Thanks for a well-reasoned reply. I think there are two issues here, which I don't often see cleanly separated: * She took the helm of a failing company; is it

Thanks for a well-reasoned reply. I think there are two issues here, which I don't often see cleanly separated: * She took the helm of a failing company; is it reasonable to think that she was going to be able to turn it around, from any rational perspective? * She was paid a lot of money to turn it around; is a CEO essentially paid to "take the blame" when a company fails /for whatever reason?/ The former is a question of business physics, if you will, and my personal belief is that she is not at fault in any real sense. Yahoo was a company on life support for several years before she got there. Nothing was going to turn that around. If anything, the point of bringing her in was to prop up the company long enough to cash in on Alibaba, and in that she certainly succeeded. The latter question goes to a debate we should definitely be having regarding executive compensation, and one in which I probably agree with both you and other (somewhat self-righteous) respondents to my comment. She was paid far too much. However, in that she cannot be faulted any more than any other well-compensated CEO in the world, regardless of success. To say that she was paid far too much /to fail/ implies that had she succeeded the pay would have been appropriate. The notion that there's some outcome that warrants executive compensation on that level is not one I subscribe to.