You (Richard L. Hamilton) wrote:
> >
> > On 19 Aug 2010, at 15:43, Rick Ramsey wrote:
> >
> > > I've been with Sun since 89 and our great engineers
> > have always moved on. There's only room for a few at
> > the top, after all. It's actually a healthy
> > movement, since it gives younger engineers with fresh
> > approaches a change to step up.
> >
> > Indeed. Sun had just under 30,000 employees when
> > Oracle took over, IIRC. The list of 'big names' who
> > have left, while all incredibly talented people, does
> > nonetheless represent a pretty small drop in the
> > ocean of Sun's talent pool.
> >
> > Cheeri,
> > Calum.
>
> Certainly I don't wish to suggest that choosing to stay or go
> corresponds to talent or ethics or any other particular attribute.
>
> I only mean to suggest that there is the appearance that enough
> talented people that were likely to be able to write their own ticket
> anywhere chose to go that it suggests the possibility that some
> felt that their preferred approach to solving problems or creating
> something new could better be pursued elsewhere.
Let me add some numbers...
We know, that Sun was one of the IT companies, that spend an enormous
percentage of it's revenue into engineering... More than 10 percent. If, and
that's now a very crude approach, we then assume, that that relates to 10% of
the costs also, we can assume, that more than 10% of Sun's employees have been
engineers. At the "end" Sun had still more than 30000 employees, so assuming,
that a high percentage might be working on Solaris might provide us with an
approach to a number close to 1000 engineers... All very crude and rough
speculation, I can't determine those numbers.
So, < 10 people leaving are < 1 percent. That's a way below average number in
IT. Most companies have a way higher employee turn-around number than that...
So, trying to derive anything from that is worse than reading in the
coffeepot... ;-)
That's my thinking...
And: Being a "top" engineer never should provide you with an eternal such
position in the same company. You're blocking others to achieve the same. It's
healthy also to remove the top percentage, so that the "average" can
grow. Otherwise, as long as a company does not grow, there would not be any
incentive or opportunity for the close-to-top engineers to even try to reach
the top...
So, never try to predict the future. Or: Ask yourself, why no-one is even
thinking about complaining, that Greg Papadopoulos no longer is the CTO? If
you believe in Top-to-Bottom brightness being an indication for quality of
products or rate of innovation, having Greg leaving should have send thrills
down your veins, because following that logic laid out here, it would have
indicated, that there won't be ANY INNOVATION at all coming from the former
Sun part...
Think about that reasoning... ;-)
Matthias
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