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I realize people like to hate on Oracle, and some hate justified, but there's also a reason why Oracle is one of the extremely few tech companies that have surv

I realize people like to hate on Oracle, and some hate justified, but there's also a reason why Oracle is one of the extremely few tech companies that have survived the test of time. Gosling is complaining about about pay and management oversight. Has anyone wonder if overpay and no oversight is what contributed to Sun's failure. Speaking as an insider, I can say with 100% certainty it was. Sun had this hardware business that was printing money and then the music stopped. I wonder if Google might suffer a similar fate like Sun. As soon as ad-revenue slows down, will they need to grow up and be managed like a real company by putting restrictions on pay and enforce management oversight.

nickbauman 9y ago
What killed Sun was they made a big bet in something that was an evolutionary cul-de-sac. In business sectors that rely heavily on innovation, if you make and test bets carefully, you survive. If you don't, you don't. Cushy perks* don't matter. And the jury certainly is out on Oracle. Right now Oracle is a company where great software goes to die. All signs point to them eventually ending up like Yahoo. It'll take a while, but the handwriting is already on the wall. (*within reason)
gtufano 9y ago
You're right on most accounts but (and it's a big but) there is a world between SUNW lush-y experience, events, "primadonnas" and Oracle's "it's just extorting money from customers locked-in in any case so fk off the people working for us". (disclaimer: I've been in both).
iamcreasy 9y ago
> Speaking as an insider, I can say with 100% certainty it was. Can you elaborate on that?
jakewins 9y ago
I don't know that it's fair to say that Oracle has survived the test of time; their core business has been on a steady decline for years; now they are playing catch-up in cloud and are talking about second derivative growth like they were an undergrad startup. The fact is that they have not grown their top line for five years(1), 70% of their business is in a dying sector and they have opted to cut R&D spending in favor of stock buybacks and dividend payouts for years(2). I don't see how they can change course; their investors keep asking for dividends while the bulk of their competitors are either privately owned or public with strong founder/owners; point being Oracles competitors are controlled by investors that want R&D spending, Oracle is not, and Oracle sorely needs R&D to build a portfolio that'll keep them from being yet another leveraged buy-out.. (1) https://ycharts.com/companies/ORCL/revenues (2) http://marketrealist.com/2016/12/oracles-share-buybacks-dividend-trend-will-run-2017/
- Turbots 9y ago
  they are extremely arrogant, too. They said they will be the biggest cloud provider in the world in 5 years (bigger than AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure)... I'll eat my hat if they succeed in that! ;-)
Diederich 9y ago
> will they need to grow up and be managed like a real company by putting restrictions on pay and enforce management oversight. I've been at a couple of larger than Oracle-sized organizations that paid quite well and didn't have a lot of 'management oversight'....which I am taking to mean, roughly, 'top-down, heavy-handed management'.
Turbots 9y ago
No amount of management oversight can overcome a failing business model... If the revenue starts slowing down, you adapt or you die. It is the ability to adapt that is crucial, so you need to keep your employees (your tech people in this case) very happy, motivated and free to pursue what they believe is the next model to make peoples lives easier (which will start generating revenue again).
bitmapbrother 9y ago
You're saying that Oracle has grown up. This is a quote from your security chief: >Stop checking our code for vulnerabilities That's not the reaction from a company that's "grown up". It's a sign of a company that still has growing up to do.

nickbauman 9y ago

What killed Sun was they made a big bet in something that was an evolutionary cul-de-sac. In business sectors that rely heavily on innovation, if you make and test bets carefully, you survive. If you don't, you don't. Cushy perks* don't matter. And the jury certainly is out on Oracle. Right now Oracle is a company where great software goes to die. All signs point to them eventually ending up like Yahoo. It'll take a while, but the handwriting is already on the wall. (*within reason)

gtufano 9y ago

You're right on most accounts but (and it's a big but) there is a world between SUNW lush-y experience, events, "primadonnas" and Oracle's "it's just extorting money from customers locked-in in any case so fk off the people working for us". (disclaimer: I've been in both).

iamcreasy 9y ago

> Speaking as an insider, I can say with 100% certainty it was. Can you elaborate on that?

jakewins 9y ago

I don't know that it's fair to say that Oracle has survived the test of time; their core business has been on a steady decline for years; now they are playing catch-up in cloud and are talking about second derivative growth like they were an undergrad startup. The fact is that they have not grown their top line for five years(1), 70% of their business is in a dying sector and they have opted to cut R&D spending in favor of stock buybacks and dividend payouts for years(2). I don't see how they can change course; their investors keep asking for dividends while the bulk of their competitors are either privately owned or public with strong founder/owners; point being Oracles competitors are controlled by investors that want R&D spending, Oracle is not, and Oracle sorely needs R&D to build a portfolio that'll keep them from being yet another leveraged buy-out.. (1) https://ycharts.com/companies/ORCL/revenues (2) http://marketrealist.com/2016/12/oracles-share-buybacks-dividend-trend-will-run-2017/

Turbots 9y ago
they are extremely arrogant, too. They said they will be the biggest cloud provider in the world in 5 years (bigger than AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure)... I'll eat my hat if they succeed in that! ;-)

Diederich 9y ago

> will they need to grow up and be managed like a real company by putting restrictions on pay and enforce management oversight. I've been at a couple of larger than Oracle-sized organizations that paid quite well and didn't have a lot of 'management oversight'....which I am taking to mean, roughly, 'top-down, heavy-handed management'.

Turbots 9y ago

No amount of management oversight can overcome a failing business model... If the revenue starts slowing down, you adapt or you die. It is the ability to adapt that is crucial, so you need to keep your employees (your tech people in this case) very happy, motivated and free to pursue what they believe is the next model to make peoples lives easier (which will start generating revenue again).

bitmapbrother 9y ago

You're saying that Oracle has grown up. This is a quote from your security chief: >Stop checking our code for vulnerabilities That's not the reaction from a company that's "grown up". It's a sign of a company that still has growing up to do.