Ladies and Gentlemen, Jeff Skilling is no longer the model for the out of control CEO on an analyst call. On yesterday’s conference call, CEO Carol Bartz used a naughty swear when responding to a question from FBR’s Heath Terry:
Heath, as far as the investment of the global platforms, the — the real important issue, frankly, well there are a couple of important issues, but of our re-org, was to get engineering focused. And it was sort of scattered to the winds. I’m not talking about an engineering center in Bangalore or whatever, but I’m talking about engineers in almost in every country. And way too many product people. So, when I say product people, we sort of had a one product management person for every three engineers. So we had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do, but nobody f—ing doing anything.
Now the official transcript says:
So we had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do, but nobody [technical difficulties] doing anything.
This is nonsense. CEOs are people, and sometimes they mess up, and sometimes they use swear words. I think it’s wrong for Yahoo to lie like this. It’s fine if they want to write [expletive deleted] but to outright lie and say it was technical difficulties speaks to the integrity of the company.
I agree. They are people too. I remember having private conversations with one (now) former governor and the guy used adult language when he got passionate about somethings. Everybody can slip. I’m not excusing it but I’m certainly not going to castigate someone for a genuine slip.