UPDATE THE POST WS REMOVED as of Dec. 3! All that is left is this clip.
McNealy…”You’re FIRED!” — Grudge websites are always entertaining. I’m actually surprised more of them aren’t done by irked and laid-off employees more often. I figured blogging software would make it easy. Here is one from long-time industry maven, Michael Murdock.
I am publicly calling on the BOARD of SUN along with Scott McNealy to step down and a new Board be voted in. All current managment should leave, or be fired. It’s time for changes at the company. Time to reorganize, reevaluate every employee, every salary, and every expenditure (cellphones big time expense for SUN). Time for a visionary to come in and save the company. Steve Jobs are you reading this? It’s time for Apple to come in, BUY SUN and fire the entire management team.
And because of this website you can be certain that this will happen immediately!!
I’m working on a grudge site. I worked on a TV show this summer. A former friend was the general contractor and he brought me on to work. I worked very hard and the tv people noticed, they asked me to come back. Larry didn’t pay me for the first show, the production company did for the second two shows. Larry paid me a month late, and then his check bounced. He also stopped me from working further on the show.
I’ve been a contractor at Sun for 4 months now. Most of the internal propaganda I heard from McNealy and Schwartz made sense to me, but I ignored it because I’ve been duped before. Meanwhile, the stock has risen 66% in the time I’ve been there. D’oh!
Jonathan Schwartz: Expert Leaker.
Sun’s hardware business got slammed by the dot.com bust, and they have been regrouping and reorganizing the best they can. Clearly they can’t afford to have as many employees building machines that don’t sell anymore, for reasons and trends that are really beyond McNeally’s control. And without hardware sales, they can’t afford to subsidize as many products that they’re giving away for free, like Solaris, or Java.
But I agree with their taking the long view and sticking with Solaris and Sparc as viable and necessary platforms. Solaris 10 is pretty cool and will pay dividends for IT departments. I think now McNealy will start charging for software, since that’s where the value is.
In fact he has to, because they’ve adopted a “negative margin” strategy on hardware. This is a big mistake in my book, as it leads to a downward spiral. But if you’re going to cut margins to the bone, you might as well go as far as it takes to win business in competitive bidding.
The point is that this former employee’s website, and most of them, are sour grapes because they lost their job. I don’t see any evidence that the current leadership can’t see what’s actually happenning in the marketplace, and what they have to do to turn around. In fact, new management would probably cut even more jobs and projects left and right, but McNealy is taking a long term, strategic view as a founder.
The risk for all companies concerned is competing in a mature and stagnant IT market.
Another real story is the way they’re trying to create or take back market share in the J2ME space. And winning. IBM and the phone manufacturers get all upset at the way Sun is muscling some of the JSRs through. But if you want a viable protector of Java, then SUN has to make money on Java _somehow_. They’ve created the common platform for millions of cell phone games to be deployed, worth billions in revenue, let alone other types of applications in the pipeline. There are too many commies in the open-source community who think it’s anathema for a company to be making money off an “open standard.” In reading the JSRs and the whole Java Community Process, I’m amazed at how open it actually is. I don’t understand the hoopla really. It’s only hinted at by certain companies’ criticisms on certain J2ME JSRs. But they’re being paranoid. (Dvorak investigative lead. hint hint.)
Better to have a champion for your platform than leaving it open to the MSFT smear campaign department. That’s a real department now, right?, staffed by lawyers, trolls, and PR types.
The reason we do not see more grudge sites is because most corporations are going to think twice before hiring someone that has built one of these things. Would you want someone working for you that has a track record of publicly denouncing a former employer?
Would you want someone working for you that has a track record of publicly denouncing a former employer?
Thats one of the things that gives me a little pause. I’m not so much upset with the employer as my manager. I try to be fair and tell my side of the story, but also leave a little room for interpretation. The thing is, if the show is editted with any fidelity to reality, my former boss will be shown for the obvious fraud and liar that he is. I have been fired a couple of times. There are good and bad ways to do it.
Good:
I’m sorry there are people progressing faster than you in training, we like you, you show up on time. This employer then bought back the company uniform I had just bought. (Restaruant)
Sorry, business is slowing down and we don’t have room for you. (restaruant, construction).
Bad:
Not paying me on time. Then bouncing the check that you finally pay me with.
Showing up for a shift, and being told you have been replaced.