Ousted Yahoo CEO calls board “doofuses”

In her first interview since being fired as CEO of Yahoo on Tuesday, Carol Bartz called the company's board "doofuses."

"These people fucked me over," Bartz told Fortune magazine on Wednesday night.

Bartz recalled how she spoke with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock on the phone on Tuesday night.

Bartz was in New York, to speak at Citigroup's (C) technology conference the next day, when she was supposed to call Bostock at 6 p.m. "I called him at 6:06," she recalls. When he got on the line, she says, he started reading a lawyer's prepared statement to dismiss her.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" adding, "'Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'"

When Bostock finished reading, Bartz didn't argue—"I got it. I got it," she told the Yahoo chairman. "I thought you were classier," she added.

Bartz became CEO of Yahoo in 2009, and said the issue that led to this point was revenue.

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

Bartz said the board's impatience was the result of criticism it faced after turning down a deal to be acquired by Microsoft in 2007.

"The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country," Bartz said. "Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are."

When they spoke on Tuesday, Bostock told Bartz she had two hours to decide whether to resign or be fired. She called her husband, her children and her assistant and then, after finding out that Yahoo lawyers were coming to hand her papers, she abruptly switched hotels. Later Tuesday evening she wrote an email to every Yahoo employee:

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

Yahoo's stock jumped more than 6 percent in after-hours trading after news of Bartz's departure broke.

Even rapper Snoop Dogg reacted to the news, tweeting on Tuesday night: "Im takn over as tha CEO of Yahoo. Need sum of tha Snoop Dogg content ya digg. Nuff Said."