McNealy Steps Down as Sun Microsystems CEO

SlashdotOgre writes "Mercury News reports that Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, will be stepping down from his role as CEO. McNealy will continue as chairman, and fellow co-founder Jonathan Schwartz will now take the helm."

Comments

Rumors from a few days ago were true

[kbahey]

I am surprised the editors did not link to this rumor that McNealy is stepping down from a few days ago on Slashdot.

Funny McNealy dismissed this as a 22 year old rumor only a few days ago.

That's odd...

[Otter]

Schwartz is a PR genius, and the way he continuously trolls the Linux journalist/zealot community for attention is masterful. But that seems like a strange fit for the CEO position.

At any rate, this should prompt the 30-something crowd here and elsewhere to reflect on just what the hell they've been doing with thir careers while this guy becomes the CEO of Sun...

Re:That's odd...

[kfg]

At any rate, this should prompt the 30-something crowd here and elsewhere to reflect on just what the hell they've been doing with thir careers while this guy becomes the CEO of Sun...

In the words of the great Tom Lehrer:

"It's a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age. . .he'd been dead for three years."

KFG

Re:That's odd...

[rco3]

Excellent point. Let's see, what have I been doing with the last 18 years of my life... Ooh! Ooh! I've been NOT becoming a suit! I don't have to fucking TOUCH business or management! I can sit back and do engineering and research without having to do any of the bullshit that McNealy and Schwartz have to do.

Do they make more money? Yes. Do I care? Amazingly enough, not so much. Right now I have a roof over my head, food on the table, health insurance, decent transportation, daycare for the munchkin - and approximately 50% of my income is currently in the "disposable" column - meaning unallocated and available for new cars, nicer houses, fantastic stereo systems, huge monitors, etc. Next year, when I go full time, it gets better.

So thanks for pointing out what a difference there is between my position and Schwartz's. He does stuff I don't want to do, and gets paid more than he needs for doing it. I do what I love, and get paid more than I need for doing it. Sounds like I chose the right path. That was your point, right?

Re:Rumors from a few days ago were true

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Funny McNealy dismissed this as a 22 year old rumor only a few days ago.

Well it was a 22 year old rumor a few days ago...

Massive layoff forthcoming

[winkydink]

McNealy was resistant to a massive layoffs (25-35%), which analysts say are the only way to revamp Sun at this point.

More importantly, revamp as what? Big iron only?

I dunno

Re:Massive layoff forthcoming

[jadavis]

It's sad that Sun is looking at so much financial trouble right now (assuming they actually are, and it might not actually be that bad). Solaris 10 is really quite amazing software, and their chip designs look very promising. I think it would take Linux/FreeBSD a long time to catch up to some of the things in Solaris 10 like ZFS and DTrace.

I'm really pretty new to Solaris, however as soon as I started using it I could tell that they did real research on the kernel. I was very impressed after using Linux/FreeBSD for a long time. I can't think of any other companies actually doing that kind of research still. IBM does a lot of Linux development, but I sometimes get the feeling it's more to just make Linux into an AIX replacement (not that I know much about AIX).

Re:Massive layoff forthcoming

[Kadin2048]

Unless, of course, they fire the wrong people.

I've worked for a few big companies, and I can tell you with certainty that at any given time, AT LEAST 10% of the people working there were dead weight and could be eliminated.

But that's like saying, 3% of people in society are criminals. Okay, fine; but knowing that doesn't make picking the right ones any easier. You can't just decide to go out on Tuesday and round them all up.

You can spend the rest of your life (and a whole lot of people have) trying to find ways of figuring out which 10% or whatever are the unproductive ones. Occasionally, it's obvious. But more often, it's quite subtle; someone who looks unproductive on the surface might be just the person you need occasionally -- like some of the old-guard guys in my office: they don't do much but sit around and eat donuts 90% of the time, but when you need a piece of information, you know where to go to. And in that other 10% of the time, they make well up for their donut-munching. Likewise, there are interns and brand new hires who slave away constantly from 7:30AM to 6:30PM in some cases, but what they're working on is often not the most useful stuff around. (Of course, they're cheap, so they stay hired regardless.)

Firing people is like playing a game of russian roulette, but instead of just playing for your own brains, you're playing for a whole lot of people's jobs, futures, careers, and fortunes. I'd much rather keep around a few extra people than pull the trigger on someone that turns out, in some subtle and unforseen way, to be crucial to daily operations. Human social networks are a complex thing, and that's what you're really dealing with in "management." (Of course, only a few percentage of managers--usually the best ones in my experience--realize this.)

