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Pretty much all you need to know about working at Oracle: Making his point about the "creepiness," not only with Ellison but with Oracle's power structure, Gos
by bitmapbrother 9y ago
Pretty much all you need to know about working at Oracle:
Making his point about the "creepiness," not only with Ellison but with Oracle's power structure, Gosling said he sparked a notion to try to improve morale amongst the Sun faithful who endured the Oracle acquisition. He said the company decided to rent out the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, Calif., and allow the Sun folks to have a day of fun. Scott McNealy and Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz signed off on the project that came in well under budget and all systems were go, Gosling said. Except a few days before the event was to occur, Oracle Co-President Safra Catz got wind of it and put the kibosh on the thing.
"Safra found out and had a fit," Gosling said." The word came down that Oracle does not do employee appreciation events. So she forced the thing to be cancelled. But they didn't save any money because the money had been spent - so we ended up giving the tickets to charities. We were forced to give it up because it wasn't the -Oracle Way.' On the other hand, Oracle sponsors this sailboat for about $200 million."
- bluedino 9y agoWasn't McNealy on the Sun company ice hockey team back in the old days? It sounded like an incredible place to work back then
- bitL 9y agoYeah, SUN was cool back in the day before it moved to the "cursed" Santa Clara building. Interestingly, their original office is now occupied by Facebook (1 Hacker Way) and there is still sign of SUN in front of Facebook - unofficially to remind Facebook it shouldn't stop innovating.
- scintill76 9y agoNice story about the sign; here's more and pictures: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the-back-of-facebooks-sign-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the-back-...
- lobster_johnson 9y agoWhat do you mean by "cursed"?
- bitL 9y agoScott McNealy blamed SUN's misfortune on moving to a former psychiatric ward in Santa Clara - it coincides with SUN's loss of luck (and some directors really believed the building was cursed). Also, business-wide there is a known "headquarters curse", when a company feels it needs to have a more representative HQ. Let's see what it does to Apple.
- fred_is_fred 9y agoI think the failure has more to do with leaders who believe in curses than actual curses.
- luckydude 9y agoYeah, I've played with him/against him in some practices. Much preferred playing with him, he is bigger than me and could flatten me easily. Pretty decent player, better than me (I coached Los Gatos High hockey so I have some insight into who makes a good player and who doesn't).
- bitL 9y agoAnother interesting tidbit about Oracle - if you leave as a peon and return back after a few years, you are given exactly the same conditions as you had when you left, regardless of what you did in the years in-between. Oracle doesn't care if you progressed in the meantime.
- junkculture 9y agoWhy would anyone go back?
- nbdev 9y agoHe's full of shit, entirely.
- oraguy 9y agoBecause someone is incompetent? Oracle is a safe haven for incompetent managers and so called team leads. I know a few ex-colleagues of mine who left Oracle to join other companies and were shocked to see how fast and agile other companies were. It is not in Oracle's DNA to hold managers accountable or fire them for management blunders or shoddy management. So when some of these managers and team leads from Oracle joined other companies, they found much to their surprise that they were answerable to higher management for the state of the project they were managing. They could not keep up with the pace of development or having concrete responsibility, and returned to Oracle to live a purposeless but relaxed life where one would earn less but otherwise thrive in the company by doing little to no actual work.
- junkculture 9y agoThat's pretty much what happens to de facto monopolies. I've heard much the same about Microsoft's program managers.
- technion 9y agoI really wouldn't underestimate the investment on the Oracle yacht. I've known several executives to speak highly Oracle based on being avid sailors.