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Sun Microsystems, a CEO's Last Stand?
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek's cover article is a sharp look at Sun Microsystems. The gist of the article? That its fall can be laid at the Feet of its CEO, Scott McNealy. Overall, a balanced read, one that does a good recap of the the high and the very low low's that Sun has reached under McNealy."
/me waves ... 33 and been at Sun for 4 years. Of course, I was aquired, not hired, and most of the people my age who were aquired have been fired ("RIF'ed").
... it was spot-on. Alot of us down in the lower ranks have been saying the same things that the execs quoted in the article said. And most of us knew that McNealy was the one dodging the issues (sorry, holding steady). Personally I won't be too surprised, if Sun keeps the current stock trend, to see a company like IBM buy Sun out and strip out everything but R&D. We're good at R&D, but we've lost touch with the market.
There are a number of Sun engineering offices that have a majority age under 35, but alot of those are overseas so you won't meet them. The offices in California and the Sales offices definitely are of an older average age.
As for the article
I'm a software engineer who recieved my Masters in CS and am about to complete an MBA as well, so I've got some perspective from both sides.
Basically, you're right in that management views you as a resource that is somewhat replaceable. To expand on this though, you're not as easily replaceable as the fry cook at McDonalds so a little more strategy is involved. In order to accomodate for this, the MBA program teaches classes in "Leadership" and "Organizational Behavior". These classes veil themsleves as "making the employees happy an productive" but the reality is that they are courses in how to manipulate people into doing what you want, possibly to their detriment, while still thinking things are great.
Someone skilled in these management tools can keep you thinking you're work environment is awesome right up till you get your pink slip.
Bottom line: always look out for yourself and never trust the management
eh?
:-)
I loved the Netras. They were exactly the right product.
What is the value of a video card on a webserver? Or a floppy drive? Or even a CD-ROM, though I would usually end up ordering them, for the additional $135.
Would you really have run the Sun-supplied httpd under any circumstances?? At the time, they were always shipping versions that were seriously outdated. They shipped sendmail4 for YEARS after sendmail8 was out! (This I never understood.)
I bought hundreds of Netras (literally, for a dozen different clients). They were a great way to build a cheap presentation layer for a web farm.
The standard pair of network interfaces was nice too (and rare among HW vendors, at the time). It saved $800 for a quad card.
Yes, they were IDE and there was no MBus. That didn't bother me at all. I used them where there were already good design reasons for system redundancy, either for failover or scaling.
So obviously, the Netras fit my needs perfectly and not yours. For those who weren't around at the time, Linux was *not* a viable option for a large production web farm at the time. It definitely *is* now, and IMHO that's why Sun is so devalued.
Solaris is still superior to Linux in many ways, but Linux is just as good or better for the vast majority of the market. If they were priced equally (TCO- admins, hardware, and software combined), Solaris would still be holding on. They aren't. It isn't.
I still own a bunch of Sun stock that I'm unwilling to sell at this deep of a loss. Come on Scott, make me proud of my stubbornness. Steve did!