I saw this document linked on Twitter yesterday and it's just amazing. I always knew that Larry Ellison's mug was in the dictionary next to the definition of "customer hostility", but man, it's another thing altogether to read the top 60 ways Oracle will screw you.
My favorite is how you can't use Oracle Technology Network (OTN DEV) licenses for testing. They're only for development, which is something you do without testing.
I worked at Sun in Menlo Park in the 2002 post-bubble sadness, when the satellite buildings were slowly being closed and the free coffee was being scaled back.
I remember vividly a town hall with Johnathan Schwartz as the speaker (he was briefly CEO but wasn't at the time).
One of the engineers, after hearing a speech full of buzzwords but no substance asked "Okay, but how does this actually make us money?"
The engineer was politely told to shut up, focus on engineering and leave the "making money" part to the businessmen.
"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it’s very hard to get used to that idea. It’s like, ‘surely this is more complicated!’ but it’s like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity — that’s it! …Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah… you talk to Oracle, it’s like, ‘no, we don’t fucking make dreams happen — we make money!’ …You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle."
The video has a text slide, but perhaps the more pertinent assertions are:
* Oracle was extremely straightforward about caring about only money. (In contrast to Sun, or even to the claims of investment banks.)
* Oracle was that way because it was the alter-ego of Ellison. (With funny bit about not attempting to anthropomorphize Ellison.)
(What Cantrill didn't mention, when alleging Ellison's simplicity, was Ellison's supposed intense competitiveness with, or hatred of, Bill Gates. I happened to bump into Ellison once, at an event, and seemed to see a hint of that firsthand.)
I linked to 34:00 min in, which is where the part on Oracle and Ellison starts and is only a few minutes long (and very funny). Bryan talks about his experiences being at Sun after it was acquired by Oracle and the sad demise of OpenSolaris.
Sorry, I don't really understand from the article: how exactly did the accused supposedly break fiduciary obligations? Does it solely have to do with Larry's previous involvement in NetSuite?
Per the Reuters article [0], it sounds like Ellison had a vested interest (of the financial variety) in Oracle acquiring NetSuite at a premium unreasonably higher than NetSuite's actual value, so that's why the shareholders are suing him.
You can connect the SV housing bubble fairly directly to pension funds piling money into tech stocks and venture capital after the late-00s global financial crisis (because bond yields were in the gutter and they're more or less obliged to seek returns somewhere, and they weren't available in less risky instruments).
Same kind of problem Berkshire Hathaway has; once you're big enough, available returns are limited by how much you yourself distort the market. Pension funds used to be able to buy almost limitless bonds in order to lock in annuity returns, but a) a bunch of them are a long way underwater and b) the effective rate of interest on bonds was below zero so they were forced to seek riskier assets, bidding up the price on those, which... etc etc etc.
Capital concentration – huge pension schemes, enormous corporations, big university endowments – has weird effects and it happens in all kinds of places.
Probably just the first ones to pull the trigger. I don’t understand what the lawsuit is about though, seems like they are just complaining about performance of the acquisition? People just drunk on Oracle koolaid?
The current CEO is also a target of said lawsuit-blessing, so "execs" is a reasonable description that encompasses both (without something wordier like "current and former Oracle CEOs").
Larry Ellison owned 40% of NetSuite when it was purchased at a very high price. He effectively ran both sides of the deal (between oracle and NetSuite) and funneled shareholder money into his own pockets via the transaction. Allegedly.
> Larry Ellison owned 40% of NetSuite when it was purchased at a very high price. He effectively ran both sides of the deal (between oracle and NetSuite) and funneled shareholder money into his own pockets via the transaction. Allegedly.
It's very similar to what happened with HP and Autonomy.
Sold for $10B (3 years ago). 40% of that is $4B, of Ellison's $65B financial networth.
The amount Ellison profited from scheming
(the premium over actual value, discounted by the fact that Ellison owns much of money being spent on the purchase) seems...not big enough to matter? But his greed is unbridled?
Basically: Larry Ellison had a vested interest in Oracle buying NetSuite, and (allegedly) abused his power within Oracle to kickoff the NetSuite acquisition at a premium far above NetSuite's actual value, thus (allegedly) financially benefiting Ellison rather nicely.
Readit News
I saw this document linked on Twitter yesterday and it's just amazing. I always knew that Larry Ellison's mug was in the dictionary next to the definition of "customer hostility", but man, it's another thing altogether to read the top 60 ways Oracle will screw you.
My favorite is how you can't use Oracle Technology Network (OTN DEV) licenses for testing. They're only for development, which is something you do without testing.
https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2034
I remember vividly a town hall with Johnathan Schwartz as the speaker (he was briefly CEO but wasn't at the time).
One of the engineers, after hearing a speech full of buzzwords but no substance asked "Okay, but how does this actually make us money?"
The engineer was politely told to shut up, focus on engineering and leave the "making money" part to the businessmen.
We all know how that worked out.
RIP Sun.
"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it’s very hard to get used to that idea. It’s like, ‘surely this is more complicated!’ but it’s like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity — that’s it! …Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah… you talk to Oracle, it’s like, ‘no, we don’t fucking make dreams happen — we make money!’ …You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle."
Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
* Oracle was extremely straightforward about caring about only money. (In contrast to Sun, or even to the claims of investment banks.)
* Oracle was that way because it was the alter-ego of Ellison. (With funny bit about not attempting to anthropomorphize Ellison.)
(What Cantrill didn't mention, when alleging Ellison's simplicity, was Ellison's supposed intense competitiveness with, or hatred of, Bill Gates. I happened to bump into Ellison once, at an event, and seemed to see a hint of that firsthand.)
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/otc-oracle-idUSKCN1V91UJ
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> As Frankel wrote in her article, the lawsuit, which was originally filed by the Firemen’s Retirement System of St. Louis, could be worth billions:
Same kind of problem Berkshire Hathaway has; once you're big enough, available returns are limited by how much you yourself distort the market. Pension funds used to be able to buy almost limitless bonds in order to lock in annuity returns, but a) a bunch of them are a long way underwater and b) the effective rate of interest on bonds was below zero so they were forced to seek riskier assets, bidding up the price on those, which... etc etc etc.
Capital concentration – huge pension schemes, enormous corporations, big university endowments – has weird effects and it happens in all kinds of places.
It's very similar to what happened with HP and Autonomy.
Dead Comment
The amount Ellison profited from scheming (the premium over actual value, discounted by the fact that Ellison owns much of money being spent on the purchase) seems...not big enough to matter? But his greed is unbridled?
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