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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Led Illegal Purge of Male Employees, Lawsuit Charges (mercurynews.com)

A prominent local media executive fired from Yahoo last year has filed a lawsuit accusing CEO Marissa Mayer of leading a campaign to purge male employees. "Mayer encouraged and fostered the use of (an employee performance-rating system) to accommodate management's subjective biases and personal opinions, to the detriment of Yahoo's male employees," said the suit by Scott Ard filed this week in federal district court in San Jose. From a MercuryNews article: Ard, who worked for Yahoo for 3 and a half years until January 2015, is now editor-in-chief of the Silicon Valley Business Journal. His lawsuit also claims that Yahoo illegally fired large numbers of workers ousted under a performance-rating system imposed by Mayer. That allegation was not tied to gender. Yahoo spokeswoman Carolyn Clark said Yahoo couldn't comment on pending litigation, but she defended the company's performance-review process, which she said was guided by "fairness." "Our performance-review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular and actionable feedback from others," Clark said. "We believe this process allows our team to develop and do their best work. Our performance-review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out."

39 of 566 comments (clear)

  1. Cue the feminists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cue the feminists to start pointing out that it's impossible to be sexist against white males because we all site at the top of the power hierarchy. Cue the feminists to also call this guy a whiner and tell him to suck it up.

    1. Re:Cue the feminists by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Dude. There are no feminists on this web site.

      Actually there are - both male and female. However, achieving equality isn't in the SJW's agenda, and the definition of feminist has been transformed into something ugly and repulsive to many of both sexes.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    2. Re:Cue the feminists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dude. There are no feminists on this web site.

      LIke hell.

      I bet some of them are even female.

      The others are pussified sitzpinklers who wonder why all the HAWT women go for masculine MEN.

    3. Re:Cue the feminists by fche · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Would you count "good parenting" or "being taught hard-work american values" or "not being a single-parent family" as the sort of unfair advantage that you would complain about as being a racist/sexist unequal-outcome phenomenon?

    4. Re:Cue the feminists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Feminism falls within that as Al Qaeda falls within Islam and Westboro Baptist Church falls within Christianity.

      On this note, there is no such thing as a bad or a good feminist. There are just feminists who are too lazy or unwilling to self-regulate their collective, and other feminists.
      To automatically vocally denounce a feminist for acting radically or unbecoming of the ideal, is to only pull No True Scotsman arguments for the purpose of shedding the responsibility to self-regulate your movement.
      The idea that feminism is infallible is precisely what makes it such a hated and crappy movement, and it's also what produces egoistic and narcissistic tendency within the movement. And to state that feminist definition has been "twisted" just so the precious label can remain infallible and pure, is precisely the kind of mentality which only further blemishes feminism.
      The crux of the matter is, anyone who labels themselves a feminist is not fighting for equal rights, because people who fight for equal rights aren't in need of worthless labels or worthless label defending.
      They are out there in the field doing shit, rather than playing Internet warrior from a chair scouring through Twitter for their next male (and even female as of late) target to "shame" and defame because they have different opinions.

      Internet feminists are just plain garbage.

    5. Re:Cue the feminists by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or are you suggesting that the 1960s broke up all-american hard-working black nuclear families?

      Sadly, pretty much yeah. The Great Society social programs of the 1960's (that perversely rewarded single parent households), combined with the get-tough-on-crime/War on Drugs policies of the 1980's (that began incarcerating black men at an unprecedented rate) pretty much destroyed the traditional black family.

      Today, two-thirds of black kids live in single-parent households and 72% of them are born out of wedlock. Conversely, only 1 in 4 white kids live in single-parent households and only 25% of them are born out of wedlock.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    6. Re: Cue the feminists by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't forget the ULTIMATE evil in the world: White HETEROSEXUAL men. I shudder to think of them plotting all their evil deeds.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    7. Re:Cue the feminists by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, the feminism that is defining policy in government and large institutions is increasingly coming into line with that 'fanatic element,' largely thanks to it running unchecked through academia like diarrhea through diseased intestines.

  2. Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because if they were fair they would have lead to her own termination.

    1. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by mi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The story of Yahoo!'s downfall can be repeated on a much grander scale, if we elect a woman simply because she is a woman .

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    2. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by bmo · · Score: 3, Funny

      My wife used to work for hospice.

      When she says "transitioned" she means "died."

      Which is what Yahoo's going to do, shortly.

