Slashdot Mirror
A Reflection On Sun Executive Payouts For Failure
With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."
I did study economics in college, up to senior level. My professors took time out early in each semester specifically to badmouth econometrics. One of them made sure to do it three or four times more during the semester.
The "mathematical models" I was taught were stunningly useless, and weren't even math. They wrote equations that weren't equations, but relations, and the relations they claimed to document were purely fictional. To this day I can still hear my Chinese TA say "opportunity cost" in heavily accented English, an overused phrase that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the decision making processes of humans.
Economics as a field of study is a joke in poor taste, and I doubt very much it has changed in the 14 years since I last suffered through a course. Nor will it, until the professors in question die of old age. They have tenure. It doesn't matter if they live in a fantasy world.