Pascal Lauener / Reuters

Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in this January 25, 2013, file photo.

UPDATED 12:28 p.m. EDT: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who sparked an uproar and hurt her image as a working mom when she banned telecommuting two months ago, is now offering employees generous new family leave benefits.

Under the new policy, mothers can take 16 weeks of paid leave with benefits, and fathers can take up to eight weeks, each time they have a new child via childbirth. Both parents receive eight weeks off for new children via adoption, foster child placement or surrogacy.

This change is a significant increase for Yahoo employees, particularly mothers, who will basically get twice as much paid time off. Under the old policy, moms received eight week paid after pregnancy, or 10 weeks if they had a C-section.

Read more from NBCBayArea.com.

Yahoo will also give new parents $500 to spend on such things as house cleaning, groceries and babysitters, plus Yahoo-branded baby gifts.

Mayer's decision, which brings the Sunnyvale-based Yahoo closer to Silicon Valley titans Google and Facebook, could help repair the damage as she works to turn around the struggling media giant.

But it doesn't only make sense from a public relations standpoint, observers said. The new policy could fit into a broader corporate strategy to attract and retain more talent and ultimately improve Yahoo's financial performance.

"It's a smart move," said Rachel Sklar, a New York-based blogger and founder of The Li.st, an organization dedicated to elevate the status of women in New Media and technology. "It suggests a long-term strategy. This is a great precedent."

Companies who provide "everything" to their employees, such as free lunch and daycare sites at Google, do better financially in the long run because there is nothing to "distract" their workers from working, Sklar said.

"The temptation will be to see this through a gender lens - -that of course she did it because she's a new-mom CEO," Sklar said. "And this certainly would suggest she has a heightened awareness as a working mom, but this will encourage new parents to be engaged with the company and have a financial piece of mind. When companies nickel-and-dime their employees, it just adds to their burden."

From the moment she became Yahoo's new chief executive last year, Mayer, 37, has been seen as a symbol of corporate gender politics. She took the job when she was five months pregnant and worked through a two-week maternity leave that ended in October.

Her decision to return to work so quickly attracted both praise and criticism - praise for showing that a new mother could continue to steer a Fortune 500 company, and criticism for failing to set a realistic expectations for America's working moms.

Mayer drew praise for adding perks such as new iPhones and free food, cutting company bureaucracy and redesigning work spaces. Many of those amenities were standard at her prior employer, Google.

In February, Mayer sparked another debate when she decided to end Yahoo's lenient telecommuting policy. Employees with existing work-from-home arrangements were told they had to start coming into the office or look for another job.

The move reflected Mayer's an all-hands-on-deck approach to turning around Yahoo and make it more competitive. But she was again accused of making it harder on working parents.

But her decision to double family leave for new parents from 8 weeks to 16 weeks puts Yahoo in the same ballpark as her Silicon Valley rivals: Google gives between 18 and 22 weeks off to new mothers, and Facebook told the New York Times that it gives new mothers and fathers four months of paid leave.

A Google spokeswoman said that all the Mountain View-company perks - which include preferred parking for expectant mothers and $500 in "baby bucks" to spend on things such as takeout dinners, like Yahoo is now offering - are so that life can be as smooth as possible for new parents. That's of course, the spokeswoman noted, so that they can come back to work fully rested.

In California, workers are eligible for six weeks of partial pay through the state's disability benefits program.

Mayer's move also comes amid a broader debate in America about the country's commitment to family leave. The United States, which hasn't updated its Family and Medical Leave Act in 20 years, ranks among the worst of all developed countries. Sweden, Denmark Russian mothers get at least a year off paid and Canadian mothers get 50 weeks off paid.

The U.S. law requires large companies to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employers who need to care for a newborn child or an ill relative. And that relatively stingy benefit covers only workers who have been at a company for at least a year. That leaves millions without access to the benefit. Many more cut their absences short because they can't afford unpaid leave.

