9 ms·

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems

211 points by casca 13y ago

rob-alarcon 13y ago
"Bob Coe once told me he did not have to interview the candidates for his Administrative Assistant position. I should simply ask each candidate to link her hands behind her head with her elbows pointing forward and walk toward the wall. If her elbows were the first part of her anatomy to touch the wall, she was eliminated from candidacy. All applicants whose breasts touched first, he would interview." --classy; Good read for the afternoon coffee.
- mahmud 13y ago
  That made me viscerally sick.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    So it caused you to be physically ill, such as lightheadedness or vomiting?
    - chris_wot 13y ago
      Why is that so hard to believe? Some people do feel ill when reading about vile and disgusting circumstances and situations. Yeah, fun times at start ups, unless you are a woman. Why are we celebrating this bullshit again?
      - easytiger 13y ago
        Highlighting, not celebrating
        peterwwillis 13y ago
        Reminiscing.
      - tsotha 13y ago
        >Why is that so hard to believe? Some people do feel ill when reading about vile and disgusting circumstances and situations. If you're such a wilting flower that rude talk from 25 years ago makes you physically sick you'll never amount to much in life.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Why is that so hard to believe? I dunno. I know it's a common literary device, but it's never actually happened to me or anyone I know. I objected to the original comment because it seemed like exaggeration, which suggests bandwagon jumping for bandwagon jumping's sake, which isn't healthy for the greater issue.
- gonzo 13y ago
  World's second oldest joke.
  - tsotha 13y ago
    Yep. I heard it first in the '80s from a guy in the civil service who'd been telling it for forty years.
andrewchoi 13y ago
Why are specific words highlighted in the post? I'm seeing words like "McNealy", "CEO's", etc. highlighted.
- testing12341234 13y ago
  Each of those words has a CSS class called 'goog-spellcheck-word'. It appears that the content from this article was copied out of a WYSYWIG editor, and those CSS tags were copied as well.
- anonymoushn 13y ago
  He's letting us read what his spellchecker thinks about his article. <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;">McNealy</span>
  - kposehn 13y ago
    She :)
badman_ting 13y ago
She calls it the best gig ever, and bully for her, but that doesn't sound like such a great workplace to me.
- salgernon 13y ago
  I didn't have the same experiences as her (at all) but on my first day at Sun, circa 1990, I was given an OS tape, a 3/260 and a cardboard box full of VME cards (some functional) and was expected to get it onto the network and get X11 installed... Never having had to do that kind of thing before, it took me almost a week to boot.
  - gonzo 13y ago
    You got a 3/260 on your first day? Lucky! I got a Sun i386, but quickly replaced it with a 3/260, and then, eventually, a Sparcstation. I built SWAN out of 3/260s as routers. Those were good machines. :-)
jmduke 13y ago
Part 2 is here: http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_30.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys...
- datalus 13y ago
  Snipers aimed at engineers? Really?
  - chiph 13y ago
    The Secretary of the Department of Commerce came to visit us at a previous job. He had his own armed security guys that followed him around, and I'm sure HR passed all our social security numbers to them for background checks ahead of time. The best part was his speech was how off-shoring was Good for America. Which went over like a lead balloon, as you might guess.
booop 13y ago
> When I went on my first interview at Sun, I thought it made office furniture. The ad had said it was a maker of "workstations", so I thought it was like Hay cubicles. I did not know a thing about high-tech or computers. I lucked into one of the all-time best gigs. I had a good chuckle at that. Reminded me of this interview from "The IT Crowd" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuPolrd9yuo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuPolrd9yuo
Aaronneyer 13y ago
Really enjoyed reading that. Just got through the first two. Here's a list of the links for anyone who wants to read em all. (reverse order) http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_25.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_20.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_18.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_24.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_23.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_21.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_18.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_17.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_16.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_8100.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_14.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_12.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_11.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_06.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_05.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_26.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_25.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_24.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_23.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_19.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_13.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_12.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_11.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_06.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_09.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_07.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_03.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_30.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_29.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys...
wheaties 13y ago
Having trouble getting past this part of her bio: "and counsel to anyone who employs Millennials." Really? Are they that bad? I've had nothing but good experiences and nothing, I repeast, nothing like any of the other supposed experiences the media seems to go on about. Seriously, they don't run up credit card debt like my parents or my friends do.