Yahoo CEO: No more working remote -- get to the office or quit

You are correct. Those packages are typically negotiated as part of the hiring process. It's a catch-22. Those golden parachutes are usually negotiated up front, when companies are trying to court a new CEO. In the case of Yahoo!, she was hired with great expectations -- she was hired to turn Yahoo! around and they really wanted her badly. To the point where they had to throw crazy money at her, in part to compensate her for a lot of stock she left behind at Google. That put her negotiating it when she was at the height of her negotiating power, and that severance package reflects it.

 

What are you talking about?

 

More than a casual observer of Yahoo after being one of 2,000 who got pink-slipped before the conquering hero rode in on the white horse four years ago. It was broken when she arrived at Sunnyvale. It's beyond broken now.

 

That is not true.

That board is controlled by Jeff Smith of Starboard Capital and the three other seats he controls. He won control (and effectively became Marissa Mayer's boss) after he tried to have her and her whole management team replaced as part of a very bitter battle in which he demanded and got thos board seats. She may have had a board that was pretty friendly toward her for most of her tenure, but Jeff Smith is an activist investor who was very dissatisfied with Marissa Mayer. It is fair to guess that he would have sooner tossed her out on her bum with nothing than even pay her a penny. But her severance was negotiated on the way in, not on the way out.

 

She never stood a chance. No one would have. That said, she did a particularly crappy job. She frittered away a lot of time and money and they didn't even make the right kind of attempt to stop the bleeding. That big Alibaba stake is the thing that kept that stock price elevated. That and a lot of financial engineering. Maybe that kept shareholders happy in the short term, but for the long term, it helped along a slow death.