Meet Nick D’Aloisio, a regular 17-year-old and possibly the world’s youngest tech multimillionaire after his smartphone app was sold to Yahoo for an estimated $30 million.

The British teen, who started designing apps at the age of 12, came up with the idea for Summly while doing school work.

“I was revising for history exams and using Google and search engines. And I realized there was a gap in the market,” he said.

D’Aloisio created a technology that summarized news stories into 400 characters. He launched Summly and soon after Apple featured it as a new and noteworthy app.

“When I was 15, I released a demo of the app,” D’Aloisio told TODAY. “And the Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka-Shing, his kind of investment fund, reached out to me. We had a phone call where they didn’t know my age. At the end of the call, they were like, ‘When should we meet? We’ll fly to London.’ I was kinda like: ‘Before school or after school.’ "

Asked if the money will change him, D’Aloisio said no.

“My motivation was never about the money, it was about the technology and the product. So because of that, I don’t think going forward it will feel that different,” he said.

And no splurges are on the horizon. “Well, I can’t touch the money. It’s like in a trust fund with my parents. So I’ll be managing it with them,” D’Aloisio said.

The Yahoo acquisition was pegged at $30 million by All Things D, which cited unnamed sources who said the company paid 90 percent in cash and 10 percent in stock. The British teen will reportedly go to work for Yahoo for 18 months as part of the deal.

“I’m really excited that we’ve sold it because Yahoo’s a really great company to be joining right now, I think with Marissa Mayer there as their CEO,” he said.” As a technologist, it’s great time to be joining the company because they’re focusing on mobile and applications and that’s exactly what Summly was.”

Since the acquisition, Summly is no longer available as a free app, but will be incorporated into several Yahoo offerings as it repositions its focus on mobile.

“I think the plan is to take our technology, this summarization algorithm and integrate it into as many different parts of Yahoo as possible,” D’Aloisio said.

With one mega-deal under his belt, D’Aloisio said he has a few role models to emulate.“Mark Zuckerberg’s obviously very inspirational because he’s a young CEO of kinda a big company and he started when he was 19. I think Steve Jobs is also really inspirational for me because he was very persistent in doing what he wanted to do and that’s why Apple became what it is,” D’Aloisio said.

Struggling electronics retailer Best Buy, long known for a corporate culture that rewards employees for performance rather than office attendance, is following in Yahoo’s footsteps.

A week after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banned working from home, Best Buy announced that it is ending its flexible workplace policies and will require its 4,000 or so headquarters staff to work a traditional 40-hour week at the office.

Best Buy spokesman Jeff Shelman said the decision is “totally about making sure we do everything we can to reinvigorate the company for all our stakeholders.” 

The new policy applies to the electronics retailer’s headquarters in Richfield, Minn., and not to most of the company’s 160,000 employees – dubbed “blue shirt” sales associates -- who work in stores.

Shelman emphasized that the new policy doesn’t mean an end to all flexibility.

“If you have a sick kid or say, like today, there’s nine inches of snow on the ground, or you have to go to the dentist, you can have a conversation with your manager,” he said.

The move comes a week after Best Buy announced it would lay off 400 employees at its headquarters, which the company said would help save about $150 million. The electronics retailer also had some good news: On Friday, it posted promising fourth-quarter results, as revenue from U.S. stores open longer than 14 months rose 0.9 percent.

But the last year has been hard on Best Buy, during which it announced the closure of dozens of stores. In July, the company announced it would lose 2,400 jobs; a company statement this week said there would be more layoffs this year. CEO Hubert Joly took the helm in August after former CEO Brian Dunn abruptly resigned in April 2012.

Best Buy had long-touted its unorthodox workplace, which began in 2005 with a program called Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE. Employees were evaluated on performance alone and were not beholden to a schedule or to the office.   

