Everyone Else Must Fail 216
| Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison | |
| author | Karen Southwick |
| pages | 320 |
| publisher | Crown Business |
| rating | 6/10 |
| reviewer | ElectricAnt |
| ISBN | 0609610694 |
| summary | The way you shouldn't run your business |
As you would expect, there is more business than technology in the book, not to say that this is bad, but you'll find only the top slice of Oracle's business: sales, marketing, consulting etc. You won't find many discussions on how, why and which technology has been created or adopted by Oracle -- it's mostly how this technology has been sold to customers, and what happened afterwards.
Southwick covers nearly all of Oracle's history, starting with 1979 and up to mid-summer 2003 when Oracle launched its campaign to acquire PeopleSoft. The book's starts with a quote attributed to Genghis Khan ("It is not sufficient that I succeed. Everyone else must fail.") which Larry Ellison obviously likes and uses quite often. After a start like that, it's all downhill from there.
Larry Ellison is portrayed as a natural leader: visionary, extraordinary productive and effective. At the same time, he is the "supreme dictator," "extreme narcissist," "most controversial CEO," all this is combined to make "a grandiose, deeply flawed, yet extraordinary, human being." My favorite quote in this book belongs to Rich Hagberg (a management consultant). When he drives by Oracle's towers, he says, "I tell my kids that's where Darth Vader lives." This is not the book's only harsh definition of Ellison. If Softwar is an "intimate" portrait of Larry Ellison then Everyone Else Must Fail is definitely an "intimidating" portrait of him.
Oracle's culture is defined as "brutal, draining, and filled with potential pitfalls." The relationship between Larry and his subordinates, and what's equally important, with Oracles customers (the Oracle mindset is described as "use 'em and dump 'em.") Everyone is expendable, success must be achieved by all means, and everything is measured by how useful a person is to help Ellison implement his vision.
The list of dumped Oracle executives includes Tom Siebel of Siebel, Craig Conway of PeopleSoft, Greg Brady of i2 Technologies, Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com, Gray Bloom of Veritas, the list goes on and on. As soon as Larry Ellison feels that an executive gains popularity with customers, employees, and can, potentially, outplace him, he will find a reason to get rid of that person. Due to Ellison's personal "insecurity" to deliver the news face-to-face, many of those execs were fired "remotely," usually over the phone, and while on vacation. Coincidentally, almost all of them were fired just before the next portion of their stock options vested. Some of the discharged workers filed wrongful termination suits, but few of them won: none of them have talked to Larry since.
Only Bob Miner, Oracle's co-founder, top developer of Oracle's DB, and later head of development, is shown as a friend. Unfortunately, Bob Miner died in 1994 of lung cancer and Larry was left in the void. Over the last three years, Ellison fired all key members of his management team and concentrated all power in his own hands, leaving Oracle without much a needed counterbalance to Ellison's whimsical desires. With increased competition from IBM and Microsoft, unhappy customers, and flawed leadership, Karen Southwick questions the future of Oracle but leaves the question open.
The customers of Oracle DB were technology experts and didn't mind the need to fiddle with the product until they got it working; the real problems started when Oracle began to release ERP and CRM applications. These applications use the technology and don't invent it. In Ellison's eyes, though, the technology is "cool"; he likes to create technology and respects engineers, he doesn't like to perfect it. If something goes wrong with the product, the company attitude seems to be that it's because customers did something stupid.
I found the comparison between Oracle, Microsoft and IBM very interesting: both Oracle and Microsoft are seen as "technology" companies, both have core technologies (database and operating system) and everything else revolves around them, "you better buy everything from us or you're out." It's a sink-or-swim approach.
By contrast, IBM has marketed itself as a "solution" company that brings whatever customer asks for, the best-of-breed approach. However, in positioning .NET as an enterprise system, Microsoft makes one step forward to the solution approach. Oracle still hasn't make any steps in that direction.
A few things in the book are very entertaining -- for example, the story of Rick Bennett, who single-handedly served Oracle as an advertising agency from 1984 to 1990, the most aggressive ads Oracle ever ran were created by him. When Ingres was acquired by ASK Computer Systems Oracle ran a full page ad: "WE KICK ASK." This and some other examples of Oracle's ads from that era can be found on Bennett's website.
