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That's a good thing right? I mean, I'm not implying that Google is on the opposite side of this, but still, I'd wager most people on HN would love to be a Larry

That's a good thing right? I mean, I'm not implying that Google is on the opposite side of this, but still, I'd wager most people on HN would love to be a Larry Ellison (riches aside), where you get start a product today, and still be relevant with that same product 40 years from now. I honestly don't get the Oracle hate from HN people, even if I do understand it from the Slashdot folks.

cromwellian 7y ago
I previously worked at Oracle for years in the dotcom era and I can tell you the company culture was horrid. It was completely sales driven, sales people would often lie to customers and promise the product had a feature which it either didn’t have or was not well supported and then have to fly in expensive consultants afterwards to fix the resulting shitshow. I accompanied Sales Account managers with fellow female engineers to client meeting where they, and I’m not kidding, discussed which strip clubs they would go to after the meetings. If Apple is a designer culture, and Google is an engineer culture, then I‘d say Oracle is driven by a hierarchy of sales culture.
- mrep 7y ago
  > I‘d say Oracle is driven by a hierarchy of sales culture. Isn't Oracle a legal driven company [0] :) [0]: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > It was completely sales driven Another perspective is that Oracle is one of just a few tech companies left that has a proper dedicated research lab that does long-term research without asking about profit. I worked on my research project there for six years and nobody once asked me how we were going to make money from it, let alone talked about sales. That’s pretty special these days. Oracle even paid me a senior developer salary while I worked on my PhD. Hard to say that’s ‘completely sales driven!’
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Google has this as well.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      I don’t think Google has dedicated research labs do they? They’re very proud that they integrate research into (sales driven) product groups. https://youtu.be/0wqc69oNbms https://youtu.be/0wqc69oNbms And so what anyway? Google is also good at supporting things not sales driven means that Oracle isn’t?
      - mav3rick 7y ago
        Google specifically has Google Research and a Research Scientist track.
        chrisseaton 7y ago
        Their video says that’s not separate, but people embedded in product groups.
        dodobirdlord 7y ago
        https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/quantum-supremacy-using-programmable.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/quantum-supremacy-using-pr... There's plenty of lab research going on.
      - cameronbrown 7y ago
        DeepMind, Google Brain, Google AI..
        dralley 7y ago
        Project Zero could be counted as well
  - saagarjha 7y ago
- newswasboring 7y ago
  Discussing strip clubs in front of your colleagues is bad. Isn't worse because they are female.
  - cromwellian 7y ago
    True but it’s even more tone deaf when the sales bros/Mad Men aren’t even woke enough to realize what they’re doing outside the lockerroom.
    - newswasboring 7y ago
      Yeah but saying it to me (a male) would still be tone deaf, right? There are no locker rooms even in locker rooms these days. All I'm saying is, it being in front of me is disgusting enough.
    - snagglegaggle 7y ago
      Why is that? Are you uncomfortable with men expressing their sexuality? Or perhaps you see strippers as abused and taken advantage of? I personally think stripclubs arre a waste of money, but I know femenists that would take exception to either of those above.
      - newswasboring 7y ago
        I'm not afraid or uncomfortable with expressions of sexuality but a boardroom is hardly an appropriate place for it. I don't understand the argument that just because something is a normal part of life it somehow becomes ok to talk about it anywhere. Taking a shit is a normal part of life, that doesn't make it ok to discuss your weekly bowl movements in the board room. In different social settings there are different levels of comfort between people. You can be ok with strip clubs, there are perfectly valid opinions for and against them, but I come to a board room to discuss business, not your sexuality.
        snagglegaggle 7y ago
        If it was the topic of the board meeting, definitely not appropriate, but otherwise it's just the conversation was not meant for you. Can you imagine the abuse I'd catch if I complained about overhearing women talk about their periods? Or, to make it more fair, planning some kind of hypersexualized bachelorette party.
judge2020 7y ago
Not everyone strives for a relevant product just because of vendor lock-in, I'd wager most of HN would rather make good, portable products that only stay relevant due to continued hard work and incremental feature upgrades.
intc 7y ago
It would be really good to have a product which is relevant after 40 years WITHOUT adopting business model of an organized crime syndicate. In other words: Having a product which is relevant after 40 years.
danShumway 7y ago
I've worked at Oracle in an engineering (not management) position, and I've seen the (tail end) of the way they interact with acquisitions. I tend to be somewhat guarded about talking about it -- I don't see a benefit to me badmouthing a former employer. But, I'll be open and honest for this comment. The analogy I use to describe Oracle is that they're this kind of massive lumbering beast that just lays around and occasionally swallows other companies alive and whole. Then those companies run around inside, burning existing customer good will for a while until Oracle finishes digesting them or generating whatever news-reports or vendor lock-in they wanted in the first place. Then Oracle goes out to find another company to eat. I saw a slow movement with my particular department away from developing useful software towards, "just keep on releasing things, just keep on trying to figure out what looks good at trade shows, just keep the department moving forward like a zombie while it gets eaten away and resources get shifted to new acquisitions and lawyers and salespeople." The software wasn't even a secondary concern, it was just a very minor part of the company that happened on the side. Writing code was a side-effect of the business, our real business was sales and grand promises and multi-year contracts that everyone was going to regret. As a developer that wants to build products that actually help businesses and users, it felt really, really bad -- and my impression interacting with other parts of the business and other departments felt the same. Like they were just kind of lumbering on, that they existed because a few companies were locked in or were still buying them, and a few more dollars could be extracted before they starved to death or until their staff was fully absorbed into new projects. I won't go into any more specific detail than that; for better or worse I feel like I have some responsibility to be a little vague. But by the time I left I was convinced that any company Oracle bought or any project it maintained was doomed as soon as they touched it. It's one of the reasons I won't work with Java -- I just don't want to tie myself to a technology that's owned by a company like that. The current case with Sun is to me perfectly in character with the company. Oracle bought Sun, killed everything that made it Sun, and now their lawyers are out trying to extract every last penny they can get out of its mostly rotted corpse, all under the guise of 'protecting their investment' or whatever. I'm very cynical on Oracle now, and I wasn't even at the company very long. Since moving on I've been able to work on industry-scale software that's actually being designed for customers and that actually cares about helping them accomplish business goals. It's a massive breath of fresh air that I'm still grateful for to this day. It makes a huge difference to be able to get up in the morning and feel like there's an actual reason you're going to work beyond buying Ellison a new yacht.
feanaro 7y ago
I'd wager that many people on HN are not interested in the startup and VC aspects at all. I come here for the news, the geekery and the expertise.
lstodd 7y ago
I ... don't know about everyone else here, but personally I'd rather become a McAfee than an Ellison. At least John has this thing called sense of humor.
- kweinber 7y ago
  I don’t think his neighbor’s family would agree with you: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.itpro.co.uk/security/33284/john-mcafee-ordered-to-pay-25-million-over-neighbours-murder%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.itpro.co.uk/security/33284/...
  - lstodd 7y ago
    This article reads like something from theonion or babylon bee. Especially the last paragraph. Did you read it? It's either an elaborate joke, or McAfee wrote it himself. Or both. In any case, if I was an US citizen and had to choose between him and Trump, well, that would've been a very hard choice. They both deliver.

