7 ms·

Good for Paul. He has wanted the CEO job forever, and was notoriously bitter about being passed over last time. Don’t expect a revolution in Red Hat’s strategy

by zapita 7y ago

Good for Paul. He has wanted the CEO job forever, and was notoriously bitter about being passed over last time. Don’t expect a revolution in Red Hat’s strategy or culture. Paul was already extremely influential, especially on product and R&D which are not Jim’s strong suits. Things to know about Paul: - He is very competitive and has a zero-sum approach to competition: for him to win, someone else has to lose. - He has a bad temper. If you work on the same floor as him, you will hear yelling. - He doesn’t shy away from Oracle-style tactics. Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”).

notacoward 7y ago
Oh, he's not going to like the phrase "Oracle-style" at all. Another thing people should know about Paul Cormier is that his hatred for Oracle knows no bounds. There's certainly no love lost between the two companies at any level, but even in that context the depth of his loathing for them seemed notable. Some might say excessive. I was there for eight years BTW.
- zapita 7y ago
  That is true - the hatred of Oracle runs deep. But when it comes to competitive tactics, they have more in common than the Red Hat marketing brochure would have you believe.
  - op00to 7y ago
    Like what?
    - zapita 7y ago
      Like what I wrote in my original comment: > Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”)
      - silly-silly 7y ago
        From someone coming from support, This is horseshit.
        notacoward 7y ago
        It has to be horseshit. A significant part of Red Hat's value-add is customers can go to them with problems that might not actually be Red Hat's own, and still get help resolving them. "One throat to choke" is the charming phrase I often heard. It's huge for enterprise customers, and a big part of what they pay large sums of money for. I'm sure there are some cases where Red Hat does have to say they can't support something, but doing so willy-nilly would be suicidal.
        freedomben 7y ago
        I work for Red Hat Consulting helping customers with their Red Hat products (especially OpenShift) and I can confirm we often help customers who are using products that aren't ours, or even are competitors with ours. Just yesterday I was helping diagnose a problem with Hashicorp Vault. I've written code for this customer to integrate one of our solutions with it as well. My team has helped with Spring Boot issues (a "competitor" to us) and Liberty, and more. We try to help with everything. I can't speak on whether that will change or not since I don't know the future, but it wouldn't be an easy thing to move. It's deeply embedded in our culture.
Longhanks 7y ago
Sounds like a unhealthy place to work at.
- zapita 7y ago
  Like most large companies, it depends on your team and assignment.
- BaronVonSteuben 7y ago
  Indeed, that is my thought as well. If I worked there I'd want to stay as far away from this guy as possible. Red Hat seems like a pretty big company tho, so probably the average person never interacts with the CEO. But still, the tone gets set at the top, and will filter down.
  - op00to 7y ago
    You decide your opinion on the leaders of your company based on unverified bogeyman stories on a message board? Oh boy.
- rwmj 7y ago
  As an actual Red Hat employee (also someone who has seen Paul C both at a distance and close up for over a decade), it's a healthy and happy workplace. Also Paul has been effectively doing day to day running of Red Hat as long as I've been here, so I don't expect that much to change.
- cachestash 7y ago
  Big over reaction and this is making him sound far worse than he is. Its more passion than rage with Paul as Red Hat is everything to him an he believes in the company 100%. There is also a lot more to Red Hat for its leadership. Jim is still up a level and then you have Chris Wright the CTO, a genuinely soft spoken sweet man.
cachestash 7y ago
Agree with this, he is no wall flower. Its harder to meet someone more passionate about Red Hat than Paul.
- dralley 7y ago
  There is certainly different flavors of "passion", and I'd personally prefer a different one. Oh well.
_jal 7y ago
> He doesn’t shy away from Oracle-style tactics And that will be the end of RH products in my shop. Fuck that noise, if you treat your customers like adversaries, I won't be one of them.
- icelancer 7y ago
  Red Hat has been running this way for years.
BaronVonSteuben 7y ago
As someone who is a big fan of Red Hat, it horrifies me to see the new CEO be described like that. He sounds like one of the worst people for Red Hat. I admit I despise power seekers and people with tempers, so that's coloring my view a lot. I have always been optimistic about Red Hat's future, but this has me very worried. Red Hat has done so much good in the world, and it would suck to see them shrink or disappear. That said tho, I'd rather they go extinct than become evil. The latter suddenly seems like a possibility. I sure hope I'm wrong.
- zapita 7y ago
  A counter-point is that, if you like Red Hat today, you will probably still like Red Hat in 5 years, because the new CEO played a key role in getting Red Hat to this point.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- barkingcat 7y ago
  Yah similar to zapita's reply below, if this person is a driving force in redhat's past, you probably won't see any changes if you liked what they were doing in the past. Brings to light an understanding of things like systemd though. I can understand how a culture like this would promote systemd's "all or nothing" approach. The thing is, this is how Redhat Wins and has been winning ... I think redhat won't disappear because of this leadership style, but this is how it has been getting contracts, making money, getting sponsorships, and being attractive enough to be bought by IBM.
  - zapita 7y ago
    > The thing is, this is how Redhat Wins and has been winning ... I think redhat won't disappear because of this leadership style, but this is how it has been getting contracts, making money, getting sponsorships, and being attractive enough to be bought by IBM. Very true. Red Hat is a very successful company by any measure. Paul played an important role in making that happen. At the same time, Red Hat also has a major problem which limits its long-term growth potential: lack of meaningful diversification. RHEL is still the lion's share of their revenue. It's a powerhouse of a business, but its growth is definitely reaching a plateau. So what comes next? As far as I can tell, the answer is: Openshift and Ansible. Both are successful products, for different reasons. But can they grow revenue fast enough to compensate for RHEL's gradual decline? The answer seems to be "not yet". I think Red Hat reached the same conclusion, realized that their stock price would likely peak in 2019/2020 as markets realize the problem, and decided to sell. And here's the thing: Paul also owns this problem. The failure to differentiate happened on his watch. If you believe Openshift/Ansible revenue is already on the same growth trajectory as RHEL, then success is a matter of execution, and Paul is the right guy for the job. But if you believe that Ansible and Openshift, while good, are just not as game-changing as RHEL once was - then no amount of execution will solve that problem. EDIT: I meant "diversification", not differentiation! My bad.
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
And this is supposed to be a good thing for the company that supposedly has open source and collaboration at its core? Sounds like he'd be better suited to the IBM CEO role.
- cachestash 7y ago
  He was the reason for the company being so open source focused, he managed RH engineering for near on 20 years.
  - aquaticsunset 7y ago
    He famously likes to emphasize the "enterprise" aspect of Red Hat's product offerings. Red Hat is not an open source company - it's an enterprise software company through open source development. It's a really big difference.
CrankyBear 7y ago
Paul's very good at what he does, but no one who knows him would say he's easy to work with.
rurp 7y ago
>Good for Paul Followed by: >zero-sum approach to competition >bad temper >Oracle-style tactics Sounds like what's good for Paul is going to be bad for a lot of employees and customers.
gilrain 7y ago
Yikes. It's 2020, and emotional abuse (which is absolutely what shouting at people you hold power over is) is not even a little acceptable. When you're an adult, you control your temper.
- op00to 7y ago
  No idea who or what youre talking about, but I’m sure youre not achieving whatever it is you set out to achieve here.
  - gilrain 7y ago
    I was responding to the description of the new CEO as losing his temper to a degree that his shouting can be heard on the entire floor. Which I don't view as appropriate.