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  It's classic generation gap bullshit, just like always. Oh man, the kids these days! I'm generation X myself and I well remember all the crap our generation got growing up. How we were dumber than the last generation, less ambitious, lacked principles and morals, etc. And yet if you look at reality you see that gen-x has caused a revolution in business with an explosion in startups, freelancing, independent projects, innovation, etc. (just look at kickstarter, for example). And they've been far more pragmatic and humane about issues such as gay marriage, LGBT acceptance, race relations, and drug use (e.g. ending the war on drugs) than even the baby boomers and far more than the "greatest generation". Additionally, through my friend group and volunteering I have a lot of interaction with "millenials" and as far as I can tell the hype about them is vastly overwrought. Sure there are some who are demanding, but that's true of all cross-sections of humanity, whether by age or any other metric. There are just as many who are hard working, ambitious, generous, and so forth. Also, I'd like to point out how much of a raw deal a lot of millenials are getting. When I went to college in the mid to late '90s it was possible for my middle class parents to pay tuition to a very good state University out of pocket without incurring any significant economic hardship. Today that's almost impossible, acquiring a college degree is not only much more necessary these days it's also far more expensive, and very difficult for most folks to do so without going into significant debt. Add on to that the horrific state of the job market today, especially for people just entering it without experience. And it's not a whole lot better at the high end either. It used to be that in the tech world you could ride a rising company's growth as a fairly late employee and working for only maybe a decade or so would net you enough savings just from stock and stock options to allow you to retire fairly rich. Now the market is very different and employee compensation is different and that sort of thing just isn't the norm any longer. You can make a damned good living, but you don't have the life and career options that were possible in the past. Which means that a lot of the most talented folks are forced to take on a lot more risk in order to acquire the same sorts of rewards. Which is good and bad but it's certainly not easier.
luckydude 13y ago
I was there in building 5. I played hockey with Scott and Steve (srk@sun.com, I was lm@sun.com, to this day the best email address I've ever had.) Guy Harris was there, he's why I went to Sun. He left to go to Auspex but since Auspex licensed Sun's source he kept coming back. John Pope and I worked late, Guy pounded on the door of building 5, we let him in so he could fix stuff. I still have memories of Guy going "shit, they haven't fixed this? Losers. Checkin." Guy committed changes to Suns code long after he was not employed by Sun. Scooter used to come into our building around 7pm and tell us how we were going to rule the world. He got up on the conference table and he stood there and made us believe. How many CEO's are around at 7pm? When that other guy was put in, some web guy, I was bummed. Scooter really loved Sun, he cared a lot.
- bcantrill 13y ago
  Considering that you were the reason that Bonwick came to Sun and Bonwick was the reason I came to Sun, I guess that makes me a descendant of sort of Guy Harris... Also, not sure if you saw it or not, but I gave you a shout-out in my history of SunOS/Solaris/OpenSolaris/illumos[1]. I'm sure I got some of the history slightly wrong from that era (it did, after all, predate me at Sun), so accept my apologies in advance... [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
  - luckydude 13y ago
    Holy crap, you got my wife cheering you. Thanks a lot from me and her Bryan. Great shout out. Very cool talk too. You should continue to talk about how the kernel team ruled.
christopheraden 13y ago
I remember my mom telling me stories about Sun's glory days, and me thinking that it seemed sort of unbelievable that any workplace would be as wild as she described. Interesting to see a lot of the same sort of stories being told here and more. She was there from 1988 to 2008. I wonder what the Solaris, mysql, and Java teams are like now that it's run by The Evil Empire.
- angersock 13y ago
  A great deal smaller, I imagine. :P
chris_wot 13y ago
The level of sexism and misogyny in this post is incredible. Hiring women for breast size. Making sexual harassment problems "go away". Pretty fucking disgusting.
- Tichy 13y ago
  What's wrong about the "go away" thing? What is the appropriate solution in your opinion - death row for the offender?
  - diyang 13y ago
    No one's advocating such measures. The "go away" implies that the claim was repressed, instead of fairly considered.
    - vidarh 13y ago
      It implies the claim was withdrawn. It may be that it was repressed, but it also might be the person who made the claim in reality just wanted an apology or for things to stop, and that she managed to sort things out. A lot of the time personnel conflicts escalate because the two sides don't know how to resolve it between themselves, and a good HR person can make the problem go away simply by facilitating communication. Now, if she really did make it "go away" by repressing a valid claim, then that's quite disgusting, but without more details we don't know whether or not this was anything bad. There's enough other icky behaviour described there's no reason to jump to conclusions about the rest.
  - discodave 13y ago
    Or just being held accountable for their actions.
    - Tichy 13y ago
      Who says they weren't?
  - mathattack 13y ago
general_failure 13y ago
She gets bullied like crazy and she says its her best job. Tbh, I think this speaks a lot about our current generation women than Hers. I mean just compare the things she had to go through compared to the current generation...
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  I have no idea what you mean, could you be more specific?
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    I believe the point is that while the current generation whines about any sort of adversity, earlier generations sucked it up and enjoyed the challenge. "Back in my day we built our heat equation solvers on punched cards, and had to manually draw the resulting graph based on the output. Nowadays you whippersnappers complain when scipy doesn't have a built in heat equation solver, and you are forced to manually write conjugate gradient."
    - josephlord 13y ago
      Maybe that was the point but it is a pretty lousy one. The ones that stayed and thrived may have 'sucked it up and enjoyed the challenge' but how many bright capable people hated it and were made miserable or left (perhaps the whole industry or even the workforce).
    - glhaynes 13y ago
      while the current generation whines about any sort of adversity, earlier generations sucked it up and enjoyed the challenge. Or... we could reverse which side we're being charitable to: while the current generation more often demands appropriate behavior, earlier generations just "sucked it up" because they wouldn't have had establishment support if they had spoken up. Millions of female/minority employees with tremendous potential (and the companies that could have employed/promoted them) lost out.
gonzo 13y ago
I (jthomp@sun.com, aka "net.god") was in tears. Those were good times.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mathattack 13y ago
If I don't leave this post now, I'll lose my morning reading the entire series!
- disgruntledphd2 13y ago
  I know the feeling. Fortunately I was compiling a massive report, so I didn't lose as much productive time as I could have. Well worth reading the whole thing though.
glanch 13y ago
Way to handle the sitters/squatters bathroom problem. I enjoyed that.
joshguthrie 13y ago
Thanks for these articles! As a youngster, Sun always was "that Java company", but having testimonies of it as a young and innovative company is great. I'm a bit disappointed about the title still as it makes it bait for "women are mistreated by IT men, which is why they don't go to IT anymore". Sure, some people are not respectful (they will always exist), but your account shows that the few that were never stopped you from belonging to (and being seen by all as a key member of) a great IT company.

