Re: (484 lines) The "CEO-as-crook" FAQ

Straydog wrote:
...but I still have to ask how a guy can walk with some $700 mil in a year and not feel
guilty about it. And, from some past writings of his, he's not any less of an ***
than some/alot of the other "overpriviledged" crowd. If these guys would just take about
$ten million outta their own overblown paychecks and keep US guys employed instead
of the "race to the bottom", I think it would be a more fair world.

Here's my contrapositive about this guy...

For one, people call him an *** and don't mix it up with things
like "visionary but screwd", labels used to describe Gates/Jobs. Next,
Oracle's corporate culture has never been *fun* nor a *geek haven*,
also widely used to prop up Bill Gate's company. Oracle's very much
been a sales culture where people work 3-6 years, make contacts at
client sites, and move on to one of the clients as an IT manager,
consultant, or systems person. The ones who stay are generally very
billable or have the talent to close deals and move up the ladder.

R&D at Oracle had been in decline before the dot com era; they've been
sending R&D to Asia before it got in vogue everywhere else. Americans
have usually worked in the sales/consulting end since the mid-to-late
90s; the backoffice was hardly the place to be at Oracle.

Finally, Larry founded the company, unlike Jack Welch, and in a way
really has all the equity and power that an emperor, like Genghis Khan,
can enjoy. He didn't parachute into the executive suite, screw the
company, and take off with the goods like Welch, Dunlap, Palmer... the
typical hachet men. A lot of successful people in the IT field, before
the whole outsourcing post-2001 world, were created by either working
at Oracle or by working for one of its partners a/o clients. It was a
breeding ground for Americans, who wanted to get some experience at a
name firm with an established base, but then branch out and find their
own niche in the world.

Microsoft, in contrast, created drones with little sin quo non outside
of their special projects at MS. In effect, MS created S&E-like losers
and Oracle, successful consultants.

seeing as a wholesale cheating of the system (Gate= monopolist, Enron=fraud, new
raft of crap=options backdating, old crap=Archer/Daniels and price fixing, and lots
more).

No arguments from me here.

Larry, however, isn't like Bill. He's not concerned about S&E jobs and
he doesn't mince his words to appear to be a forward thinking mentor
for society. Ellison's a mercurial billionaire, a Howard Hughes of
sorts, who enjoys himself and controls a tightly run database
corporation. And that's what a CEO is, a member of the ownership class.

A pretty big fraction of the ruler/ownership/rich class usually got their loot by crookery,
trickery, exploitation, slavery, etc.

This is true but among thieves, there's a hierarchy of ethics. I think
Larry's the anti-hero of the bunch who could potentially be one of the
good guys if prompted in that direction.

.