      --
      BMO

    3. Re: Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by s.petry · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Making false claims about someone and then claiming to be the victim has become the normal. Victim hood has become a currency and is used extensively as such. People who don't learn about the Hegelian dialectic are doomed to fall prey to the tactic.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    4. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the misogyny is strong with this one

      The most obvious thing that's wrong with Team SJW is that they do things like calling the pointing out of facts "misogyny." Finally, enough people are getting sick of that Orwellian bit of PC nonsense, and millions of people are preparing to vote for someone they don't particularly like, just so they can deny a vote the kind of person who practices and preaches that sort of deliberate BS in pursuit of political power.

      No, pointing out that it's foolish to vote for a corrupt, incompetent, career-long liar who has only evaded prison because of her political connections because she is a woman is NOT misogyny. But calling someone who makes that observation a misogynist is an example of the juvenile, delusional mindset and behavior that has millions and millions of people taking steps to show how sick they are of it. Let me guess, you consider that half of your fellow citizens to be irredeemably deplorable, right? Yeah, figured.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    5. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hillary didn't need the superdelegates to win; she had enough votes and delegates to win without them. It's true that the DNC rigged things, along with the mainstream media (esp. WaPo) spinning things in her favor as much as possible, but in the end, it was the Democratic voters who picked her. And unlike the GOP side where the vote was badly split among SO many candidates, allowing Trump to win with a minority of votes, the Dem side didn't have this: O'Malley, Chafffee and Webb barely got any votes at all and two of those dropped out very early on.

      Basically, in this election the GOP proved that it's incompetent at getting their establishment pick selected, and the DNC proved that they're masters of it. But still, the ultimate responsibility on the Democrat side (NOT the Republican side) is with the voters themselves. *They* made the choice for Hillary.

      (The same is not true on the Republican side; the voters there are not responsible, because of the first-past-the-post voting system, and the fact that Trump only got a minority of votes. The nomination of Trump really shows that FPTP voting systems should be banned everywhere, and anyone who thinks they're a good system should be summarily executed so that their stupidity does not spread.)

    6. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Funny

      I had a boss that was man angry after 3 failed divorces and purged all men from managerial positions.

      Ok, I have to ask: how exactly do you fail at a divorce, let alone three of them?

      People have failed marriages all the time, but I've never heard of a failed divorce. I've heard of people changing their mind and deciding to stay together, but I wouldn't call that a "failed divorce".

    7. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by ourlovecanlastforeve · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a guy who worked in customer service for 15 years and one who spent several years doing it at Yahoo I can tell you that those employee evaluations are nothing more than permission slips to fire employees when they are no longer needed instead of laying them off.

      They are intentionally designed with metrics that are impossible to meet and the targets are open to interpenetration by managers, which creates an ever moving target that can't be hit.

      It is just like in Office Space where the boss asks the waitress "what do you think of a person who just does the bare minimum."

      Meeting expectations is never enough. No matter how good you are, when it comes time to reduce staff you will be eliminated and you have no recourse because the numbers they made up say you performed poorly.

      But it's not just Yahoo who does this -- rather it's been the practice at every company I've ever worked at.

    8. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 3, Funny

      She tried to get divorced three times, and each time she filed for divorce the judge pointed out to her that she wasn't actually married to any of her 36 cats.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    9. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm getting very sick of this SJW/mainstream-media narrative that Donald Trump is some sort of frothing-at-the-mouth madman who's going to start a nuclear war and start sending minorities to concentration camps on his inauguration day.

      Donald Trump is a pompous blowhard asshole. But he's also a fairly left-of-center conservative who is anything but crazy or irrational. He has absolutely no interest in starting any wars or doing anything crazy or stupid while in office. War these days is bad business and Trump isn't likely to to go out of his way to oppress anyone. He's way more Ronald Reagan than Dick Cheney.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    10. Re: Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by Atomic+Fro · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've never seen that quote before. But as someone who is a small cog in the industry, what she said about the FDA is absolutely true.

      Rising drug costs? The FDA is complicit. Drugs approved without being properly vetted? The FDA is complicit.

      Vaccines are great and everything, but do we really need to require thousands of dollars in vaccines for things like chicken pox before a child can go to public school? It's great that insurance hides this cost for most, but I have seen the other side where people have fallen through the cracks in Medicaid and Obamacare. These poor, both in terms of wealth and luck, people needing to get their five year olds caught up before school needing $1200 for the first round.

      It was $1200 because government required it, not because of free market. Just like Epipen. Just like so many common generic drugs the FDA pulls from the market as being "unsafe" and then a single patented brand medication takes their place at 100x to 1000x the cost.

