Money Talks

AP dishes my salary

There are things in this life that you're better off not knowing. One of them is the salary of your co-workers. There is no joy to found there, only jealousy, disgust, frustration and outright despair.

Sure, you may find that some folks make less than you do, but even the proportion can piss you off. I mean, can you believe they're paying that worthless SOB that much?

Timing is everything, too. We were doing our RIFs this week and I can't think of a worse time for my salary and perks to be splattered all over the business section.

Sure, $7.7 Million is more than some CEOs make, Steve Ballmer included, but it is nothing compared to Larry Ellison's $60 million. No wonder the asshole has that smug look on his friggin face all the time.

Folks, if the Sun board wants to give me a chauffer, plane rides for my kids, and a home security system, that's their prerogative. You should see all the stupid shit I asked for.

The Hoods

The HR people were all wearing their hoods today. It's RIF time and we had to let some people go just to make Wall Street happy.

Like most big companies, we tend to recruit HR folks from the sorority equivalent of the Skull and Bones made famous by President Bush. Their society is so secret that only their supreme acolytes know the real name of thing.

I actually dated one of these protoHood chicks in college. Don't ask me how I know, but she had a t-shirt in her panty drawer that depicted a praying mantis eating it's mate. Fuck, I get the shivers just thinking about it.

Thing is, we need the Hoods when there is dirty work to do. They don't ask questions and they execute without remorse. And when you turn them on each other? It's like friggin girl-on-girl vampire scary, dude. But the next day, it's like nothing happened and they'll show you pictures of their kids at a soccer game.

Frankly, I hate this part of the job. We're making money now, for Christ's sake. So when the analysts aren't looking, I'll sneak the hoods back in and have them see who we can hire back.

Two-facebook

I'm sitting here scratching my head about Microsoft's huge investment in Facebook that looks to be going down. I mean, they could buy dozens of companies for the hundreds of millions that they're plunking down.

And it occurs to me how desperately Microsoft needs something like Facebook to get them into Web 2.0. New generations are spending their lives on the web and they don't need Internet Explorer, LiveSearch, Vista, Word, Powerpoint, or Excel to do any of it.

Could it be that Microsoft staff cruising for college girls saw a business opportunity? Maybe. Did they catch wind that Google is working on something much better? Probably. Time to get out the wallet.

As for Facebook, I just think any company this young ought to beware old married dudes with money. Redmond wants to be your friend, all right. That's why they've got condoms in their pockets. Ewwwww!

Eco and the moneymen

A lot of fake CEOs these days seem to be obsessed with what other people are doing. Not here, let me tell you; at Sun we're too busy working for a better world.

Today we launched our new OpenEco.org site, "a new global on-line community that provides free, easy-to-use tools to help participants assess, track, and compare business energy performance, share proven best practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and encourage sustainable innovation."

While I offered to kick things off with a speech on Innovations of the Participation Age and their Quantum Effects on Global Keynesian Marketplace Paradoxical Trend Inversions, someone thought it better to invite Bill Clinton. I watched his talk on the web, and have to say that I came away truly inspired. The man has been reading his Al Gore, let me tell you.

But what struck me most was the intelligence of this great communicator. Not only does he understand the problem of global warming, he understands the politics necessary to get the right things done.

So I'm not going to worry about the fact that Intel launched LessWatts.org a couple of days ahead of us. Carbon Disclosure is for everyone that wants to keep making money, er, umm, I mean living.

Freedom of Assembly

Sun was probably the first company to hold a press conference in Second Life. I forget what we announced there, as I still have nightmares about the various phallic avatars that ended up in the audience.

But now that IBM employees in Italy have chosen to picket the company's Second Life HQ, I've decided to give this 3D shit a second chance. In fact, I've donated a boatload of Linden dollars to the cause through an anonymous source so these freedom fighters can have the best quality signs, t-shirts, and TATs all bemoaning the evils of Big Blue.

The funny thing is that those Italians are always striking about something. In real life, they strike for more vacation, higher hemlines, and cheaper porn so often that no one takes them seriously. But with this geeky Second Life thing, they'll probably get so much attention that IBM will have no choice but to cave and pay them whatever the fuck they want.

You know, naysayers get on me about my Red Shift and Participation Age rhetoric all the time, but here we have evidence that the shit is really going down. And when Big Corporations like IBM can no longer speak with a single voice, all the press releases in the world will be powerless against a couple of disgruntled employees who chose to be dickheads.

Slashed

I want to set the record straight on this Slashtard contention that OpenOffice.org has an uncertain future. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, what kind of headline is "The Uncertain Future of OpenOffice.org"??? It sounds like a statement of fact when in reality it is little more than troll bait.

There are now over 100 friggin million downloads of OpenOffice crawling around out there. That's a helluva user base comprised largely of people who refuse to give Microsoft any money. As the Borg work their way into China, these numbers are sure to grow exponentially.

So Sun controls the code base, is that such a problem? Do you want Beastmaster Bill to slip some Clippy code in there when you're not looking? I didn't think so.

