Yahoo employees don’t think much of ousted CEO Carol Bartz

Yahoo employees are celebrating the fact that their chief executive, Carol Bartz, has been fired.

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Former Yahoo vice president Brad Garlinghouse greeted the news with a gleefully nasty tweet: “Ding dong the witch is dead.”

He’s not alone. According to a survey by Glassdoor, Bartz’s approval rating among Yahoo employees has nosedived quarter after quarter to a dismal 24% in the second quarter of 2011, before bouncing slightly to 33% in the third quarter. That means two-thirds of Yahoos have no confidence in Bartz.

For a CEO who had a 90% approval rating shortly after she took the reins in the second quarter of 2009, that’s got to be a disheartening change.

The chart above, provided by Glassdoor, shows how employees’ opinions of Bartz have declined over the past two and a half years. The numbers are based on more than 700 surveys filled out by Yahoo employees who visited Glassdoor.com. They included 275 comments on Bartz specifically.

As a point of comparison, Steve Jobs had a 97% approval rating among Apple employees before he announced he was stepping out of the CEO role in August. AOL’s Tim Armstrong has a 66% approval rating, and Google CEO Larry Page has 97% approval, but on a smaller sampling of reviews (31). Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has a 45% approval rating; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has 91% approval.

Further comments about Yahoo management from Glassdoor’s recent surveys:

“No strong leadership with vision & execution. Especially lacks execution.” – Yahoo principal engineer

“Be straightforward with the real problems Yahoo is facing and focus on the core business rather than spread the money over many irrelevant projects that are destined to die from the day they start.” – Yahoo employee

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“Very low employee morale is taking a toll on those who still want to work here, Upper management gives the same raa-raa speeches will little to back up the talk.” – Yahoo employee

“Lack of numbers driven decision making, lack of customer focus. Top leadership denies the world changed so we are still pursuing the portal business when the world rapidly changes to mobile, apps, social networks and location based personal solutions.” – Yahoo product manager

“Keep fighting the good fight; keep employees motivated, and reward them for doing well! Do better at identifying top talent and nurturing, stimulating, and retaining that talent.” – Yahoo technical employee

“please stop making senseless speeches about your vision and strategic plans. Instead, focus more on quality engineering and addressing the platform problems. Please don’t attempt to save a few bucks by outsourcing.” – Yahoo technical employee

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“go away already!” – Yahoo web analytics manager

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