by zapita 7y ago

notacoward 7y ago

Oh, he's not going to like the phrase "Oracle-style" at all. Another thing people should know about Paul Cormier is that his hatred for Oracle knows no bounds. There's certainly no love lost between the two companies at any level, but even in that context the depth of his loathing for them seemed notable. Some might say excessive. I was there for eight years BTW.

zapita 7y ago
That is true - the hatred of Oracle runs deep. But when it comes to competitive tactics, they have more in common than the Red Hat marketing brochure would have you believe.
- op00to 7y ago
  Like what?
  - zapita 7y ago
    Like what I wrote in my original comment: > Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”)
    - silly-silly 7y ago
      From someone coming from support, This is horseshit.
      - notacoward 7y ago
        It has to be horseshit. A significant part of Red Hat's value-add is customers can go to them with problems that might not actually be Red Hat's own, and still get help resolving them. "One throat to choke" is the charming phrase I often heard. It's huge for enterprise customers, and a big part of what they pay large sums of money for. I'm sure there are some cases where Red Hat does have to say they can't support something, but doing so willy-nilly would be suicidal.
        freedomben 7y ago
        I work for Red Hat Consulting helping customers with their Red Hat products (especially OpenShift) and I can confirm we often help customers who are using products that aren't ours, or even are competitors with ours. Just yesterday I was helping diagnose a problem with Hashicorp Vault. I've written code for this customer to integrate one of our solutions with it as well. My team has helped with Spring Boot issues (a "competitor" to us) and Liberty, and more. We try to help with everything. I can't speak on whether that will change or not since I don't know the future, but it wouldn't be an easy thing to move. It's deeply embedded in our culture.

