By 2012, Yahoo was in trouble. Increased competition from Google and dysfunction within the office caused the online pioneer to slip. In July 2012, Marissa Meyer was hired as Yahoo’s CEO. There were high hopes Meyer’s leadership would get Yahoo back on the right track. For a while, things seem to be turning around.
But starting a few months ago, the Yahoo exodus began. The Yahoo exodus is becoming so frequent and so intense that employees are worried if company growth will continue at all. Last week alone, there has been resignations of women top executives Lisa Licht and Jackie Reces. Yahoo’s Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt abruptly left. Was it to chase a Hollywood dream or was it to get away from Meyer? Depends on who you ask. Their homepage creation VP Mike Kerns is gone. So is technology architect expert Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz. In June 2015, Yahoo security officer leader Alex Stamos left and went to Facebook. Engineering VP?Jim Everingham left in June and is now employed at Instagram. Scott Burke, the former Senior VP of advertising, left Yahoo to help a genetics startup. Dawn Airey was so frustrated with lack of progress she packed her bags. She’s now CEO of Getty Images. Top ad exec Peter Foster sang ‘Bye Bye Bye’ to Yahoo. He’s now helping a startup company called Wrap Media. There are other big names that have left Yahoo that time won’t allow me to permit.
This year, Yahoo’s market shares have fallen 34%. Good leaders are evacuating Yahoo like women and children evacuated the Titanic. What is Marissa Meyer doing about it? She’s putting up cute pictures of kittens and spinning the situation like nothing’s wrong. But for this many top execs to leave in a short period of time should indicate to a 3rd grader that something is terribly wrong. They’re leaving to join Yahoo’s rivals. They’re leaving out of frustration. Shouldn’t the alarms be going off? Shouldn’t something be done about this?