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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."
can I just email my resume to HR@sun.com? or should I walk in and say I want the job?
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
I certainly wouldn't want to reach under McNealy, especially near his low lows.
At the various conferences and other tech events I go to, I've met many Sun and Microsoft employees. One thing that really strikes me is that I've yet to meet a Sun employee younger than about 35, but I've also never met a Microsoft employee (other than an executive) over 35. I think this creates problems for both companies.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
OMG Sun is dying ... wait a minute. Almost slipped.
OMG Apple is dying
OMG *BSD is dying
OMG Linux is
How do you wildly underhype something? (Or even wildly underutilize or underimplement.) Does it involve caffeinated valium?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
SUN started in the 1980s as a Unix workstation vendor. They were very successful because, for a Unix vendor they were pretty cheap. Unfortunately for SUN, the PC was cheaper and progressed much faster than anyone in the 80s or early 90s could have imagined, and surpassed the SUN workstations while remaining much cheaper. Although SUN still has a pretty good presence in High-End computing, the market there was never really that big (apart from the fluke during the dot-com boom).
The new numbers for the latest quarter are coming out soon, so we'll have more to go on then.
I do find it a little distrubing that I'm even saying something like that.... The short term mentality for success is putting a lot of un-needed pressure on companies.
Anyway, like a previous poster said, this is the quarterly, "Oh, Sun's gonna die soon" thread. Don't believe it.
Look at SGI. They were going great during the early nineties and had their legs cut out from under 'em when the ATI/NVidia wars started and people realized they didn't need to buy those mondo-expensive graphics systems anymore.
Yet, they're still alive. Barely, but they're still alive.
It takes a lot to kill a company, and Sun's not going anywhere anytime soon. They have $7 BILLION in cash in the bank right now, have a strong R&D budget.
They're not going anywhere. Either is McNealy.
The PC was just a wound, it is Sun itself which is killing Sun. More acuratly it is the Sun directors which are causing harm. Watching Sun is like watching a schizophrenic. Do they hate Linux or love Linux this week? Do they love Java or hate Jav this week? Will they dilute the Java brand name with some other half assed project only tangebly connected with Java or will they hype up some new super-cool Java feature? Will they hate Microsoft or be in bed with them this week? Will they, won't they? Yes, no?
It would be unfair to say that Sun don't have any direction. They do; but it involves thousands of twists and u-turns and someone keeps changing the map.
...does this mean that when Sun actually dies, it will turn into a black hole and suck all the other silicon valley companies down? It sure is massive enough :)
I always figured that if you were at the top of the heap, and you were surrounded by friends, you could do pretty much anything you want.
In theory, to get to the top, you should know what's best for the business, how to implement what's best for the business, and be trustworthy to do so. However, anymore, it seems like an ivy league degree and some friends in high places are what it takes to get to the top. People aren't made into leaders just because they have that little slip of paper. Sure, it helps cultivate people who already have the talent, but just forcing your way through school won't make you a leader if you didn't have the skills to begin with.
OTOH, people like us are viewed as "resources". Therefore, we can be replaced, upgraded, downgraded, or simply pitched out like used up garbage. We have the skills, but not the connections. The people who have the connections frequently don't have the skills to evaluate OUR skills because they were hired, again, because of their little piece of paper rather than promoted because of what they proved they knew.
It really is a scary deformation of the way things are supposed to be. I'm sure management has a different view of things, but that's how I see it, and, from talking to other people, I don't seem to be alone in having that view.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The company I came to work for in 1994 was a training partner with SUN. We taught SUN classes; system admin, maintenance, some programming, etc. In 1995 Java came on the scene and we ramped up to teach that too. The demand for SUN instruction boomed so much we eventually branched out into 8 other locations around the country and the money was just pouring in. We almost had to beat back excess students with a stick. SUN also had their own training centers, but we (along with other training partners) got a lot of the overflow, or students who couldn't travel to SUN sites. (SUN did certify us as qualified instructors, if you must ask, and we often travelled to teach in their centers).
When the dot-com bust came, it came hard on training. Nobody wanted to learn any more. Most all of the training partners folded, and SUN absorbed a few of the more profitable ones for itself. Eventually, SUN divested itself of the education part and sold it off to a 3rd party named Accenture, while keeping only 3 centers for themselves (San Jose, Broomfield CO, and Burlington MA). Accenture has many of the other former SUN sites, and there are still a few struggling and starving training partners waiting for an upturn.
The demand for training is ever so slowly and painfully rising, about as fast as SUN's fortunes are now. But the heyday of the late '90s is long gone. And most of the instructors I personally knew were either released or they quit. These were some mighty bright people, too-- it was hard to see them go.
My outlook is wait and see. I myself am hibernating while teaching at a local technical college. Maybe things will get better, maybe they won't. Time will tell.
I was once told by someone in the top three executive tiers at Sun that they are an opportunistic company, meaning that they see a trend and jump on it. I didn't quite realize how true this was or more specifically how dangerous it was until it sank in. If you look back, they jumped on the band wagon catering to databases, then the jumped on webserver train, then they tried jumping on the low cost linux server trail, then they jumped in the Office Suite cubicle and finally grabbed onto the OSS bandwagon, each time spending more money for less or no profit. There has not been a concise vision or plan for this company for quite some time and they're paying for it now.
Unfortunately for Sun, they're not innovators and there are no current trends directly in their area for them to latch on to. Unfortunatley in lean times you need to either a) innovate and create new markets or b) produce commodity items cheaper. Neither of these things are congruent to Scott's vision or Sun's current form.
Even if Scott was to step down, what do you do with Sun? Java is not going to make it any money as a product, their in house developers are terrible and IBM has pretty much gobbled up large enterprise development market, Microsoft, agreement or not, is always looming in the corner looking to spank McNealy. If McNealy was smarter, he would have tried to be a visionary by latching onto biotech or something, developing other hardware that would leveraged his existing product base and created a reason to use his products over someone elses. But again, not innovators, regardless of how much they complain about Microsoft stiffling innovation.
Ultimately, Sun isn't quite a ship headed towards an iceberg, nor is it headed toward land. It's just circling in the middle of no where waiting for a volcano to build an island in its path.
Every ship needs to refuel at some point.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
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