Survey: Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer Is the ‘Least Likeable’ CEO in Tech

Yahoo's chief executive ranked low on the list of likeable CEOs in a survey from startup Owler.

May 25, 2017 1:23 pm

Yahoo’s CEO needs to do some serious soul searching to repair her image.

Marissa Mayer was ranked the “most disliked” CEO in the technology, according to a survey that listed likability of public companies’ CEOs. Conducted by startup Owler, the study featured two lists of executives, those who are most liked and most disliked.

To make matters worse, Mayer was second-most “disliked” CEO overall—just one notch above United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz, who’s taken some heat for the violent incidents that occurred onboard his company’s planes. Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Meg Whitman and T-Mobile’s John J. Legere also scored dubious honors.

Mayer has been on a roller-coaster of reputation since she first joined Yahoo in 2012. The exec was once viewed as the aging Internet company’s savior and paid handsomely for it—as much as $162 million, Business Insider reports. Her high salary coupled with a swath of layoffs and historic security breaches have damaged her public perception.

The most liked list featured 22 technology CEOs of the spots on the list of 50. Public darlings from Silicon Valley like Tesla’s  and SpaceX’s Elon Musk or Google’s Sundar Pichai didn’t crack the Top 20. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even land on either list.

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