cromwellian 7y ago

I previously worked at Oracle for years in the dotcom era and I can tell you the company culture was horrid. It was completely sales driven, sales people would often lie to customers and promise the product had a feature which it either didn’t have or was not well supported and then have to fly in expensive consultants afterwards to fix the resulting shitshow. I accompanied Sales Account managers with fellow female engineers to client meeting where they, and I’m not kidding, discussed which strip clubs they would go to after the meetings. If Apple is a designer culture, and Google is an engineer culture, then I‘d say Oracle is driven by a hierarchy of sales culture.

mrep 7y ago
> I‘d say Oracle is driven by a hierarchy of sales culture. Isn't Oracle a legal driven company [0] :) [0]: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
chrisseaton 7y ago
> It was completely sales driven Another perspective is that Oracle is one of just a few tech companies left that has a proper dedicated research lab that does long-term research without asking about profit. I worked on my research project there for six years and nobody once asked me how we were going to make money from it, let alone talked about sales. That’s pretty special these days. Oracle even paid me a senior developer salary while I worked on my PhD. Hard to say that’s ‘completely sales driven!’
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Google has this as well.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    I don’t think Google has dedicated research labs do they? They’re very proud that they integrate research into (sales driven) product groups. https://youtu.be/0wqc69oNbms https://youtu.be/0wqc69oNbms And so what anyway? Google is also good at supporting things not sales driven means that Oracle isn’t?
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      Google specifically has Google Research and a Research Scientist track.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        Their video says that’s not separate, but people embedded in product groups.
        dodobirdlord 7y ago
        https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/quantum-supremacy-using-programmable.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/quantum-supremacy-using-pr... There's plenty of lab research going on.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      DeepMind, Google Brain, Google AI..
      - dralley 7y ago
        Project Zero could be counted as well
- saagarjha 7y ago
newswasboring 7y ago
Discussing strip clubs in front of your colleagues is bad. Isn't worse because they are female.
- cromwellian 7y ago
  True but it’s even more tone deaf when the sales bros/Mad Men aren’t even woke enough to realize what they’re doing outside the lockerroom.
  - newswasboring 7y ago
    Yeah but saying it to me (a male) would still be tone deaf, right? There are no locker rooms even in locker rooms these days. All I'm saying is, it being in front of me is disgusting enough.
  - snagglegaggle 7y ago
    Why is that? Are you uncomfortable with men expressing their sexuality? Or perhaps you see strippers as abused and taken advantage of? I personally think stripclubs arre a waste of money, but I know femenists that would take exception to either of those above.
    - newswasboring 7y ago
      I'm not afraid or uncomfortable with expressions of sexuality but a boardroom is hardly an appropriate place for it. I don't understand the argument that just because something is a normal part of life it somehow becomes ok to talk about it anywhere. Taking a shit is a normal part of life, that doesn't make it ok to discuss your weekly bowl movements in the board room. In different social settings there are different levels of comfort between people. You can be ok with strip clubs, there are perfectly valid opinions for and against them, but I come to a board room to discuss business, not your sexuality.
      - snagglegaggle 7y ago
        If it was the topic of the board meeting, definitely not appropriate, but otherwise it's just the conversation was not meant for you. Can you imagine the abuse I'd catch if I complained about overhearing women talk about their periods? Or, to make it more fair, planning some kind of hypersexualized bachelorette party.

