Carol Bartz First Day As Yahoo CEO

Carol Bartz, Yahoo's new CEO had her first day in the life at Yahoo as the new CEO for the falling company. During a phone call with press and analysts, Bartz showed that she had liveliness and you could tell she will not be afraid to firmly take the reins. When asked how long it would take for her to scrutinize the assets at Yahoo she quickly replied. "Let's not put ourselves in some crazy timeline. Let's give this company some frigging breathing room. Everybody on the outside deciding what Yahoo should or shouldn't do--that's going to stop," she said.

Another question that came up during the phone call was one that asked how her experience working at a software company, Autodesk, will help her serve at a company that sells advertising. "I didn't know CAD (computer-aided design) when I joined Autodesk, I didn't knew hardware when I joined Sun," she said. "I have brain power to understand what it takes."

Bartz was the CEO at Autodesk, a company that focuses on 2D and 3D design software for use with engineering and constructing buildings, from 1992 until 2006. According to Forbes, "Since 1992, Bartz, 56, has transformed Autodesk from an aimless maker of PC software into a leader of computer-aided design software, targeting architects and builders." She is credited with instituting and promoting Autodesk's "3F" or "fail-fast forward" concept -- the idea that you engineer a company to fail in certain missions, to be resilient to failure, and to respond to it by overcoming quickly. Bartz received a BA in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin in 1971.

After hearing the new CEO on the phone, you get a hint that she has a presence that perhaps the previous CEO at Yahoo didn't have. It will be interesting to see how she can possibly turn around the company in the upcoming year(s).