'These people f***ed me over': Fired Yahoo CEO lashes out at 'doofus' board

Carol Bartz did not hold back during her first interview since getting fired as CEO of Yahoo.

Barely 24 hours after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock told Miss Bartz the news on her cell phone, she rang Fortune magazine to let off some steam.

Speaking of the Yahoo board that fired over, she said: 'These people f***ed me over.

She went on to refer to them a bunch of 'doofuses.'

Miss Bartz called from Silicon Valley as reporters waited outside.

She said she was in New York on Tuesday to speak at Citigroup's technology conference on the following day.

She was supposed to call Mr Bostock at 6pm. 'I called him at 6:06,' she says, adding that when he got on the line he started reading a lawyer's prepared statement to dismiss her.

Miss Bartz told Fortune: 'I said \"Roy, I think that's a script. Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?\"'

But Miss Bartz did not argue when Mr Bostock finished reading, replying only: 'I got it. I got it.'

But she followed up with: 'I thought you were classier.'

She was recruited in January 2009 after successfully building Autodesk, but Miss Bartz never was the tuaround chief that the Yahoo board had hoped for.

Drastic measures: Yahoo let go 600 workers at its Califoian HQ and elsewhere just before Christmas, but the cost cutting wasn't enough to save Bartz

She slashed costs and improved profit margins, but failed to improve revenue growth at a time when Yahoo has lost clicks and ad dollars to Google and Facebook.

Miss Bartz said of the board: 'They want revenue growth, even though they were told that we would not have revenue growth until 2012.'

As Miss Bartz sees it, Yahoo's search partnership with Microsoft — a deal she negotiated two years ago to offload costs — has Yahoo paying Microsoft 12per cent of its search revenue and limits current growth but will help the company long-term.

She attributes the directors' impatience to the criticism they faced when they tued down a lucrative deal to sell Yahoo to Microsoft in 2007, before she arrived.

'The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country,' Miss Bartz says.

Ran out of time: In 2009, Bartz cuts a deal with Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer which she said would help the company in the long-run

'Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are.\"

After Mr Bostock's call, she wrote an email on her iPad to Yahoo's 14,000 employees.

It said: 'To all, I am very sad to tell you that I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's Chairman of the Board.

'It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward. Carol.'

When asked what she thinks of her successor Tim Morse, she called him 'a great guy.'  

Morse was chief financial officer and is now interim chief.

When asked bny Fortune who she thinks the board might appoint long-term, she replied: 'They should bring me in.'

She said she plans to remain on Yahoo's board as a director, which means she would be surrounded by people she's just called 'doofuses.'

Miss Bartz said: 'I want to make sure that the employees don't believe that I've abandoned them. I would never abandon them.

'I wish the Yahoo people the best, because it's a fantastic franchise.'

Miss Bartz's rocky tenure was punctuated by stagnating growth and a bitter row with one of the firm's Chinese partners.

Yahoo have recently settled a payment dispute with China's Alibaba Group, in which Yahoo holds a 40 per cent stake.

In April of last year, she candidly admitted that she 'could have done better' in her job, by which time speculation around her position was already growing.

The firm was forced to lay off more than 600 staff - around five per cent of its workforce - just before Christmas due to lacklustre growth.

In recent months speculation has mounted over various companies wanting to either take over Yahoo or invest and split into parts.

News Corp, AT&T, and Verizon had all been linked with a move to buy the firm out, with Yahoo's cooperation.

Speaking about his new temporary position, Mr Morse said: 'It is an honor to be selected for this role and lead the Company with this world-class team of executives.

'I look forward to working with the Executive Leadership Council and the talented employees of Yahoo!, and to partnering with the Board to invest in the organization and continue to drive its ongoing growth plans.'