Longhanks 7y ago

Sounds like a unhealthy place to work at.

zapita 7y ago
Like most large companies, it depends on your team and assignment.
BaronVonSteuben 7y ago
Indeed, that is my thought as well. If I worked there I'd want to stay as far away from this guy as possible. Red Hat seems like a pretty big company tho, so probably the average person never interacts with the CEO. But still, the tone gets set at the top, and will filter down.
- op00to 7y ago
  You decide your opinion on the leaders of your company based on unverified bogeyman stories on a message board? Oh boy.
rwmj 7y ago
As an actual Red Hat employee (also someone who has seen Paul C both at a distance and close up for over a decade), it's a healthy and happy workplace. Also Paul has been effectively doing day to day running of Red Hat as long as I've been here, so I don't expect that much to change.
cachestash 7y ago
Big over reaction and this is making him sound far worse than he is. Its more passion than rage with Paul as Red Hat is everything to him an he believes in the company 100%. There is also a lot more to Red Hat for its leadership. Jim is still up a level and then you have Chris Wright the CTO, a genuinely soft spoken sweet man.

cachestash 7y ago

Agree with this, he is no wall flower. Its harder to meet someone more passionate about Red Hat than Paul.

dralley 7y ago
There is certainly different flavors of "passion", and I'd personally prefer a different one. Oh well.

_jal 7y ago

> He doesn’t shy away from Oracle-style tactics And that will be the end of RH products in my shop. Fuck that noise, if you treat your customers like adversaries, I won't be one of them.

icelancer 7y ago
Red Hat has been running this way for years.

BaronVonSteuben 7y ago

As someone who is a big fan of Red Hat, it horrifies me to see the new CEO be described like that. He sounds like one of the worst people for Red Hat. I admit I despise power seekers and people with tempers, so that's coloring my view a lot. I have always been optimistic about Red Hat's future, but this has me very worried. Red Hat has done so much good in the world, and it would suck to see them shrink or disappear. That said tho, I'd rather they go extinct than become evil. The latter suddenly seems like a possibility. I sure hope I'm wrong.

zapita 7y ago
A counter-point is that, if you like Red Hat today, you will probably still like Red Hat in 5 years, because the new CEO played a key role in getting Red Hat to this point.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
barkingcat 7y ago
Yah similar to zapita's reply below, if this person is a driving force in redhat's past, you probably won't see any changes if you liked what they were doing in the past. Brings to light an understanding of things like systemd though. I can understand how a culture like this would promote systemd's "all or nothing" approach. The thing is, this is how Redhat Wins and has been winning ... I think redhat won't disappear because of this leadership style, but this is how it has been getting contracts, making money, getting sponsorships, and being attractive enough to be bought by IBM.
- zapita 7y ago
  > The thing is, this is how Redhat Wins and has been winning ... I think redhat won't disappear because of this leadership style, but this is how it has been getting contracts, making money, getting sponsorships, and being attractive enough to be bought by IBM. Very true. Red Hat is a very successful company by any measure. Paul played an important role in making that happen. At the same time, Red Hat also has a major problem which limits its long-term growth potential: lack of meaningful diversification. RHEL is still the lion's share of their revenue. It's a powerhouse of a business, but its growth is definitely reaching a plateau. So what comes next? As far as I can tell, the answer is: Openshift and Ansible. Both are successful products, for different reasons. But can they grow revenue fast enough to compensate for RHEL's gradual decline? The answer seems to be "not yet". I think Red Hat reached the same conclusion, realized that their stock price would likely peak in 2019/2020 as markets realize the problem, and decided to sell. And here's the thing: Paul also owns this problem. The failure to differentiate happened on his watch. If you believe Openshift/Ansible revenue is already on the same growth trajectory as RHEL, then success is a matter of execution, and Paul is the right guy for the job. But if you believe that Ansible and Openshift, while good, are just not as game-changing as RHEL once was - then no amount of execution will solve that problem. EDIT: I meant "diversification", not differentiation! My bad.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

And this is supposed to be a good thing for the company that supposedly has open source and collaboration at its core? Sounds like he'd be better suited to the IBM CEO role.

cachestash 7y ago
He was the reason for the company being so open source focused, he managed RH engineering for near on 20 years.
- aquaticsunset 7y ago
  He famously likes to emphasize the "enterprise" aspect of Red Hat's product offerings. Red Hat is not an open source company - it's an enterprise software company through open source development. It's a really big difference.

CrankyBear 7y ago

Paul's very good at what he does, but no one who knows him would say he's easy to work with.

rurp 7y ago

>Good for Paul Followed by: >zero-sum approach to competition >bad temper >Oracle-style tactics Sounds like what's good for Paul is going to be bad for a lot of employees and customers.

gilrain 7y ago

Yikes. It's 2020, and emotional abuse (which is absolutely what shouting at people you hold power over is) is not even a little acceptable. When you're an adult, you control your temper.

op00to 7y ago
No idea who or what youre talking about, but I’m sure youre not achieving whatever it is you set out to achieve here.
- gilrain 7y ago
  I was responding to the description of the new CEO as losing his temper to a degree that his shouting can be heard on the entire floor. Which I don't view as appropriate.