Jonathan Schwartz Blog
jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com
jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com
From: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/winds_of_change_are_blow...
This has always been my favourite example of Shwartz' inability to grasp reality. Perhaps I am interpreting this incorrectly but Microsoft "help[ing] promote MySQL?" This deal didn't sound sane in January 2008 and it looks even more ludicrous to me in 2010.
By early 2008 the company had lost most of its value despite having a strong brand and a talented pool of engineers. What was going on at Sun? Deals to ship dinky browser bars with Java, JavaFX (which stood no chance in a market dominated by Adobe with Microsoft nipping at their ankles), no roadmap for JAVA 7, inability to see the potential benefits of ZFS on Linux - really, we could be here all evening.
You don't "save" a company - You run a company and you should be "saving" it every day with every decision you make.
See this opinion piece from the SJ Mercury News (from yesterday) for a well-formed opinion: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14385237
But in summation:
- Schwartz will depart with $12.8 million in severance
- The company will pay his health insurance premiums for two years
- Average Sun employees got a maximum of three months of pay
- Average Sun employees got a maximum of two months of health insurance, in some cases less.
In January, Jonathan wrote to Sun employees: "For those that ultimately won't become a part of Oracle, this will be the first step in a new adventure." Then a few days ago he wrote a cute little haiku to announce his termination from OraSun.
The laid off employees' haiku? Mike Cassidy, who wrote this editorial for the Mercury News, says it would go something like this:
State unemployment /
over 12 percent today /
Losing health insurance soon.