Re:Fellow co-founder

[fm6]

If you want to get technical, neither is McNealy. He was one of the first people recruited by Khosla and Bechtolsheim, but he had nothing to do with the initial creation of the company.

Schwartz actually did found a company: Lighthouse Design, a NextStep application developer that Sun bought out in 1996, and turned into the core of their Java Applications Group, which was supposed to develop applications for those Java-based network computers that were going to put Microsoft out of business.

What's always bugged me is that McNealy spent a ton of money to acquire LD and the other companies that got folded into JAG — all of which was wasted, because it soon became obvious that nobody was going to buy network computers, and there was no reason to keep JAG going. JAG wasn't the first, and it wasn't the last ill-conceived attempt by Sun to win the desktop war with Microsoft, and McNealy has never been called to account for all the money he wasted on that war — a war that already a conspicuous victory for Microsoft long before Sun even got involved.

Instead, McNealy is being forced out for failing to sell high-end computers at a time when nobody's buying them. Wall Street is stupid.

Re:Future of Java without Sun?

[hrvatska]

How would Java evolve without Sun to "guide" it. What would Sun certifications mean without Sun there to back it up?

IBM and a passel of other organizations who have based their application strategies on Java would put together an open source consortium that would support and guide Java. Something along the lines of the Eclipse or Apache foundations.

Re:Future of Java without Sun?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Hell, if M$ bought Java from SUN, we'd probably end up with better APIs.
I doubt it. Microsoft has had a couple of bold attempts to kill java, why would it better it?
It shipped JVM 1.1 with extensions, so that it really wasn't a compliant JVM. That left sun with the choice of either 1) accepting the changes, and having it controlled by MS, or 2) fighting them, leaving the Windows platform with an older JVM, and Bill G a "look we tried but Sun is so unreasonable" mood. They chose #2. Sucks for the people who are still saddled with a 1.1 JVM, most people wouldn't know to upgrade, and think that any suckitude is due to Java, not MS's hacking of it. I for one am saddled with not one but two apps that require JVM 1.1 and are they ever slow.

Even that wasn't enough, MS created C# as a Java killer. Think of it as Java as if the initial version was 1.4, already had learned the failures of the previous editions. They were able to learn from Sun's early mistakes. And you can also bust out of the VM when you want to, to tie you to Windows more tightly.

MS wants to destroy anything that it feels can destroy Windows. ANything that can be a platform that doesn't force you to use Windows is a threat. If it were possible to "buy" Java (and i'm not sure of the status of the JCP) they'd tightly tie it to windows, and make things not quite work right elsewhere.

And the M$ thing is old. Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. It is not the only for-profit company. Unless you feel the need to add $ to every company (do i hear $un anyone, Ci$co? $u$e?) it seems kind of pointless. Yes they have been convicted in a court of law for dirty tricks, but they are not the only one. There may be more use in targetting companies that actively kill people or foster repressive regimes ($hell Oil?)

Re:What does Sun need to do to succeed?

[Decaff]

Despite all that, the company has really screwed up. I don't think they did a good job advocating Java or buying the mindshare of the development community.

Eh? Have you any idea of the size of the Java development community?

Executives and Engineers

[kbahey]

he was an amazing businessman (he told stories about his job before Sun... at a dog food company) but simply had no connection to the tech.

Some of the lousiest managers and executives are techies. This is not to say that every techie is lousy manager/executive, but rather that it does not go automatically that a good engineer would be a good manager.

Some of the best executives for tech companies were non techies. Look at who turned around IBM from another dinosaur to be to what it is today: a tech capable respected company that is kinder and gentler: Lou Gerstner came from non other than Nabisco...

Re:Future of Java without Sun?

[javacowboy]

How did we go from McNealy leaving Sun to Sun going out of business and Java being "abandoned". Do I sense wishful thinking on your part? And you get moded "insightful"?

How did you infer that Sun was going out of business? They're not consistently profitable, but they're not bleeding red ink either. The company also has healthy cash reserves.

As for Java, the spec is wide open for anybody to implement, which the Apache Harmony project is in the process of doing. Sun may head the JCP, but other companies like IBM, Oracle, and BAE would pick up the slack, as they have too much invested in Java to abandon it.

Re:Day Late and a few Billion Dollars Short

[Alioth]

If Apple is also a failure and being beat upon by Gates like a rented mule...then give me some of that failure! It must be wonderful to be beat like a mule and to be an utter failure, after all, your stock price quadruples over the period of a couple of years. I think more of us can do with failure like that!