judge2020 7y ago

Not everyone strives for a relevant product just because of vendor lock-in, I'd wager most of HN would rather make good, portable products that only stay relevant due to continued hard work and incremental feature upgrades.

intc 7y ago

It would be really good to have a product which is relevant after 40 years WITHOUT adopting business model of an organized crime syndicate. In other words: Having a product which is relevant after 40 years.

danShumway 7y ago

I've worked at Oracle in an engineering (not management) position, and I've seen the (tail end) of the way they interact with acquisitions. I tend to be somewhat guarded about talking about it -- I don't see a benefit to me badmouthing a former employer. But, I'll be open and honest for this comment. The analogy I use to describe Oracle is that they're this kind of massive lumbering beast that just lays around and occasionally swallows other companies alive and whole. Then those companies run around inside, burning existing customer good will for a while until Oracle finishes digesting them or generating whatever news-reports or vendor lock-in they wanted in the first place. Then Oracle goes out to find another company to eat. I saw a slow movement with my particular department away from developing useful software towards, "just keep on releasing things, just keep on trying to figure out what looks good at trade shows, just keep the department moving forward like a zombie while it gets eaten away and resources get shifted to new acquisitions and lawyers and salespeople." The software wasn't even a secondary concern, it was just a very minor part of the company that happened on the side. Writing code was a side-effect of the business, our real business was sales and grand promises and multi-year contracts that everyone was going to regret. As a developer that wants to build products that actually help businesses and users, it felt really, really bad -- and my impression interacting with other parts of the business and other departments felt the same. Like they were just kind of lumbering on, that they existed because a few companies were locked in or were still buying them, and a few more dollars could be extracted before they starved to death or until their staff was fully absorbed into new projects. I won't go into any more specific detail than that; for better or worse I feel like I have some responsibility to be a little vague. But by the time I left I was convinced that any company Oracle bought or any project it maintained was doomed as soon as they touched it. It's one of the reasons I won't work with Java -- I just don't want to tie myself to a technology that's owned by a company like that. The current case with Sun is to me perfectly in character with the company. Oracle bought Sun, killed everything that made it Sun, and now their lawyers are out trying to extract every last penny they can get out of its mostly rotted corpse, all under the guise of 'protecting their investment' or whatever. I'm very cynical on Oracle now, and I wasn't even at the company very long. Since moving on I've been able to work on industry-scale software that's actually being designed for customers and that actually cares about helping them accomplish business goals. It's a massive breath of fresh air that I'm still grateful for to this day. It makes a huge difference to be able to get up in the morning and feel like there's an actual reason you're going to work beyond buying Ellison a new yacht.

feanaro 7y ago

I'd wager that many people on HN are not interested in the startup and VC aspects at all. I come here for the news, the geekery and the expertise.

lstodd 7y ago

I ... don't know about everyone else here, but personally I'd rather become a McAfee than an Ellison. At least John has this thing called sense of humor.

kweinber 7y ago
I don’t think his neighbor’s family would agree with you: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.itpro.co.uk/security/33284/john-mcafee-ordered-to-pay-25-million-over-neighbours-murder%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.itpro.co.uk/security/33284/...
- lstodd 7y ago
  This article reads like something from theonion or babylon bee. Especially the last paragraph. Did you read it? It's either an elaborate joke, or McAfee wrote it himself. Or both. In any case, if I was an US citizen and had to choose between him and Trump, well, that would've been a very hard choice. They both deliver.