The IT Nerd

Firings happen all the time. And usually they’re packaged in such a way that it can be soft pedaled. Such as “John Smith has left the company to spend more time with his family” or words to that effect.

That’s apparently not how it works at Yahoo. Marissa Mayer apparently fired COO Henrique de Castro. And she didn’t mince words based on a leaked e-mail that was sent to Yahoo staff. Here’s a snippet of it:

During my own reflection, I made the difficult decision that our COO, Henrique de Castro, should leave the company. I appreciate Henrique’s contributions and wish him the best in his future endeavors.

To recap, she decided that de Castro “should leave the company.” That’s pretty blunt. She might as well have said “I fired his sorry ass and I liked it.” Highly unusual if you ask me.

So the next question is, why was he fired? This article provides some insight:

Perhaps most problematic: In recent months, according to numerous sources, he and Mayer had developed a tense relationship that many in meetings with the pair found it hard not to notice. “They just did not get along and did not hide it at all,” said one person in several meetings. “It was really awkward.”

He had also been fighting for power with the new sales head Ned Brody, M&A head Jackie Reses and marketing head Kathy Savitt. In other words, everyone inside the Mayer inner circle.

In fact, Brody, a former AOL exec, had rolled his eyes to many who asked about De Castro’s absence at CES and his status. Savitt had been seeking control of Yahoo’s media unit, which had been under him. And Reses had long since grabbed Yahoo’s business development unit, another former De Castro charge.

In other words, “Boardwalk Empire,” but without the cool clothes and snappy banter.

Besides these interpersonal issues, perhaps most critical was that De Castro was unable to move the advertising business, which has continued to lag as Mayer’s two-year anniversary nears.

Not getting along with your boss and their inner circle is a great way to shorten your lifespan within a company. But don’t feel too sorry for de Castro. Word on the street is that he’ll take home a very big cheque.

Apologies from CEOs don’t happen every day. Thus when Yahoo CEO Melissa Mayer posted an apology on the company’s Tumblr blog to cop to the fact that they really have dropped the ball when it comes to Yahoo Mail, it got my attention. Here’s some highlights:

For many of us, Yahoo Mail is a lifeline to our friends, family members and customers. This week, we experienced a major outage that not only interrupted that connection, but caused many of you a massive inconvenience — that’s unacceptable and it’s something we’re taking very seriously. Unfortunately, the outage was much more complex than it seemed at first, which is why it’s taking us several days to resolve the compounding issues.

Yahoo Mail has been down or flaky since the 9th of December. The service is largely up now, but company is still working on restoring service for some users as I type this though. Mayer also goes on to say this:

Above all else, we’re going to be working hard on improvements to prevent issues like this in the future. While our overall uptime is well above 99.9%, even accounting for this incident, we really let you down this week.

We can, and we will, do better in the future.

They admitted that they had a problem. They committed publicly to doing better, and they apologized. More companies should follow this example as judging from the number of “likes” on this post, it’s a path that resonates with users.