Sun's CIO Talks Internal Experiences

daria42 writes "This is an interesting interview with Sun's chief information officer Bill Vass, about his experiences as the CIO of one of the world's best-known high-tech company. In particular, Vass talks about corporate blogging (and frustrated lawyers), problems providing IT support to finicky Sun engineers (who sometimes demand Indian help desk support knows kernel details), Sun's programs testing its software internally on employees before it goes out, and how ultimately, his job is like any other CIO's...just with some cool toys."

Comments

Sun is buying Novell!

[AKAImBatman]

For example, he said Sun president Jonathan Schwartz -- who keeps a public blog -- was frustrated when April Fool's day came around, because he couldn't use his blog to play a practical joke.

"A few times, he's said things like 'maybe we should acquire Novell', and it changed the stock price," Vass said of Schwartz's blog. "You have to be careful ... if ever he's writing anything controversial he has to get the lawyers to look at it."

Sun is buying Novell? Ack! I need to go call my stock broker!

Re:One Point, One Big Problem

[Lumpy]

this problem is typically management's fault. or caused by management.

I am the guy who just replaced one of those engineering guru guys. he has crap EVERYWHERE running critical systems and data collection as well as processing. someone powered off his PC and crashed the billing system.

After digging in his notes and code as well as his old email I discovered that he wanted to do things right, he had a subversion server set up and a development as well as a production server in the server room.

But, management did not allow him to do his job right. I saw endless emails and messages about needing X Y or Z right now! did he finish Z yet? why is Y not in testing? who told you to stop working on X?

it was endless so the poor guy had to half ass everything because management refused to hire him any help, refused to accept realistic deadlines or adjust importance... everything was top super critical!

I was promoted to this position, I was able to find out most of this before accepting the promotion and told them that I work very differently. I use project management, refuse to work on 5 things at the same time as that creates 5 crappy, broken things as well as makes the process 10 times longer. I explained my concerns to the divisional VP that interviewed me and he agreed that that working atmosphere was not acceptable and told me that I have his authority to tell my superiors that they have to sort out priorities themselves and that EVERY new project request will come in at the bottom of the to-do list unless it has been signed off by the VP of operations to deserve to be escalated above everything else.

The origional mess was cause by management. and until someone in management gives a peon engineer or programmer the authority and protection to tell other management "nope, sorry." it will never get any better.