Slashdot is a mixed bag. It's supposed to be a forum for Stuff that Matters, but sometimes I wish these guys would just have a Coke and Smile and shut the fuck up.

The Bio-Boat

I ran into Bill Joy the other day at Peet's coffee. I hadn't seen the man for a long time and he looked troubled.

"It's the bio-boat, man. I just can't get it working."

I knew about Bill's boat project, kind of a floating, self-sustaining bio-dome. He started talking about it years ago, but no one took him seriously.

"The bio-boat? You mean it's real?"

"It's friggin real, all right," he said. "All 158 meters of it. I built all of it, from the hull to the software to the neuro-electronics. Trouble is, there's this one bug that keeps the thing from booting."

I offered to take a look. I mean, the guy founded Sun after all.

And holy crap! He should have called it the bio yacht. And when I got below and took a look at his screen, I could tell what the problem was right away. I changed a couple lines of code around and the system booted like a charm.

"You did it, Jonathan. Thanks a million!"

I kind of got choked up as he sailed off. He waved goodbye and said something about never needing to return to land again.

That's the trouble with us genius types--we're inventing a world that runs for free in a market that is perfectly happy to stop for gas.

Maker's Mark

Every new leader has to make his mark. This differentiation process can be especially tough when you happen to be the successor to someone like Scooter. Without his caustic wit, it seemed fruitless for me to keep up his tradition of slamming our competitors.

So I have chosen an alternate strategy for the express purpose of getting Sun's name out there. At times, the tactics in this strategy might confound you. Things like changing our stock ticker, splitting the stock 4-1, and giving shit away are not in the playbook of mere mortal CEOs. In fact, these actions are just the harbingers of an approaching maelstrom of unconventionality to come.

Like any good uber-strategy, this work of genius needs a name. I'm dubbing it The Power of the Schwartz.

In short, the Schwartz is an energy field that influences all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the business galaxy together. And as it has since the dawn of time, the Schwartz plays a part in nearly every decision made by men.

So the next time Sun does something that makes you scratch your head, think about the great power behind it all. You will become one with understanding.

May the Schwartz be with you.

Strange Bedfellows

It's been a hectic week. I bought CFS, helped AMD launch their quad-core, and turned Sun into an OEM for one of the most reviled companies on the planet.

And people are getting all upset like we committed some kind of sacrilege or something. The backlash got so bad I was beginning to think this time I shouldn't have announced the one more thing as Jobso likes to do.

The moment I knew it was time to face the music was when my kid asked me why I signed a deal with the Borg. "They're evil, Daddy. They even made Captain Picard do bad things!"

While it was easy to straighten out this misunderstanding, it occurs to me that the world looks at Microsoft through a child's eyes. As convicted monopolists, they will always be cast as the bad guys.

So when Sun puts down the gloves and works with Microsoft, naturally it's kind of a letdown. We're supposed to fight the evil, not profit from it.

Look guys, that's bullshit! Something like 65 percent of servers ship with windows on them. As an x86 vendor, we need to give the frigtards in this market what they want.

Does that make us hypocritical? Sure. But as I heard Alan Alda say on NPR today, "The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values."

AMD can thank me later

AMD has been pregnant with Barcelona for a long time, but now that the baby is in the crib, I want to share my own delivery story.

AMD's Barcelona webcast was held at 6:30 pm Pacific time so that participants could join live from all parts of the globe. I was supposed to tape my segment from our studios in Menlo Park.

I got there early and the vibe was all wrong. It was just me, some camera guy contractor, and a little monitor for me to watch. Totally lame.

So I hopped in my limo and told the driver to take me to the Presidio where the real event was taking place. Trouble was, the friggin Giants game had traffic tied up in knots!

I called in to tell them I was running late, and AMD's Hector Ruiz had a shit-fit.

"Wha-chu mean, traffic? We'sa planning dis event for over six-a fucking a-months!"

I couldn't help but laugh because the guy sounded just like Father Guido Sarducci.

"Dude, like chill, OK? Just put me at the end."

So I got there an hour late and the moderator had no clue how to introduce me. He stammered something about the dot-com being the network computer and I winged it from there with a nice history lesson of Sun and AMD. Hector must have had some bad shrimp or something because I saw him run off and barf backstage.

That's the trouble with a lot of CEOs. They just don't have the pizazz it takes to pull off this kind of shit.

Game day

I get pretty worked up when football season starts. Seeing Howie Long and the rest of those morons on the Fox pregame show is like coming home.

And some people don't get it, as if sport isn't something worthy of us Mensa types. What they don't realize is that by watching large men pound the crap out of each other, even the meekest among us can reap the benefits of no-contact testosterone.

And us CEOs need the juice. We have to be decisive, strong, and confident when we call the plays, bukko! Football gets us in touch with that inner Neanderthal so that Monday we're ready to battle.

If I was Larry Ellison, I suppose I'd just load up on cialis and fly around in my MIG while pretending to strafe Santa Cruz. He tells me it makes everything look blue for days.