      Then there is manufacturer collusion where a common drug all of a sudden has "manufacturing" issues and it's not available from any manufacturer. Then in a month or two it's available again, but only from a single source, and yes it's still generic, but at 4x the cost.

      This is mostly hidden from "consumers" because insurance. You are still paying your $4 copay. But the costs on the back end are high. Meaning less money for labor, so long lines and wait times at the pharmacy. Higher costs for the insurers mean higher premiums. So all that anger gets thrown at the pharmacy and the insurers. The guys at the top are laughing all the way to the bank.

      --

      ==================
      Hippie Logger Jock
      ==================
    11. Re:Proof her perf evaluations weren't fair by Cederic · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hating women isn't normal.

      Who around here hates women? Asking purely out of curiousity because I can't see anybody.

      Several posters are women, and never get grief over that fact. Several posters mention their long term relationships to women.

      It's a very rare poster indeed that posts hatred towards women, and they get modded out of existence.

  3. Sounds like the UK civil service by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the UK civil service they introduced a performance management system with bands:

    Must improve
    Achieved
    Exceeded

    A certain percentage of employees must be in each band.

    Most civil service middle managers are women. And what do you know... the percentage of men put into "must improve" is almost double that of women. 'Cos it's much easier for women to fuck over men than their gal pals. That's on top of the blatant discrimination against men that goes on in customer facing roles - where all the real opportunities and back office jobs are reserved for gal pals of female managers.

    It's a disgrace. It's right there in the stats. Male employees have publicly asked "what's being done to address this" and get fobbed off every time. The Civil Service doesn't BADLY want to answer that question - even though, by the definitions they set up, it is rock solid evidence of discrimination.

    It just goes to show. Women show an in-group preference for other women and try to push out men. Men get little or no development unless they grab whatever chances they can and move onto other jobs... fast.

  4. Income is down, so... by MMC+Monster · · Score: 5, Funny

    She was probably just trying to curtail cost by firing the male employees.

    Wasn't this reported in The Onion?

    --
    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  5. lesson purge males = sure fail and bankruptcy by sittingnut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    mayer never learned that civilization and all good things are results of males trying to impress women.
    -
    anyway,
    companies should stick to making money for investors through legal means.
    companies should not be engaged in politics and social justice activism and engineering(unless that part of their business, as with some pr or lobbying firms ).

    if investors and employees want to engage in any of that, do it privately with own money.

    but they want to do "good"(usually for their own self interested motivations) with other peoples' money.

  6. Marissa, Holmes, and Pao should combine by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Funny

    And start a new company that combines their core strengths of incompetency, fraud, and perpetual social injustice. They can name the company "Loss Carry Forward, Inc."

  7. A question for westerners by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I need you westerners to explain something about this feminism fart of yours.

    Why is it, and everything along with it, lead by white women?
    White women are unarguably the most privileged class on this planet.
    - Most prefer white women for dating as dating app surveys showcase.
    - Most judicial systems are biased towards white women like no other race or gender on this planet.
    - They are much more likely to get away with anything and everything than any other class.
    - They have the biggest proportion of material wealth given to them for free/without work/without expended effort on this planet unlike any other class. Through history, most luxury resources, animal hides, bling, leathers, every-fucking-thing exploited from colonization, ended up in the rooms and on the bodies of white women.
    - Is there a discussion being had among a diverse group of people? White women always get the lead.
    - For some reason, white women are the "representative leadership" for minority groups that have nothing to do with them. Case in point the LGBT for some reason, albeit the LGBT is questioning their involvement.
    - White women were never prosecuted for their gender alone, or their skin alone. They were never forced to wear veils, they were never forced to mutilate their clits, they were never hanged and burned for being women like homosexuals and blacks were for their sexuality and skin color respectively. The closest thing they ever got was witch burning, though that has nothing to do with gender but more individual questionable practices.

    What the fuck is the point of this social justice shit if justice is being defined by the most unjust privileged class in the world - white women?

    1. Re:A question for westerners by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Pretty much agree with your points, although historically white women did get burnt as witches and treated badly in various ways, they've had a relatively less painful time compared to various minorities throughout history.

      Truth is the social justice stuff is basically a way for big business to sell more shit to white women. In order to do so they have to mock & belittle men/the poor. This is why men are always dipshits on commercials. This is why tiny teenage girls are super-warriors on film. We've built our global economy around conspicuous consumption geared towards the whims of white women and therefore need to construct a media bubble based around boosting the esteem of the ladies.