211 points by casca 13y ago

"Bob Coe once told me he did not have to interview the candidates for his Administrative Assistant position. I should simply ask each candidate to link her hands behind her head with her elbows pointing forward and walk toward the wall. If her elbows were the first part of her anatomy to touch the wall, she was eliminated from candidacy. All applicants whose breasts touched first, he would interview." --classy; Good read for the afternoon coffee.

mahmud 13y ago
That made me viscerally sick.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  So it caused you to be physically ill, such as lightheadedness or vomiting?
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Why is that so hard to believe? Some people do feel ill when reading about vile and disgusting circumstances and situations. Yeah, fun times at start ups, unless you are a woman. Why are we celebrating this bullshit again?
    - easytiger 13y ago
      Highlighting, not celebrating
      - peterwwillis 13y ago
        Reminiscing.
    - tsotha 13y ago
      >Why is that so hard to believe? Some people do feel ill when reading about vile and disgusting circumstances and situations. If you're such a wilting flower that rude talk from 25 years ago makes you physically sick you'll never amount to much in life.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Why is that so hard to believe? I dunno. I know it's a common literary device, but it's never actually happened to me or anyone I know. I objected to the original comment because it seemed like exaggeration, which suggests bandwagon jumping for bandwagon jumping's sake, which isn't healthy for the greater issue.
gonzo 13y ago
World's second oldest joke.
- tsotha 13y ago
  Yep. I heard it first in the '80s from a guy in the civil service who'd been telling it for forty years.

andrewchoi 13y ago

Why are specific words highlighted in the post? I'm seeing words like "McNealy", "CEO's", etc. highlighted.

testing12341234 13y ago
Each of those words has a CSS class called 'goog-spellcheck-word'. It appears that the content from this article was copied out of a WYSYWIG editor, and those CSS tags were copied as well.
anonymoushn 13y ago
He's letting us read what his spellchecker thinks about his article. <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;">McNealy</span>
- kposehn 13y ago
  She :)

badman_ting 13y ago

She calls it the best gig ever, and bully for her, but that doesn't sound like such a great workplace to me.

