a pretty low move, even though you'd be hard-pressed to find someone with the guts to give Bartz bad news to her face. Bartz told Fortune that the people at Yahoo "f*cked her over."

    It was clear that Bartz's sun had set at Yahoo, as employee approval ratings dropped from 90% right after she was hired in January 2009 down to 24% before Bostock gave her that fateful ring.

    The company has been struggling to find its way for quite some time, as search competitors like Google and others have breezed past it on several fronts. And Yahoo recently suffered from an ugly public argument over the spin-off of promising Chinese online payment platform Alipay from Alibaba, a company that Yahoo partially owns. Rumors of an acquisition from private equity firms like Silver Lake or even Microsoft don't lend confidence that Yahoo can get out of this pickle on its own.

    Still, this less than savory exit will not be a career-killer for Bartz as it's clear that the company had become a rather large ship to steer.