Yahoo and Microsoft CEOs lose approval as Google and Apple leaders top polls

EMPLOYEES AT Yahoo and Microsoft have dealt their CEOs low approval ratings but staff at Google and Apple couldn't be much happier.

The figures come from a report by Glassdoor, which evaluated the firms' employee satisfaction with their bosses over the past 12 months.

Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer dropped considerably, while Google's Eric Schmidt and Apple's Steve Jobs saw extremely high approval levels.

Schmidt led the polls at 96 per cent, a three per cent increase over the previous year, marking a record high for the man who handed over control of the company to co-founder Larry Page today.

Jobs was not far behind at 95 per cent, but his rating has actually fallen three points compared to the same period a year previous.

In stark contrast Bartz dropped a staggering amount, from 77 per cent to 50 per cent, suggesting it might not be long before she sees her approval rating plummet to similar levels as that of her predecessor Jerry Yang, who left the company with a 34 per cent employee satisfaction rating.

Ballmer isn't doing a whole lot better, with a six per cent drop to 40 per cent over the last 12 months, but with major blunders over the past few years, such as the botched Kin phone and a late entry into the smartphone market with Windows Phone 7, it's not surprising that the Vole's people aren't happy.

It's funny that Yahoo and Microsoft teamed up not so long ago to support Bing in an attempt to steal market share from their biggest rival Google, and yet both of their leaders are suffering internal unpopularity while the outgoing Google leader enjoys unprecedented praise. µ