      Men of course can fuck off. Good-looking rich men are okay as they are aspired to by rich white women. Nerds, fatties, the average-looking, the average-achieving males are basically worthless. Attempts to make them consume like hungry hippos tend to fail so the only thing left is to keep pushing the tat out to the women and hope they keep on buying. Sadly this has resulted in a generation of neurotic females and depressed to shit males, but hey, at least those profits keep coming in.

    2. Re:A question for westerners by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

      White female teacher has sex with 15 year old student. Gets a slap on the wrist.

      White male teacher has sex with 15 year old student. Gets life ruined, sex offender, and a lengthy prison sentence during which his life will be in danger every day.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:A question for westerners by russotto · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is why tiny teenage girls are super-warriors on film.

      I thought that was so could cast hot 20-something actresses in those roles and put them in tight and revealing clothing.

    4. Re:A question for westerners by ausekilis · · Score: 3, Interesting
      As a white guy I'll take a crack at this (and likely be downvoted, but hey...):

      I need you westerners to explain something about this feminism fart of yours.

      Why is it, and everything along with it, lead by white women?

      Most of the "-isms" we love to carry on about in the U.S. stem from some notion of a group of people being underserved or underrepresented in some way. Take a look at the racism/feminism allegations being thrown around in Silicon Valley.

      White women are unarguably the most privileged class on this planet. - Most prefer white women for dating as dating app surveys showcase. - Most judicial systems are biased towards white women like no other race or gender on this planet. - They are much more likely to get away with anything and everything than any other class.

      Yes, the media-popularized form of beauty is largely "white woman", or with features similar to a white woman. There have been studies that show beautiful people are typically seen as more trustworthy, which may account for getting away with stuff.

      I would have to see evidence of judicial systems biasing toward white women. I do know that in custody disputes, the law is typically on the Mother's side... But that's a gender focus, not a race focus.

      - They have the biggest proportion of material wealth given to them for free/without work/without expended effort on this planet unlike any other class. Through history, most luxury resources, animal hides, bling, leathers, every-fucking-thing exploited from colonization, ended up in the rooms and on the bodies of white women.

      Again, would need to see evidence of this. For every Paris Hilton there's thousands of "Women of Wal-Mart". The same is true for every Nicki Minaj.

      - Is there a discussion being had among a diverse group of people? White women always get the lead.

      Not always. Susana Martinez is Governor of New Mexico. Woman? Yes. White? No. Michelle Obama has started a great deal of public discussions about assorted issues. Another example of an extremely influential woman is Oprah Winfrey. One of the most prominent physicists today is Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Musicians? Race and gender are all over the map, just depends on the style of music. Athletes? again, all over the map, but it depends on the sport.

      - White women were never prosecuted for their gender alone, or their skin alone. They were never forced to wear veils, they were never forced to mutilate their clits, they were never hanged and burned for being women like homosexuals and blacks were for their sexuality and skin color respectively. The closest thing they ever got was witch burning, though that has nothing to do with gender but more individual questionable practices.

      Now you are conflating foreign (from the U.S.) religious beliefs and cultural behaviors. Islamic women cover due to their faith, in certain parts of the world that faith is also the government (to a degree), so they will be punished for improper attire.

      In some cultures women are mutilated as part of a right of passage. To say nothing about circumcision, some other modern cultures that will circumcise or mutilate a boy as part of his right of passage into manhood. When was the last time you heard of this happening in any first-world country?

      White women did get prosecuted, for centuries. Just like women in every other patriarchal society. Women were bought and sold for their hand in marriage. Women did not have a voice in government. Women were used as a sort of parlay between kingdoms to promote peace and an alliance. Hell, women are considered unclean for 7 days a month according to the Bible.

      What the fuck is the point of this social justice shit if justice is being defined by the most unjust privileged class in the world - white women?

      Wait, so you're telling me that all the backlash towar

  8. Typo in the summary? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Informative

    The title says it was a "male purge" but also says "That allegation was not tied to gender." Reading the article it says women were less than 20% of the chief editors and within 18 months it was 80%. The main plaintiff does not actually single out Mayer but another editor Megan Liberman. Also the summary fails to mention that this lawsuit was about Yahoo News not Yahoo overall.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  9. Re:The opressed can not opress by ooloorie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, at some point, people simply stop caring. According to progressives and Democrats, I'm a homophobic, racist misogynist, and you know what? I've learned to live with it. Just as I had to learn to live with being a gay man in a homophobic society, and an immigrant in the US.