Jody Thompson, a former Best Buy employee who implemented the program there, said that when she left the company in 2007, about 80 percent of the corporate office – between 2,500 and 3,000 employees – had been trained in ROWE. She said nearly all took advantage of the flexible schedule that came with a ROWE-focused work environment. Thompson left Best Buy to co-found Culture Rx with another Best Buy employee.

“It was going really well,” she said. “But over time, more and more happened in terms of new management coming in. There wasn’t the right thinking in place to continue to evolve, so they just decided go to back to 1952.”  

Best Buy’s CEO doesn’t blame ROWE for its woes, Shelman said.

“There is no cause and effect that the struggles we’ve had as a company is directly tied to the flexible work schedule,” he said. “It’s just that this time and place the decision has been made that we want as many people as possible physically in position.”

After an investor presentation in November, Joly told the Star Tribune that he wanted employees to feel “disposable as opposed to indispensable.”

Key Banc analyst Brad Thomas has watched Best Buy for 12 years and said he’s not surprised by the company’s decision, noting that the new management team comes from outside the company. “This kind of policy would be the type of thing they’re trying to change about the company from top to bottom,” he said.

But he said even the smartest management team may not be able to save Best Buy in the long run. The practice of “showrooming,” in which customers visit a Best Buy store to check out an item like a TV and then buy it online for less, has cut into the company’s sales.

Despite the announcements by Yahoo and Best Buy, working from home appears to be growing rather than shrinking. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 13.4 million people worked from home at least part-time during a typical week in 2010. 

And research indicates that telecommuting doesn't hinder productivity. Washington State University psychology professor Tahira Probst said via email that research suggests that telecommuting also helps boss-worker relations.

"Telecommuting is associated with significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, lower turnover intentions, reduced role stress, and higher supervisor-ratings of job performance," Probst said.

Related content:

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• Is telecommuting dead? Don't count on it, experts say
• Work (from home) with us: Tech firms cash in on Yahoo's ban

The hubbub over Yahoo’s decision to nix telecommuting got a lot of people talking this week about the potential distraction of working from home.

But what about those office distractions?

About than half of the more than 38,000 people who took our poll this week dismissed the idea that working in an office is more productive. Instead, they said, this much-vaunted “exchange of ideas” you get an office is more of a distraction.

Anyone who’s ever had a lengthy “exchange of ideas” with a co-worker who’s had a complicated health problem, relationship drama or parenting issue probably knows what these readers are talking about.

 “I telecommute on occasion and I find I get twice to three times as much done when I work from home. Part of this is due to no co-worker distractions - and while I am certainly always open to discourse, it does interrupt the work flow,” one reader wrote.

Many readers noted that in this modern era, there are plenty of ways to stay connected besides physically being next to each other.

“In the 21st century, it's not necessary for workers who have the right tools to work side-by-side in order to share ideas. Email, instant messaging and online discussion forums -- not to mention the good ol' fashioned telephone -- provide those functions quite nicely,” another reader wrote.

Still, others readers argued that people are more productive at the office, where they can see co-workers, be seen by the boss and not be distracted by household chores.

But some readers said it’s really about the worker, not the location.

“If people are lazy, they're going to be lazy anywhere,” one noted.

Forget the corner office. In 2013, the most coveted workspace is a worker’s own kitchen table or home office.

Nearly a week after a leaked memo revealed that Yahoo employees with work-from-home arrangements would need to show up in the office every day starting in June, smaller tech companies are attempting to woo disgruntled telecommuters.

Earlier this week, Drew Anderson, CTO of digital media startup Hitlab USA Inc., posted an ad on Craigslist with "Yahoo Telecommuters Welcome" in the title.

Within two days, Anderson received between 100 and 200 replies — up to 10 times his usual response rate. "A handful" of applicants, he said, were current Yahoo employees.

Anderson said his ad also was yielding a better caliber of job applicants. "The range of experience is wider and just the general response has been very good," he said. "I’m using the event as leverage... It’s a great tool for me."

Shortly after the memo was leaked, some companies took to Twitter to invite Yahoo employees to come work for them.

