Marissa Mayer Is Plotting A Major Purge Of Executives At Yahoo

Yahoo just parted ways with its chief information security officer, Justin Somaini, AllThingsD's Kara Swisher reports.

She says there are two reasons for his departure.

One: Yahoo Mail has suffered from some security bugs lately, and Somaini may be getting the blame.

Two: CEO Marissa Mayer is looking at purging LOTS of Yahoo execs from the company in the coming weeks and months.

Swisher:

Sources noted that Somaini’s leaving is also part of a wider look at a range of higher-level execs at Yahoo — top staff status is based on Levels, such as L3, L4, L5 — that is now taking place across the company by CEO Marissa Mayer.

Sources noted that Mayer is moving to replace a number of them as she seeks to remake the top ranks of the company, even as some are contemplating departure in the March time frame when their various and sundry stock options and other payouts are realized.

Certainly, Yahoo needs better people on staff.

But this executive purge could also be part of Mayer's plan to cut Yahoo's costs.

Yahoo has 18,000 full time employees and contractors, and we've been hearing from insiders for a while now that it should probably have 10,000 fewer.

Mayer knows this, and she plans to fix Yahoo's cost structure by cutting lots of people.

But she's not going to do it in a massive, one-off layoff.

A source close to the company tells us that instead, she's going to do it "very surgically, very carefully."

Lots of people think this kind of sniper-style cost-cutting is a big mistake because it destroys morale.