[va_coder]

I sympathize with all the great Sun engineers that got a bad deal, but didn't Sun do poorly from an investor perspective? And isn't that important?

As much as I really hate Oracle (I'm a programmer and don't like their products), they do really well for investors. They make fat profits each quarter. I don't really understand why - why people buy their overpriced, complex products - but they do.

[tsotha]

The sales organization gets priority in Oracle. They're never going to start a project by asking "what would be cool?", but rather "what do our customers want?". Not the path to the most technically satisfying jobs, but companies like that stand a better chance of making money.

I've worked at a few (smaller) software companies, and from what I can tell the ones that go out of business do so because they make really cool products that either 1) don't get connected to the right customers or 2) are missing some critical feature customers need because developers didn't understand the business space. Both problems are the result of a poor or unsupported sales organization.

As a technical guy I get irritated by the sales people as much as anyone else, especially when they try to promise away my nights or weekends. But a software company won't survive without them. Based on my own experience I'd say the most successful companies could better be described as sales organizations that do software instead of software companies that do sales.

[va_coder]

I agree. I also think managers with discipline and ok intelligence are better than managers that are really intelligent with little discipline.

The disciplined managers focus on what needs to get done and do it. (The don't spend part of their day reading HN ;)

[dagw]

Oracle is very good if you're the sort of company that wants to make one phone call and buy a turnkey system to do something very boring, but important, that isn't really core to your company. You simply place one call and say "Hi I need a payroll system for my company with a few 100K employees spread around the world", then Oracle takes care of providing everything from hardware and OS right up to support and training, with each component bearing the Oracle brand. Very few companies can offer that.

[lzw]

Oracle is marketing and support organization, notba software company. I wouldn't want to work for them, and don't like their products, but I respect that they deliver real value to their customers.

It seems kinda odd to me that gosling isn't going out and getting a great job at a hot startup.... He could write his own ticket.

It really isn't oracles job to retain him, they dont really need him it seems.

[wh-uws]

I can answer that one... their pointy haired bosses read the ads in the airports and business magazines that say "98% of Fortune 500 companies" use Oracle