Think what you'd like about her time at Yahoo, but former CEO Carol Bartz certainly left the company with a bang. Board chairman Roy Bostock skirted an in-person confrontation and, Bartz says, read her a lawyer's statement over the phone -- a pretty low move, even though you'd be hard-pressed to find someone with the guts to give Bartz bad news to her face. Bartz told Fortune that the people at Yahoo "f*cked her over."
It was clear that Bartz's sun had set at Yahoo, as employee approval ratings dropped from 90% right after she was hired in January 2009 down to 24% before Bostock gave her that fateful ring.
The company has been struggling to find its way for quite some time, as search competitors like Google and others have breezed past it on several fronts. And Yahoo recently suffered from an ugly public argument over the spin-off of promising Chinese online payment platform Alipay from Alibaba, a company that Yahoo partially owns. Rumors of an acquisition from private equity firms like Silver Lake or even Microsoft don't lend confidence that Yahoo can get out of this pickle on its own.
Still, this less than savory exit will not be a career-killer for Bartz as it's clear that the company had become a rather large ship to steer.
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