Marc Garrett, CEO of software developer Intridea, touted his company’s flexible arrangements:

Hey #Yahoos: if you're being forced to quit come work with us @intridea. We all work from home!

So did Sara Rosso, an employee of Automattic, which runs the popular WorldPress content management system:

Disappointed in @marissamayer's ban on working remotely ow.ly/hZOzn Yahoo peeps, come to @Automattic! :)

“You want to be able to give people the freedom to work,” said Silke Fleischer, CEO of mobile app developer ATIV Software, based in Santa Rosa, Calif. Ativ’s 11 employees all work remotely. Daily meetings and even job interviews are all conducted over Skype, she said.

While Yahoo’s telework ban might bring back the water cooler conversations, Fleischer said, “We’re on Skype all day long... we’re communicating.” 

What CEO Marissa Mayer did right, experts say, was realize that Yahoo struggled with productivity and collaboration issues, and take steps to fix them. Her mistake was taking those steps in the wrong direction.

“You could have that situation regardless of whether teleworking was going on,” said Dayna Fellows, president of consulting company WorkLife Performance, Inc. Yahoo’s blanket ban on working from home is “a little baby-and-bathwater,” she said, “It’s not going to solve what I think they’re trying to solve.”

On average, office workers spend about 80 percent of their time working on tasks that require concentration and focus, with the remainder collaborative, said Richard Kadzis, spokesman at CoreNet Global, which works with clients on strategic management of corporate real estate and workplace resources. Working from home part of the time lets employees be in the most productive environment to do both, he said. "Distractions are minimized," he said.

Aside from increasing productivity, a good telecommuting program also helps businesses cut costs. Companies in which around a quarter of the workforce works remotely save 10 to 15 percent on their real estate overhead, Kadzis said. 

Fleischer said companies like hers could benefit from Yahoo's new policy. "It could actually free up talent from Yahoo. Smaller companies can’t necessarily offer all these other options," she said. "However, they can offer you the freedom."

Maybe Yahoo should have done its homework before banning work-at-home.

For millions of American companies large and small, telecommuting has become a critical force in boosting worker productivity and growing profits in the information age.

Take the case of Dallas-based Ryan, LLC, the seventh largest corporate tax services firm in the U.S., with more than 900 employees in 45 locations in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. In August 2008, the company realized it had a problem. Voluntary turnover was roughly 20 percent. Some employees who quit said the long hours at the office left them little time for a personal life.

“We had a policy that required people to be physically present,” said Delta Emerson, the company’s chief of staff. “If you were not seen, you were questioned as to whether or not you were working.”

The solution: a flexible work schedule that allowed employees to work remotely and set their own hours. Though the transition had its bumps, the results were surprising.

Not only did the work all get done, the company became even more productive. Revenues went up. Client satisfaction went up. And turnover went down.

Emerson said the lesson was that there’s more to productivity than just showing up at the office. Ryan workers know that their job performance is now being measured on how much work they get done, not how reliably they show up at the office, she said.

“Everyone knows what they have to do to cut it,” said Emerson. “But people treasure this flexibility to the point that they will give their all to continue to work in an environment that allows that.”

By focusing more on measuring how well employees are doing their job, and worrying less about where the work gets done, companies with flexible work policies are seeing productivity go up, according to human resources experts.

That may be one more reason American companies are adopting flexible work policies. As of last year, nearly two-thirds of employers offered flexible work rules to at least some of their employees – up from about a third in 2005, according to a national study by the Society for Human Resource Management.

“We don’t see this trend going away,” said Michael Aitken, SHRM’s vice president of government affairs. "This is the way that work will get done in the future. I spend a great deal of time and energy in educating our members about the value that it offers.”

