Art Streiber

On January 13, 2009, Carol Bartz became CEO of Yahoo! One of her first acts was to inform her staff that she would "drop-kick to fucking Mars" anyone who leaked company secrets. Since then she's been trying to return Yahoo! to dominance, deliberately destroying everyone's impression of what it actually does. After a deal with Microsoft, Yahoo! is transforming from a search engine to a Web portal — one that, if Bartz is right, will attract new users (and new revenue) by trimming unwieldy Web searches down to personalized streams of information. She has her skeptics. But Bartz is right a lot, and most CEOs of her caliber don't earn their pay by luck. Neither do cocktail waitresses, and Bartz was once one of those, too. She knows when to give someone a "bunny dip." And she knows when someone needs a good drop-kicking.

My mom died when I was eight. My grandparents took my brother and me onto their farm when I was twelve. So for four years, between eight and twelve, I was mom, housecleaner, cook — and guess what? The little shit doesn't get to you anymore, it just doesn't matter.

One day, my brother and I were in the machine shed when we heard a rattlesnake above us. We didn't think about running for my grandfather — we ran for Grandma. She came, grabbed a shovel, poked the snake off the rafter, and chopped its head off. This was a big snake. And she said, "You could've done that."

It wasn't like she was trying to give us some big life lesson. She just walked away, and that's the way it was.

I was a damn good cocktail waitress. I talked my way into the job and I had never been in the bar. I didn't know there were costumes. So they'd say, "Okay, wear this." I went home and for the next three days, I did about fifty hours of Jane Fonda. Honest to God, I probably did a thousand sit-ups. I get into this outfit, I go out, the problem was, I didn't know the drinks. So when somebody said, "I'll have a brandy and Seven," I didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

I can't believe they let me keep that job. But I went on to make wicked tips. It didn't take much to charm people and do a little bunny dip or some damn thing. I made a lot of money.

One night I had a trayful of drinks, and I had on black fishnet stockings and a garter, and the next thing I know I'm like getting air. Somebody had lifted my little skirt up. So I go to look over and it was my high school principal. I can't remember his name now. I said, "Mr. — !" and he went, "Carol!" And you know I didn't tolerate any of that kind of stuff and that wasn't the kind of place it was, but he's coming from this shit-bum little town and he's in the big time, Madison [Wisconsin], and here comes the cocktail waitress and he's going to show off.

My first day as a manager was at Digital Equipment in Atlanta. I was a sales rep. I was promoted from among my peers, so one day I was a peer and the next day I was their boss.

That first day didn't go too well, and I'll tell you why. Do you know what plug compatible means? You have a receptor that receives the plug. Well, one of my new sales reps/peers walked in and he said, "I have no intention of working for a plug-compatible boss."

I said, "Well, I'm not going anywhere." I'd never been a boss before, and this was five minutes after I'd been promoted. Jesus, if it happened today, I'd beat the shit out of him. I mean: Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

My second day at Yahoo!, a year ago, I had my first all-hands meeting, and they're all sitting there looking at me. So I do a Q&A, and a hand goes up. "Have you ever used a mobile device?" Have I ever used a fucking mobile device?! I mean, God, I was sixty! I said, "I left my walker over there on the side, and I think I can stand here just long enough to finish this meeting."

Cursing is part of the job. Everybody has this funny reaction to it. I don't know what the big deal is.

Yahoo! had a huge problem of all kinds of internal documents getting out to the press. Terrible timing. And what I was trying to explain is, all we're doing is hurting each other. You know we can't have a family conversation without you running and telling the neighbors? So I was just explaining that it was a bad thing to do, and if I found them, that's what would happen to them. If I found out who was leaking this, I'd just drop-kick you to Mars. You have to have some passion. What am I going to say? "Oh, please don't ..."? You think my employees would remember it? No. Did I do it because of that? No. I did it because at the moment I got myself all riled up. You know, everybody thinks I do it consciously. People actually ask me: "When are you going to drop the f-bomb?" I say, "What do you think, put a dime in my ear and then it comes out? No, but get me worked up about something and who knows what'll come out."

I hug employees all the time. I'm a huge contact person. Touch is an extremely important part of the human condition.

