'I was fired on the phone' and other stories from dumped CEOs

When Andrew Mason wrote his "People of Groupon" memo on February 28, 2013, saying he had been fired from his job, Twitterati echoed the quirky CEO's exit letter. Here are other iconic and "very visible" CEOs who had to exit almost overnight:

Carol Bartz, Yahoo
The Yahoo CEO had been brought in to turn around the first company of the Internet but failed both in strategy and execution. Her hard-nosed style of leadership, which grated Yahoo veterans, failed to deliver. Eventually, on Sept 6, 2011, she was asked to leave.

Steve Jobs, Apple
At 30, some nine years since he co-founded Apple, Steve Jobs was fired from the company. For Jobs, who returned to Apple in 1996, it worked out well in the end. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," he told a Stanford graduating class later.

Lee Iacocca, Ford
Iacocca, Ford Motor Co.'s salesman impresario was fired in 1978, ending eight years of a testy relationship with Henry Ford II. Iacocca was hired by Chrysler Corp. in 1979 and turned around the company brilliantly before retiring in 1992.

Carly Fiorina, HP
When Carly Fiorina, one of the powerful women CEOs in US Inc. was eased out of Hewlett-Packard in February 2005, stock markets cheered up driving shares of HP up nearly seven per cent. Apart from her controversial decision to buy Compaq, her brash and take-no-prisoners style of leadership didn't gel well with the engineer-led culture of HP, either.

Leo Apotheker, HP
HP has had more than its share of fired-CEOs (remember, Mark Hurd, who was asked to go after an inappropriate work-personal relationship with a contractor emerged?). The latest was Leo Apotheker, a former SAP hand, who was asked to leave HP in less than a year in the corner office.