But old perceptions about the distractions of the home office persist. In her now widely-read memo explaining why Yahoo now forbids its employees to work from home, CEO Marissa Mayer explained that “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

The vast majority of companies who support flexible work practices, however, disagree. Employees who take advantage of telecommuting and other flexible policies often are more productive than if they worked only at the office, according to SHRM research. Some 97 percent of human resources managers at companies with those policies said that productivity is “the same or better” than with office-only work rules.

By skipping the travel time required to get to the office, telecommuting boosts the number of productive hours each employee can devote to work. In a 2010 study, American Consumer Institute economists Joseph Fuhr and Stephen Pociask calculated that roughly 1.7 trillion minutes are spent commuting every year – at a cost in lost work time and transportation expenses of roughly 7.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

The economic benefits of expanding telecommuting could be huge. The authors estimate that, over 10 years, a 10 percent increase in telecommuting hours would save nearly $100 billion in lost time and expense.

We would all also breathe a little easier. Fuhr and Pociask calculated that by saving 4.4 billion gallons of gasoline, along with the energy savings from reduced office space, a 10 percent increase in hours worked form home over the next decade would reduce greenhouse gas emission by more than half a billion tons of carbon dioxide.

To be sure, not all occupations are well-suited to telecommuting. Waiters and barge pilots aren’t ever going to be very productive working from a home office. But as more occupations become tied to a computer screen for much of the day, it matters less where that screen is situated.

As many home office workers can attest, some work is better performed in a group setting – especially dull, menial tasks where the urge to goof-off and ready distractions are ever present.

That was also the conclusion of a 2012 study by economist Glenn Dutcher at the University of Innsbruck, who found that while telecommuting “has a positive impact on productivity of creative tasks” it has a “negative impact on productivity of dull tasks.” So if your job involves a lot of copying and collating, you’ll probably get more done chatting with co-workers while visiting the water cooler in the copy room.

Mayer also cited those kind of chance encounters in defense of her “everyone back to the office” mandate.

“Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,” she wrote.

From TODAY: KLG sticks up for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

But for every serendipitous encounter that sparks the creation of a winning new product, there are many hours wasted sitting in someone else’s unproductive meeting or listening to a cube neighbor justify their picks in the Oscars pool, said Aitken.

“(Telecommuting) allows for less interruption at the office,” he said. “No people swinging by and wanting to talk about what happened over the weekend.”

And while detractors argue that a home office present too many productivity-killing distractions, workers who telecommute are better able to juggle their work and home lives. That helps reduce absenteeism.

“I may want to go to a doctor’s appointment or pick up the dry cleaning or go to my son or daughter’s school play,” said Aitken. “Telecommuting allows that worker the peace of mind to be able to do the things they may need to do for their life side and still meet their work obligations.”

Supporters of flexible work policies say the key to making the transition work is the development of better ways to measure how well their employees are doing. Being the first in the parking lot in the morning and the last to leave at night usually has little to do with how much actual work gets done in between.

“We used to measure people based on hours worked, and the person who worked the most hours was like a hero,” said Emerson. “There was frequently no tie-in related to what else they had done. So people who put in the hours could get away with a lot. Now, we don’t even pay attention to hours anymore. We’re looking at results.”

Related story:

Hey Marissa! Working from home is alive and well

Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer has taken a lot of heat for her ban on working from home. The lion's share of TODAY.com readers disagreed with her decision, too, but Kathie Lee thinks that much of the outcry has to to with the fact that Mayer is a woman. KLG said that radical decisions made by other executives haven't been met with as much resistance.

TODAY

"She's trying to get her ship in shape," said KLG, noting that the policy wouldn't be how she'd personally run things. She also pointed out that the value of the company's stock has increased since Mayer took over, and that it's important to give her credit as a leader.

Hoda said that employee happiness is important to consider, too, but that working from home is a potential sap on productivity. When she's home trying to work, Hoda admitted, "I watch soaps."

KLG agreed that it's better for some families to have the option to work from home, but that the job of a CEO is to think about the bottom line. "A lot of people work really hard… and I feel for everybody. But we live in a world where there's a system in place," she said.

