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Co-founder Joy to leave Sun
TheLinuxWarrior writes "An article
at CNET says Bill Joy, Sun Micro co-founder and chief scientist, is leaving the company." You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
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Lame attempts at humor notwithstanding, I found it a great joy to leave Sun. Though working with Joy up in Aspen would be a fine scenario.
When I started working with SunOS in 1992, I thought that working at the pioneering company would be a great career path. After several years, I finally got there, and was immensely distressed at the culture of "not invented here" and "zero career growth" as unspoken rules. They build lovely campuses to work in, but boy did it suck to be a minion there.
After several years, I finally got there, and was immensely distressed at the culture of "not invented here" and "zero career growth" as unspoken rules.
Same with nearly all companies. There are two philosophies of running companies.
Method #1: "Core Technology Group" - Form your core technology group with experienced staff. Then recruit project managers to manage software engineers. Any strangers will only get offered the dead-end jobs while nieces/nephews and trusted staff get the good software engineering jobs. This is great if you're an senior engineer/architect. The advantage of this method is you keep your senior staff. The disadvantage is that you keep losing your junior staff.
Method #2: "Everyone gets pushed up into management". In this method, the philosophy is to get the new graduates to bring in new ideas. Whenever somebody comes along and has experience (from another company or an university project) an existing member of staff is promoted to team leader. After several pushes they get pushed into a project manager (and promptly leave to set up their own company). In some states/countries management will slap on a Non-Compete-Agreement if they can get off with it. This usually ends up with the brightest entry-level graduates not applying to the company. The disadvantage is that even if you are loyal to the company you'll more often than not get bogged down in some tedious but critical part of a project, only to see new graduates get to work on the latest technology.
This is great when you're an entry level graduate. The disadvantage to the company is that they keep losing their senior staff. Smaller companies seem to be run this way.
Be lucky you haven't applied to a company which uses grad-fighting as an interview technique: Invite 10-12 graduates to an interview session and sit them around a table for a debate. Tell them that there are several positions available and that these will go to the individuals who make the most contribution to the debate. Then sit back and watch the fight take place.