I also have a big thing about eye contact. I'll never forget President Clinton's economic summit in Little Rock. This was back in 1992, when I was a newly minted CEO. I walk into this room, see every important person I've ever read about in the business magazines, and think, Oh, God, can I disappear?

But then I said to myself: I know how to play this. What's the best way to a man's heart? Big compliments. So I walk over to Bob Crandall, the CEO of American Airlines at the time. I say: "I've been an admirer of yours, and it's amazing to meet you." I do this with three or four people. All they do is shake my hand while their heads are swiveling to see who else is in the room.

That had a big impact. I thought: You don't do that to people. So I have a big thing about eye contact and touching. When I'm with you in the moment, I'm with you, not over there.

What do I look for when hiring? Well, let's get past the assumption that they can do the job. There has to be a no-asshole rule.

We'll go through the whole interview, and I'll say, "I have one last question. I don't work with assholes. Are you one?"

Some say, "What a great question! I want to work in a place that's like that." But you'd be amazed at how many others hear that question and look like they've just been caught. Their expressions say: I guess I'm an asshole.

I always do my firing in the morning because that's when I'm fresh. I mean, why sit there all day thinking: I'm going to fire Joe at 4:59?

The joke was never have breakfast with Carol, because it's not a real safe thing to do. Anybody who knows me knows I don't do breakfast. If I'm going to get up early in the morning to meet with somebody, there's a reason.

Listen, you don't want to send somebody home. But if something isn't working, it's not working for either side. If you do it right, when all's said and done, there's amazing relief.

"Here's why it didn't work, and my advice for you as you're going to another job is this is a characteristic that works or doesn't work, why don't you think about that? And by the way, don't do this kind of work again because you're really not suited to it."

Are women better listeners than men? I don't know. I mean, I've never been one of you, so I don't have a clue. I think we conveniently fall into these little traps. My husband doesn't listen because his mother didn't make him listen. What am I going to do, beat him? I mean: firstborn of a southern family? Firstborn boy? Please. I mean, I love him to death, but is he going to take the garbage out? No.

When Sarah Palin was nominated, I was initially impressed. I thought that speech she gave at the convention was brilliant. To be plucked out of the wilds of Alaska and show up on that stage is not an easy task. She had something going for her, but it just kind of fell off from there, which is a shame.

A female president matters. Of course it matters. I don't know if it'll be long. It'll probably be a while. It's gonna probably be someone right now in their forties who's doing a good job at the state level — someone we've never heard of. Because I don't know that there's anybody on the scene now who could get the job.

When you talk about the Internet growing to 225 million sites, you've got to ask: Who's parsing all that? How do you make sense of all that stuff?

I mean, who has time to wander all over the Internet?

Tomorrow's Yahoo! is going to be really tailored. I'm not talking about organization — organizing means that you already know what you want and somebody's just putting it in shape for you. I'm talking about both smart science and people culling through masses of information on the fly and figuring out what people want to know.

We will be delivering your interests to you. For instance, if you're a sports fan but have no interest in tennis, we won't show you tennis. We would know that you do things in a certain sequence, so we'd say, "Here's your portfolio. Here's some news you might like. Oh, you went to this movie last week, here's some other movies you might want to check out."

I call it the Internet of One. I want it to be mine, and I don't want to work too hard to get what I need. In a way, I want it to be HAL. I want it to learn about me, to be me, and cull through the massive amount of information that's out there to find exactly what I want.

Yahoo! has been here for fifteen years. We are the Internet. Unfortunately, we sit in a paradigm that values the new shiny penny.

That said, we're very successful. A billion three cash flow a year, and six hundred million users. But we can be so much more, and that's why I came here.

Apple was down for the count before Steve Jobs returned. I'm not trying to compare myself to Steve Jobs in any way — for good reasons and for bad reasons — but think about it. What was the name of that computer before the Macintosh? Apple II. I mean, it was going nowhere.

Everyone likes to think about iPod days, but it took Steve a long time, even knowing the company, to get it turned around after he came back. So of course it's been done.

It's not my job to convince people. It's my job to work with this team and execute. Three years from now, Yahoo! is going to be the shiny new penny.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io