As for the rest of us, it's more important to embrace our limits and enjoy the talents of those strong enough to play the game. Sure, I'm just an armchair quaterback on Sunday, but when the work week starts, I'm the one in charge of 34,000 friggin people who can beat me up.

Jonathan Hears a Who

In the oft valued-under the
lander of sun
came notions to split the
stock four to one

I, pony-tailed leader shall
declare and state:
JAVA shares are too many
lets con-solidate!

The bankers on Wall Street they've
priced us so low
reflections of profit are
fogged and don't show

As surely as logs with a
maul can be split
We'll jack the shares up
They'll pay twenty for it!

And when the dust settles the
pundits will say:
they were wrong, whod've thought?
pony-tail saved the day!

Rubbed the wrong way

My masseuse said that my tension levels are off the scale. She asked me what's up with that.

"Well," I told her, "Fake Steve has been mocking me about our pending 4-1 stock split. Every time I do a bold corporate move, the iTard gets on me about how stupid it is."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"I dunno. Insecure. Belittled. Foolish."

"And who is this guy, this Fake Steve person?"

"He's an editor at Forbes pretending to be a Billionaire CEO."

"Hmmmm. And did Forbes write about you much before this fake person came along?"

"Wait. Oh my god!" I exclaimed. "You're a genius! Of course! Fake Steve must be a stockholder! By mocking me constantly, he hopes to increase investor awareness."

I felt my muscles relax. Like the Buddha says, it's not so much about what people say, the mud they throw, or who they pretend to be. In the end, it's all about intent.

Bring it, Cowboy!

You know, I was all set to have a great week. How could it go wrong with a couple of days in the Big Apple? All I had to do was schmooze some analysts, shake some hands, drink some good wine, and maybe even check out a show on Broadway.

Well, that was before these frigtards at NetApp dropped a lawsuit on us. And the fact that I first heard about this from an analyst? That kind of shit really damages my calm.

Let me give you the straight poop on this lawsuit. We've made Net Tap obsolete with our thumper storage servers and ZFS. They're toast. Done. Outta here. History.

This doesn't set well with Net Tap. They want keep breathing. And honestly, we feel bad about this. We share a lot of customers and they hired a lot of people that we RIFFED over the last seven years.

I should have expected this from that Brokeback founder of theirs. The bio for David Hitz says:


"Before his career in the computer industry, Hitz worked as a cowboy, where he got valuable management experience by herding, branding, and castrating cattle."

No wonder he has the cajones to take us on. The son of a bitch probably transplanted the biggest pair he could find.

13 Ghosts

OK, I didn't want my true likeness to be out there already, but FSJ posted this picture of me today so I guess the jig is up. The news is out. They finally found me.

Thing is, I almost missed this entry today on the Fake Steve blog because the guy does so many friggin posts every day. Forbes must be one helluva jagoff place to work if you can sit around all day thinking up this shit and even writing a book in your spare time.

I'm going with a new theory; Fake Steve isn't one guy--it's a cadre of writers at Forbes trying to outdo each other.

So here is a character analysis of these Ghost Jobs:

* Only one FSJ likes to use the "F" word, and he posts about once a week.

* One FSJ is a woman who used to refer to herself as a feminist.

* Another FSJ is not only gay, but a Windows user as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

* Yet another FSJ normally covers the entertainment industry, but doesn't even own a friggin computer.

So there you go. Touche' you fake iTards--I'm onto your game!

You are who you sell to

A new BCG survey says that many executives are frustrated with their innovation spend. In a nutshell, they want more return on their IT investments.

I've harped on this before, but the guys who gripe about this are the ones who see IT only as an expense. And if you can think back to a job you had that was made hellish because they used shitty computer systems, then you know how counter-productive these bozos can be.

The truth is that Sun doesn't target the kind of customer who looks at servers like they're something to be filled with crap and then tossed away. Let them get their backoffice Huggies from Dell or whomever.

We want to deal with the guys who see IT as a competitive weapon. That's the pack we want to run with. Not only do these guys want to crush the beancounter bozos, they want to take over the friggin earth.

And, with any luck, some of that competitive musk will rub off on my team. I mean, I want fire in their bellies and this tree-humping eco kick they're on right now is damned near sedation.

Solo Summit

I'm back from my ascension of El Capitan, and I have to tell you that it a life-changing experience.

About a quarter way up, my climbing partner got an urgent message on his Crackberry and had to bail on me. I told him not bring the goddammned thing, but that Ellison is one stubborn dickhead sometimes.

The whole point of the climb was that we were supposed to get on stage next week and announce some kind of Oracle/Sun alliance. That way, we could talk about how we "scale" together blah blah blah. Stupid, I know, but it was that or sail around the world with the asshole.

So anyway, I decided to summit on my own. About three quarters of the way up, I crawled into my sleeping bag and slept under the stars. And in the morning when I made the summit, I felt this profound feeling that I could do anything on my own.

So I canceled the Oracle announcement. In all probability, Larry would have just gone off script and announced another NetPC or some frigtard idea like that. And all I could have done was smile as he went on and on about the climb while leaving out the little part about turning chickenshit.