Not really the issue. As you said, this was a group of less than 200 employees. Probably most of them were doing the work as expected. She cut a hugely morale boosting policy to get rid of a few shirkers and made herself and Yahoo look terrible right across the tech news for it. It was a huge and crucial mistake at a time when it looked like Yahoo might be picking up and it cut an enormous amount of momentum.<p>Obviously the even bigger mistake was not doing a massive company wide re-organization and throwing out all middle management. Middle management is only an asset if it is helping the business, and as is obviously the case in Yahoo, it is not.