Marissa Mayer is still more popular than any past Yahoo CEO
Mayer's "CEO Approval Rating," given by anonymous Yahoo employees on Glassdoor, is now at 67%, which is higher than what her three predecessors - Scott Thompson, Carol Bartz, and Jerry Yang - had at the time of their departures. (We didn't count Ross Levinsohn, who only served briefly as interim CEO).
Still, that's a big drop from the 99% rating Mayer saw back in 2012 when she first started. It's also the lowest rating she's ever had, as it declined almost every quarter over the past 4 years.
The numbers are a perfect reflection of Mayer's time at Yahoo. When she first arrived in 2012, Yahoo saw renewed excitement, drawing highly talented people from all over the world. But after a number of failed projects and acquisitions culminated in stagnant growth, Yahoo has lost its steam again and was sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion, a relative bargain given it still generates roughly $5 billion in annual revenue.
Mayer's expected to leave once Verizon closes the deal to acquire Yahoo, although she's expressed her desire to remain there.
The drop
Perhaps, the reason for the decline in ratings is best explained through the common themes and keywords shared by Yahoo employees in their company reviews:
Pros: smart people, free food, and work environment
Cons: senior management, upper management, and lack of direction
"Lack of direction" is likely a big reason that Yahoo's "business outlook rating," or the percent of people saying things will get better, also reached rock-bottom this quarter at 27%. That number fell by more than half in just the past two years.
And it doesn't look like things will improve much once Yahoo becomes part of Verizon. The CEO approval rating of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam is right around Mayer's at 64%, while its company rating and senior management rating are 3.4 and 2.7, respectively, almost identical to Yahoo's.
Here's the full chart: