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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."
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.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
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.
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...
.he'd been dead for three years."
In the words of the great Tom Lehrer:
"It's a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age. .
KFG
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?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
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.
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?)
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.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."