Hah, I didn't expect my implied criticism (elsewhere in this thread) of a Yahoo VP being hired as their CEO to be so damningly validated by personal experience.
Good rule of thumb is that people from Yahoo or Sun are extremely nonproductive and tend to spend most of their time preparing powerpoint presentations for internal use.
In my experience, the deadwood at Sun actually became deadwood at Oracle; most of the folks who left Sun (disclosure: includes me) were the ones who were drawn to Sun first and foremost by its mission, and since leaving they have gone on to interesting things elsewhere. So while there are certainly companies that are red flags for me, Sun isn't one of them -- and I say this as someone who knows Sun's failings better than most...
Absolutely! It is, after all, deadwood -- and given that it's broadly resistant to Oracle's management-by-asphyxiation, it will likely be there for quite some time to come...
What do you mean by "Oracle's management-by-asphyxiation"?
And is it that Oracle has such marketplace strength that it can get away with holding the deadwood? I had heard that Oracle was a very competitive place.
"Too big to fail" usually involves outsiders (government) propping up companies. (Think GM or Bank of America) I don't think the government is propping up Oracle.
Deadwood manages to stay, unnoticed by management, for decades. Most companies of a size has plenty, the body-shops (EDS etc) seem to consist of mainly deadwood.
