2010/8/20 Matthias Pfützner <matth...@pfuetzner.de> > Let me add some numbers... > ... > that a high percentage might be working on Solaris might provide us with an > approach to a number close to 1000 engineers... >
Of your 1000 engineers, maybe 100 were the senior leaders in innovation, vision, drive and ability. At Sun, the makeup of that "club" was exceedingly dynamic, to be sure, but it was a meritocracy - if you were *good* and had job/product/whatever performance to prove it, membership was open; nobody had to leave to make room for you. >From what I have seen (and I have no visibility into the current numbers or membership), a significant number of the distinguished engineers and fellows that were there when Oracle took over have left. 30%? 50%? More? I don't know either, but the Names that are making the headlines all come from that small club... IM(ns)HO, losing that many top performing engineers to the competition will do more to harm Oracle in both the short and long run than anything that might conceivably happen due to "premature product and feature exposure" due to open source community involvement. Nobody really cares if a company lays off a bunch of its low level staff, but losing half of the technical leadership of a technical company is a disaster. Oracle may have bought the trademarks and rights to the code, but the real value of an acquisition is in the minds of those who produced the products in the first place - long term engineering excellence isn't a commodity that can be cheaply purchased or easily duplicated. Don't forget that the easiest way to make the books look better in the short term is to get rid of all those expensive engineers - you will immediately see a 10%-15% rise in profitability because you no longer have to pay the cost of development. Of course, after 24 to 36 months of coasting, you will be dead, but given the Street's myopic focus and short term memory, who cares? Just buy some other company and start everything over again... -John
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