"Let's talk about something trivial that doesn't matter," sighed Hoda, transitioning to a much more hard-hitting topic: Ben Affleck's newly shaved beard.

What do you think of the work-from-home debate? Vote here in our poll. 

Julieanne Smolinski is a TODAY contributor who is glad she never got into soaps.

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"The baby's been easy!" Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told an invite-only crowd at a Fortune "Most Powerful Women" event on Tuesday evening in Palo Alto, Calif.

"The baby's been way easier than everyone made it out to be. I think I've been really lucky that way but I had a very easy, healthy pregnancy. He's been easy. So those have been the two really terrific surprises: the kid has been easier and the job has been fun!" Mayer said, referring to her son, Macallister. The crowd chuckled along with her.

It turns out the former Google executive, known for her planning skills and extensive use of spreadsheets to make major life decisions (and determine the perfect cupcake recipe), can still be surprised when it comes to both motherhood and corporate leadership.

"I think that there's two surprising things," Mayer told the audience, comprised mostly of women, "I knew that the job would be hard and I knew that the baby would be fun. And the thing that surprised me, and really puzzlingly so, is that the job is really fun! Yahoo is a really fun place to work." 

In a television exclusive, TODAY aired excerpts of the interview this morning, which may be her last public interview for some time.

The 37-year old, Mayer, who became Yahoo's CEO while 6-months pregnant and gave birth shortly thereafter, returned to work after a two-week maternity leave, sparking debate about whether she could both lead the embattled internet giant and be a good mother.

More broadly, her story has kindled a national conversation about whether women can truly "have it all" in terms of work-life balance. As a female CEO in the male-dominated tech world, and pregnant at that, some have pointed to her ascent as evidence of "The Fall of Men."

"What's the most important thing that you do, to get it all done?" Mayer was asked onstage at the FORTUNE event.

"You have to ruthlessly prioritize," replied Mayer. Doing interviews haven't been high on the priority list lately. 

"And that's one of the reasons I haven't been talking and I will go back to not talking after tonight." said Mayer.

So far investors agree with how Mayer prioritizes her time. Yahoo's stock is up 18 percent since she took over.

A native of Wisconsin, Mayer cited legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi as an inspiration.

"And you know Vince Lombardi says, in my life there are three things: God, family and the Green Bay Packers, in that order. For me, it's God, family, and Yahoo, in that order."

In a few hours Mayer will join a group of CEOs meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss their priorities for the so-called "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts set to take place Jan. 1, unless Congress acts.

Robert Galbraith / Reuters

"My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it." new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said.

 It’s unusual enough to hear that a major corporation anointed a woman as CEO, but a pregnant CEO?

Yahoo announced Monday that Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, was taking the reins of the technology company, and hours later it was disclosed that she was also expecting her first child in October.

Mayer chose to disclose her pregnancy to the company’s board before she got the final job offer, and the board was supposedly fine and dandy with the news.

"They showed their evolved thinking," Mayer told Fortune. 

Yahoo's board may have been reassured by Mayer's unusual description of how she plans to handle the time off she will take to have a baby.

"My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it," Mayer said.

It's the kind of news that may get other pregnant women at Yahoo further down the chain worried about the time they put in after childbirth.

Many executives in Corporate America today tout how they lead by example and show their employees that work-life balance is critical. Taking emails while dealing with a newborn might be tougher than first-time-mom-to-be Mayer realizes.

Although it is also worth noting that not all women are as lucky as Mayer to even have a maternity leave benefit. (The United States is one of the only industrialized nations without mandated maternity leave.)

In any case Yahoo's board is to be applauded for looking beyond Mayer's pregnancy to the leadership she can provide the company over the long term.

“Appointing a woman as CEO is pretty rare in and of itself, and having a pregnant one is even more rare,” said Eden King, co-author of "How Women Can Make It Work: The Science of Success." “Many women who reach that level do not have children at all, much less are pregnant at the time.”

