Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants her employees to like her, and according to one report, she will fight off investors' demands to ensure that they do.
On Friday, the New York Post reported that activist shareholder Dan Loeb left Yahoo's board of directors on bad terms with Mayer because she refused to go along with his plan to fire 12,000 employees, almost 30 percent of Yahoo's staff.
“She liked being loved,” an anonymous source said of Mayer in the Post. That source, as Salon's Andrew Leonard noted, may have an ax to grind if he or she is associated with Loeb. So we should take those words with a grain of salt.
But in any case, Mayer's strategy has won the hearts and minds of Yahoo employees, by all indications. According to a study by job search site Glassdoor, 84 percent of Yahoo workers approve of Mayer's leadership. This may be because Mayer has made Yahoo relevant after many years of obsolescence, or it might just be the free snacks. Many of Yahoo's employees proclaimed their love of the free food that Mayer brought to the company in Glassdoor's survey.
And of course, Yahoo's stock has risen over 73 percent in the year that Mayer has been in charge. This is good for investors as well as employees, many of whom likely have stock in the company. No one minds getting richer.