salgernon 13y ago
I didn't have the same experiences as her (at all) but on my first day at Sun, circa 1990, I was given an OS tape, a 3/260 and a cardboard box full of VME cards (some functional) and was expected to get it onto the network and get X11 installed... Never having had to do that kind of thing before, it took me almost a week to boot.
- gonzo 13y ago
  You got a 3/260 on your first day? Lucky! I got a Sun i386, but quickly replaced it with a 3/260, and then, eventually, a Sparcstation. I built SWAN out of 3/260s as routers. Those were good machines. :-)

jmduke 13y ago

Part 2 is here: http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_30.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-in-boys...

datalus 13y ago
Snipers aimed at engineers? Really?
- chiph 13y ago
  The Secretary of the Department of Commerce came to visit us at a previous job. He had his own armed security guys that followed him around, and I'm sure HR passed all our social security numbers to them for background checks ahead of time. The best part was his speech was how off-shoring was Good for America. Which went over like a lead balloon, as you might guess.

booop 13y ago

> When I went on my first interview at Sun, I thought it made office furniture. The ad had said it was a maker of "workstations", so I thought it was like Hay cubicles. I did not know a thing about high-tech or computers. I lucked into one of the all-time best gigs. I had a good chuckle at that. Reminded me of this interview from "The IT Crowd" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuPolrd9yuo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuPolrd9yuo

Aaronneyer 13y ago

Really enjoyed reading that. Just got through the first two. Here's a list of the links for anyone who wants to read em all. (reverse order) http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_25.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_20.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_18.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_24.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_23.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_21.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_18.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_17.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_16.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_8100.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_14.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_12.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_11.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_06.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_05.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_26.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_25.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_24.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_23.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_19.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_13.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys-dorm-my-career-at-sun_12.html http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-in-boys... 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wheaties 13y ago

Having trouble getting past this part of her bio: "and counsel to anyone who employs Millennials." Really? Are they that bad? I've had nothing but good experiences and nothing, I repeast, nothing like any of the other supposed experiences the media seems to go on about. Seriously, they don't run up credit card debt like my parents or my friends do.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
It's classic generation gap bullshit, just like always. Oh man, the kids these days! I'm generation X myself and I well remember all the crap our generation got growing up. How we were dumber than the last generation, less ambitious, lacked principles and morals, etc. And yet if you look at reality you see that gen-x has caused a revolution in business with an explosion in startups, freelancing, independent projects, innovation, etc. (just look at kickstarter, for example). And they've been far more pragmatic and humane about issues such as gay marriage, LGBT acceptance, race relations, and drug use (e.g. ending the war on drugs) than even the baby boomers and far more than the "greatest generation". Additionally, through my friend group and volunteering I have a lot of interaction with "millenials" and as far as I can tell the hype about them is vastly overwrought. Sure there are some who are demanding, but that's true of all cross-sections of humanity, whether by age or any other metric. There are just as many who are hard working, ambitious, generous, and so forth. Also, I'd like to point out how much of a raw deal a lot of millenials are getting. When I went to college in the mid to late '90s it was possible for my middle class parents to pay tuition to a very good state University out of pocket without incurring any significant economic hardship. Today that's almost impossible, acquiring a college degree is not only much more necessary these days it's also far more expensive, and very difficult for most folks to do so without going into significant debt. Add on to that the horrific state of the job market today, especially for people just entering it without experience. And it's not a whole lot better at the high end either. It used to be that in the tech world you could ride a rising company's growth as a fairly late employee and working for only maybe a decade or so would net you enough savings just from stock and stock options to allow you to retire fairly rich. Now the market is very different and employee compensation is different and that sort of thing just isn't the norm any longer. You can make a damned good living, but you don't have the life and career options that were possible in the past. Which means that a lot of the most talented folks are forced to take on a lot more risk in order to acquire the same sorts of rewards. Which is good and bad but it's certainly not easier.

luckydude 13y ago

I was there in building 5. I played hockey with Scott and Steve (srk@sun.com, I was lm@sun.com, to this day the best email address I've ever had.) Guy Harris was there, he's why I went to Sun. He left to go to Auspex but since Auspex licensed Sun's source he kept coming back. John Pope and I worked late, Guy pounded on the door of building 5, we let him in so he could fix stuff. I still have memories of Guy going "shit, they haven't fixed this? Losers. Checkin." Guy committed changes to Suns code long after he was not employed by Sun. Scooter used to come into our building around 7pm and tell us how we were going to rule the world. He got up on the conference table and he stood there and made us believe. How many CEO's are around at 7pm? When that other guy was put in, some web guy, I was bummed. Scooter really loved Sun, he cared a lot.

