The much-criticized Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had a nice day yesterday. Behind a strong earnings report, Mayer took the opportunity to tout her record–and to try to combat some misconceptions. Two of the criticisms she wanted to nip were her freespending ways and the company’s bloated payroll. (The latter is increasingly a criticism when less mature companies like Uber, with far fewer employees, get massive valuations.)
Mayer wanted investors to know she’s not out there just buying everything in sight. She bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Beyond that acquisitions totaled just $500 million. As for fat, Mayer wanted investors to know that underperformers can’t hang around Yahoo and rest on laurels. “We have had nearly 2,000 performance related departures,” she testified. Which will either put investors at ease or make them realize that, wow, Yahoo really has a lot of employees because we hardly noticed 2,000 people got cut.
