As a journalist, I  appreciate  people who are straight talkers – and agree with Lucy Kellaway’s praise of Steve Jobs’ pithiness – but Carol Bartz at Yahoo has been taking it too far.

Kara Swisher suggests that the Yahoo board has doubts about Ms Bartz, and may be manoevreing to find a successor. Among other things, it is apparently worried about internal instability and Ms Bartz’s well-known bluntness (including a penchant for swearing in public).

She recently talked openly about tensions with Alibaba, Yahoo’s search partner in China, and why she had spurned  its attempts to buy back Yahoo’s 39 per cent stake. That followed her having sworn publicly at Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch (which AOL has just bought).

Meanwhile her recent retort to reports of Yahoo executive leaving sounded graceless:

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to my assistant and said, ‘Do you know who this person is,’ and they’re about six layers down.”

Of course, if the Yahoo share price was doing well and Ms Bartz’s attempts to redefine Yahoo were being seen to work, such off-the-cuff remarks might not matter. Mr Jobs can say more or less what he likes, after all, but she lacks that luxury.

Bland corporate-speak is very frustrating to listen to, and Ms Bartz is nothing if not entertaining. But her outspokenness is not wise.