bcantrill 13y ago
Considering that you were the reason that Bonwick came to Sun and Bonwick was the reason I came to Sun, I guess that makes me a descendant of sort of Guy Harris... Also, not sure if you saw it or not, but I gave you a shout-out in my history of SunOS/Solaris/OpenSolaris/illumos[1]. I'm sure I got some of the history slightly wrong from that era (it did, after all, predate me at Sun), so accept my apologies in advance... [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
- luckydude 13y ago
  Holy crap, you got my wife cheering you. Thanks a lot from me and her Bryan. Great shout out. Very cool talk too. You should continue to talk about how the kernel team ruled.

christopheraden 13y ago

I remember my mom telling me stories about Sun's glory days, and me thinking that it seemed sort of unbelievable that any workplace would be as wild as she described. Interesting to see a lot of the same sort of stories being told here and more. She was there from 1988 to 2008. I wonder what the Solaris, mysql, and Java teams are like now that it's run by The Evil Empire.

angersock 13y ago
A great deal smaller, I imagine. :P

chris_wot 13y ago

The level of sexism and misogyny in this post is incredible. Hiring women for breast size. Making sexual harassment problems "go away". Pretty fucking disgusting.

Tichy 13y ago
What's wrong about the "go away" thing? What is the appropriate solution in your opinion - death row for the offender?
- diyang 13y ago
  No one's advocating such measures. The "go away" implies that the claim was repressed, instead of fairly considered.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    It implies the claim was withdrawn. It may be that it was repressed, but it also might be the person who made the claim in reality just wanted an apology or for things to stop, and that she managed to sort things out. A lot of the time personnel conflicts escalate because the two sides don't know how to resolve it between themselves, and a good HR person can make the problem go away simply by facilitating communication. Now, if she really did make it "go away" by repressing a valid claim, then that's quite disgusting, but without more details we don't know whether or not this was anything bad. There's enough other icky behaviour described there's no reason to jump to conclusions about the rest.
- discodave 13y ago
  Or just being held accountable for their actions.
  - Tichy 13y ago
    Who says they weren't?
- mathattack 13y ago

general_failure 13y ago

She gets bullied like crazy and she says its her best job. Tbh, I think this speaks a lot about our current generation women than Hers. I mean just compare the things she had to go through compared to the current generation...

InclinedPlane 13y ago
I have no idea what you mean, could you be more specific?
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  I believe the point is that while the current generation whines about any sort of adversity, earlier generations sucked it up and enjoyed the challenge. "Back in my day we built our heat equation solvers on punched cards, and had to manually draw the resulting graph based on the output. Nowadays you whippersnappers complain when scipy doesn't have a built in heat equation solver, and you are forced to manually write conjugate gradient."
  - josephlord 13y ago
    Maybe that was the point but it is a pretty lousy one. The ones that stayed and thrived may have 'sucked it up and enjoyed the challenge' but how many bright capable people hated it and were made miserable or left (perhaps the whole industry or even the workforce).
  - glhaynes 13y ago
    while the current generation whines about any sort of adversity, earlier generations sucked it up and enjoyed the challenge. Or... we could reverse which side we're being charitable to: while the current generation more often demands appropriate behavior, earlier generations just "sucked it up" because they wouldn't have had establishment support if they had spoken up. Millions of female/minority employees with tremendous potential (and the companies that could have employed/promoted them) lost out.

gonzo 13y ago

I (jthomp@sun.com, aka "net.god") was in tears. Those were good times.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

mathattack 13y ago

If I don't leave this post now, I'll lose my morning reading the entire series!

disgruntledphd2 13y ago
I know the feeling. Fortunately I was compiling a massive report, so I didn't lose as much productive time as I could have. Well worth reading the whole thing though.

glanch 13y ago

Way to handle the sitters/squatters bathroom problem. I enjoyed that.

joshguthrie 13y ago

Thanks for these articles! As a youngster, Sun always was "that Java company", but having testimonies of it as a young and innovative company is great. I'm a bit disappointed about the title still as it makes it bait for "women are mistreated by IT men, which is why they don't go to IT anymore". Sure, some people are not respectful (they will always exist), but your account shows that the few that were never stopped you from belonging to (and being seen by all as a key member of) a great IT company.