Smart move by Marissa. She played politics to get in, won - and then did what is best for Yahoo! for the long-term. A large shareholder activist is merely looking to make fast monetary gains, and doesn't care about long-term projections.
Point taken, but if you're referring to Loeb's firing plan that Mayer supported, the firing would have been towards roughly 2,400 - 3,600 workers, not 12,000.
From the article:
"... Loeb’s plan was to fire between 20 percent and 30 percent of Yahoo!’s roughly 12,000 workers — an idea Mayer initially supported ..."
Edit: yep, I agree it's still a lot, just wanted to point out the difference.
Yes, especially since that would mean firing every employee of the company:)
I can see that being a bad day for moral....
All joking aside, I think your point is pretty solid. Getting rid of a 1/3 of the work force was not going to send a positive message to the rest of the employee's.