  10. Meh. by dskoll · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These are allegations. Of course the guy alleging them will make them as sensational as possible.

    Funny how so many guys get up in arms about "SJWs" when this guy seems to be a male version of the dreaded SJW.

  11. Re:Only one explanation by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Informative

    You're a gay Trump supporter?

    Why wouldn't he be? Whether or not Trump personally would enter into a gay marriage, he was in public talking plainly about how happy he was for (his casual acquaintance) Elton John to have married his long-time partner, and that people should be cool with it. At the same time, Hillary Clinton was voicing her support for her husband's signing of a law to prevent such things, and Barack Obama was sticking with his "marriage should be between one man and one woman" position. Trump has created more jobs jumped-on by gay people (in the entertainment, pagent, and hospitality businesses) that Hillary Clinton ever could or would. Why shouldn't a gay person support him? Are gay people supposed to like illegal immigration, higher taxes, more regulation, feckless foreign policy, and a nanny state that makes class and racial tensions WORSE instead of better? Please explain.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  12. Re:Only one explanation by HBI · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually most of the gays I know are Trump supporters in general. Since they generally know where the best food is, where the best bars are, and always seem to be having fun and have way more sex than most people do, one must wonder if they have some insight into this choice as well.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  13. Re:The opressed can not opress by Urist+McSlashdot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that when I look in a dictionary, it says that racism is prejudice or discrimination based on race, and that sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender. And that's how lots of people use those words. The Bustle article you linked to even says, "Sure, men might experience discrimination, bullying or even disparagement of their gender," which is literally sexism.

    But you, and others like you, have added "institutional or systemic" to the definitions. And then you tell other people that they're wrong if they use those words without that implicit addition.

    What I call racism you call prejudice based on race (which is the dictionary definition of racism). And what you call racism I call systemic racism. I've met plenty of people who will readily acknowledge that systemic racism and sexism exist and are important problems. They'll also readily acknowledge that white men in America cannot be victims of systemic sexism and racism (although the patriarchal system is detrimental to men in various ways, but that's another discussion). They just use slightly different language than you do.

    Trying to impose a new definition on words that are thoroughly entrenched in our language makes you come across as an asshat and makes people stop listening. Maybe this whole conversation would go better if you didn't tell an enormous swath of the country that their consensus definitions are wrong and just resigned yourself to putting the word "systemic" in front.

  14. Re:The opressed can not opress by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is self-contradictory. If discrimination against an individual male can be justified because of the average traits of males as a whole can legitimately warrant that discrimination, then discrimination against any individual can be justified because of the average traits of the larger group he/she belongs to.

    The whole point of anti-stereotype and anti-discrimination statutes is to prohibit using average traits of the group an individual belongs to as justification for sanctions against that individual. The assumption being that while the stereotype may be true of the group on average, it may not be true of a particular individual who belongs to that group, and it is wrong to pre-assume that individual exhibits those traits and thus must be sanctioned for it.

    In other words, you cannot pick and choose which groups get protection from discrimination and stereotyping. Either all are protected, or none are. Either applying the average traits of a group to all individual members of that group is OK, or it is wrong.

  15. Re:Only one explanation by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Its because a muslim walked into a gay night club and killed lots of homosexuals, and the response from the left was to push their gun control agenda while saying "dont call them radical extremists."

    Gay people have realized that within the SJW pyramid, they are at the bottom getting crushed.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  16. Re:Only one explanation by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So you're saying that the "alt-right" you find so disturbing IS the Republican party, but the hardcore lefties who literally attack Trump supporters in the street, say they hate him as they burn down parts of their own cities, screech that the First Amendment's protections shouldn't apply to non-liberals, and who think that (for example) Julian Assange should be shot for endangering Hillary Clinton's campaign ... those are all people who ARE the Democrat party, right? People who align with Hillary Clinton but who actually call for police to be killed and for the tearing down of any privately owned businesses ... that's what Democrats stand for, and thus why you should vote for Clinton, right? Because you like those ideas?

    Or is there a chance that you're being a totally disingenuous hypocrite in using one fraction of one group to define the whole, but carefully avoiding that exact same standard when it comes to the person you like?

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  17. LOL by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Our performance-review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular and actionable feedback from others," Clark said. "We believe this process allows our team to develop and do their best work. Our performance-review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out."

    Mayer still has a job, therefore something here isn't true.