

Yahoo CEO gets $47.2 Million salary package for 2009 - sandee
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aM3CXlOJRBcs&pos=1

======
plinkplonk
This is why a lot of otherwise bright people dedicate their lives to (getting
an MBA and) climbing the corporate ladder at a large company. After a while
you get huge payouts irrespective of any actual contribution. A few years at a
Vice President role (leave alone CEO) can give you huge amounts of money.

Interestingly enough Terry Semel got a nice Golden Parachute too iirc after
doing nothing much at Yahoo. One VP I know was asked to "teach Semel how the
Internet worked" after Semel joined as CEO.

Yahoo also had 300 (!!) Vice Presidents at a point of time. Imagine the
outflow of money to maintain that crowd. From Yahoo's latest marketing
campaign

"There’s nothing to look at but a box and a button,” says the voice-over in
the Yahoo (YHOO) marketing video–about an unnamed, but obvious, Web site.
“When you look at this homepage nothing looks back at you. You come to this
place so you can leave.” [1]

Somewhere in Yahoo there is whole bunch of marketing VPs and managers raking
in millions of dollars for this!!

Yahoo's successive CEOs seem to take out a good chunk of its profits without
adding much to the bottom line. Fwiw Sun was that way too.

[1] Source: [http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100505/yahoo-tries-to-
recover-f...](http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100505/yahoo-tries-to-recover-from-
its-you-ad-disaster-by-attacking-googles-one-box-this-is-going-to-end-in-
tears/)

~~~
ivenkys
"getting an MBA and climbing the corporate ladder" - one would have thought in
Tech companies Engineers would count for more than MBA's, but clearly that's
not the case with Yahoo.

~~~
josefresco
An engineer is the last person I'd want running a company like Yahoo! (and for
many reasons). Hired-gun CEO's are expensive and don't always work, but the
odds of success must be greater then hoping your brilliant founder/engineer
works out as an executive. I would argue it's easier to educate an old CEO on
tech than it is to teach an engineer how to be a successful exec.

~~~
derwiki
See Slide, Yelp, Facebook...

------
heresy
Once you get into the CEOs club, it's plain sailing.

What I find hilarious is the turn of phrase on Yahoo's own version of this
article.

"Carol Bartz received a $47.2 million compensation package during her first
year on the job as the Internet company tried to motivate her to engineer a
turnaround." Isn't doing a good job motivation enough (in addition to already
substantial compensation at that level)?

Secondly, "Bartz generally impressed analysts by closing Yahoo's unprofitable
services, laying off workers and saving even more money by striking an
Internet search partnership with Microsoft Corp."

Wow, that required real creativity and lateral thinking. That kind of
execution sure will help bring Yahoo up out of the morass. Where's the forward
thinking?

Reading about the stereotypical American CEO, it seems to be all about layoffs
and making the short-term bottom-line look good before bailing as the emperor
is revealed to have no clothes due to lack of R&D or any thinking past milking
of current cash cows.

At some point there's nothing left to cut from the hollow shell.

~~~
plinkplonk
"At some point there's nothing left to cut from the hollow shell."

at which point the CEO sells the company and rides off into the sunset with
all the millions from his stock options, or , worst case is let go with a
multi million dollar parachute. e.g: Fiorina got 21 million $ when she was
fired from HP, after essentially gutting it. [1]

With a bit of luck she'll be Senator and then she can apply her skills to
governance!

[1] To compare, at 50,000 $/startup, _one_ million dollars invested YC style
would seed 20 startups.

(EDIT: corrected calculation, Thanks niyazpk/barrkel. That should teach me not
to write quick comments while build/tests run)

~~~
barrkel
20K * 50K = 1B

------
lpolovets
Amusing. As far as I can tell, this is almost 10% of Yahoo's profits for last
year (source: <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=yhoo>)

~~~
rokhayakebe
At least they turned a profit. That is better than turning a loss and still
getting paid.

------
oziumjinx
Isn't this slightly a reflection of her attitude towards the company she is
steering? Could she have said "you know what, I'm already worth millions so
this year I will only receive $1m and we'll use the rest of that money to help
bring this company roaring back"....or are these execs just too far out of
reality to realize that saving 40-something million dollars for their company
would be helpful. I understand she was probably contractually aware of this
salary, but c'mon!

------
amix
That's a lot of money for making Yahoo more irrelevant.

~~~
robryan
Defiantly, imagine how many young talented engineers that have ended up at
places like Google, Apple and facebook they could have got for that amount.

It's kind of like how myspace, just because there is this so called middle
America that still loves yahoo today, doesn't mean that they will be there
much longer if yahoo stands relatively still. Probably won't worry Bartz who
can just jump off the sinking ship at some point with a massive amount of
savings.

------
philk
Given in 2008 MS was offering $33/share for Yahoo and it's currently trading
at $16.47/share I'd suggest that Yahoo stockholders are used to losing out
financially.

------
hga
What everyone seems to be ignoring is that Yahoo was seriously damaged goods
when she was hired to run it.

What do you think it takes to retain a CEO with a successful record (AutoCad)
for a gig that's likely to be a failure and very possibly the last good job
they'll get?

------
ivenkys
And i thought such things only happen in Large Banks. This is a sign of what
is wrong with Executive Compensation across the board.

------
jacquesm
Carol Bartz is really good at shutting stuff down, doesn't even bother selling
it.

Geocities, the publisher network, maven networks (only a year after they
bought it for $160M) the list is long.

She's the worst CEO Yahoo! has had and instead of rewarding her they should
throw her out and bring in someone with a vision on how to turn the tide.

If that doesn't happen yahoo will continue it's long and slow decomposition.

She joined in January '09, and since then the company has been on a steady
slide down from the #1 visited website to now the #4 position. That's still
huge, but it is clear that Yahoo! is coasting on momentum alone.

------
samd
They gave her a large amount of stock so that she'd have a personal stake in
making the company successful. It makes sense to have the people running the
company personally intertwined with it. It's the same in startups, you don't
want the founders shares to become so diluted that they no longer care about
the company.

~~~
icefox
how about the people working for the company? Doesn't it make sense for them
to have a personal stake? Some of them have been around at the company longer
then they have been married.

------
ramanujan
At this pace, it'll take her only 396 years to catch up to the roughly $18.6B
net worth of Larry Page.

~~~
dotcoma
At this pace, she will earn 10 or more times more in 1 year of doing nothing
good - nothing stellar, for sure - for the company than most people earn in
their lives.

------
matrixownsyou
$47.2 Million? yahooooo