What ever does happen for Yahoo's newest CEO, her appointment will up the ante on the working mommy debate. But don't expect it to change the work world.

“It’s a sample size of one, and it’s hard to know if this represents social change. I certainly have hope, but most of the evidence shows that there’s substantial discrimination of pregnant women who are working," said King, who’s an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University with a focus on women and the workplace.

Indeed, the number of pregnancy discrimination claims have been rising in the last decade, and that prompted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hold a public hearing earlier this year to address the problem. “A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the EEOC’s general counsel during the February hearing.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC. 

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was signed into law in 1978 in order to stop such bias, but many women's advocacy groups believe it doesn’t go far enough. A bill introduced in May called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which is similar to the American With Disabilities Act, is supposed to fill the donut hole that the previous act left open when it comes to making accommodations for pregnant women in the workplace. 

“Equal opportunity in the workplace is an essential right in this country, and it is deplorable that women are still being fired, forced out of their jobs, and denied employment and promotion opportunities because they become pregnant," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. "The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is badly needed legislation that would help stem this discrimination and benefit women and their families tremendously.”

But in the end, bias against pregnant workers and whether they’ll land a certain job often comes down to perceptions, maintained King. In most cases, she said, the discrimination is based on a belief that a woman won’t be able to handle the job, or chose not to work after they have children.

In the case of Yahoo’s Mayer, she’s made it clear she’ll be more than productive in her new gig even as a mom.

Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said Mayer was not available for interviews Tuesday, but directed NBCNews.com to the Fortune article. Mayer did tweet the pregnancy news late Monday: "Another piece of good news today - @zackbogue and I are expecting a new baby boy!" (Zack Bogue is her husband.)

Mayer has a tough road ahead given the many Yahoo CEOs before her who have tried to turn the beleaguered company around in the last few years. There is no doubt Wall Street will be closely watching her progress. How will a pregnant CEO be perceived by investors?

"Turning Yahoo around is likely going to be a near impossible task; the stress, at least initially, is likely to be similar to that stress of starting Google, and you add to that the stress of having a child and the result could be catastrophic for one or the other," said technology analyst Rob Enderle. "On the other hand, this pregnancy might become a forcing function.  Often inexperienced turnaround CEOs learn too late the necessity of building a very strong balanced team; in order to take the pressure off of her during her pregnancy building such a team will have higher priority and, in the end, it will be the team that will do this not the CEO alone." 

The pregnancy, he continued, "may actually help focus Marissa on doing something that often is neglected and could actually better assure the result.   In the end her job is to turn Yahoo around; how she gets there isn’t as important. Being pregnant could become a best practice which would screw a lot of male CEOs out there."    

How women handle their pregnancies and how they disclose them, will likely impact their careers, King noted.

“Marissa Mayer made the decision to tell the company before the offer, which was ethical for her to do but not legally required,” she said. “I know women who waited to disclose pregnancy until after they got a job or promotion to protect the jobs they deserved.”

On a personal note, King admitted that she was pregnant when she was up for a promotion but waited to tell her co workers and managers until after she secured the position. "I have supportive supervisors and colleagues but I didn't want to chance it," she said. "I know the research."

Did you ever face a similar situation while job hunting? How did you handle it? Let us know. 

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Mark Lennihan / AP

Carol Bartz

Call it a 21st-century firing.

The New York Times reports that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was fired by phone while en route to New York from Maine.

According to the Times, Bartz promptly sent a note to her staff from her iPad informing them that she’d been fired and how it happened, and she wished them the best of luck.

Bartz, who was blamed for her inability to turn the struggling Internet company around, is one of millions of Americans who have been fired or laid off in the past few years. While some have been given a traditional sit-down talk, others have been shown the door far less ceremoniously.

Readers, is it OK to fire someone by phone? Vote below, and share your stories about the best and worst ways to handle the unpleasant task of letting someone go.