If you're looking for a recipe how to piss off your customers, screw up your employees, alienate your partners this book is for you: it has a detailed description how to achieve all that based on Larry Ellison's extensive experience.
You can purchase Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Microsoft too (Score:2, Insightful)
Just wish they'd just concentrate (and fix) the damn OS and it's GUI.
Re:Microsoft too (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted all companies generally regard customers as an annoyance. The feeling is mutual.
Not been approved, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or for that matter, it could be that many things (in the book) may be patenly false. How are we to know?
So what happens... (Score:4, Insightful)
(the mindset)
I know I'd not be particularly happy, but what else do you do ? If your business needs Oracle, then there is no real alternative - Informix is a distant second place, with the rest of the pack some why behind. Good luck porting from "standard SQL" to "standard SQL" as well
I have a certain amount of respect for Ellison (purely down to his PR image, of course
Simon
Re:If he needs a hobby (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know how someone described as "he is the 'supreme dictator,' 'extreme narcissist,'" would fit into an open and free culture.
"And yet, somehow Ellison is a billionaire with a MiG and an America's Cup campaign and ElectricAnt is writing reviews on Slashdot"
So you have to be a billionaire to criticize one? You aren't even writing reviews.
Re:Microsoft too (Score:2, Insightful)
The way you shouldn't run your business (Score:5, Insightful)
If you shouldn't run your business that way
then why is it so successful ?
autocracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The way you shouldn't run your business (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue that no leader of these large corporations is successful. No matter how large the company grows, the feel the need to make it bigger and bigger and bigger. They all finally get to the point that they are carved up by "the people" in the form an Anti-Trust law, or implode ala Enron.
None of this would happen if leaders would learn contentment. Once you have a working business model, a strong staff, and a steady stream of customers, it is time to sit back and let your investors profit.
Today, no one is profiting. The big names are in a war of attrition and a run for the bottom. Smaller companies are having to compete against artifically low prices, and direct competition from large companies trying to soak up every available dollar.
Investors don't get dividends. Capital is tied up either acquiring companies, protecting the company from aquisitions, or jumping off a cliff with these idiotic offshoring schemes.
So if everyone is miserable, why are we doing it? Ask Captain Ahab.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot claim to know him well, but I have met him once and found him to be intelligent, well spoken, and......rather cheerful.
Look, becoming the CEO of the worlds second largest software company is bound to tick a few folks off here and there and being worth as much money as that also tends to isolate one from certain realities that result in a few eccentricities. The San Jose airport thing applies to everyone and I am sure he is wealthy enough to pay the fines that result from flying in past certain hours. The Microsoft thing applies to everyone in software who is not Microsoft (since Microsoft apparently wants to compete with everyone else), and the Peoplesoft thing is simply product diversification. If Oracle could not be all things to all people, other companies are bound to spring up to fill needs.
Is this is a book review, a synopsis, or a rant? (Score:4, Insightful)
IMO, it's pretty clear that the reviewer is more interested in making a statement about how s/he feels about Larry, using sections from the book to follow it up, than in reviewing the book.
Re:Microsoft too (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read any of his anti-trust testminony it's clear he's simply lying and everyone knows it, it just that most of it happens to be in that legal gray area that the Reagan Iran/Contra team exploited so well, "I don't recall."
OTOH, the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation _is_ doing some very nice stuff, and I don't think that Ellison can compare at all.
Re:Microsoft too (Score:3, Insightful)
It's this line of thinking that leads to things like example firings and predatory practices. You don't just want to make more money than Competitor X, you want to CRUSH Competitor X.
When Sun Tzu started being taught in MBA classes was when western civilization started to decline.
Re:Ellsion Was defined by Negative Space of Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
Gates may be a ruthless businessman, but I don't get the impression that he's a ruthless person. Of course, I don't know him, so take this with grain of salt, but I can't imagine Bill Gates ever saying "Maybe I should fire a few Maverick missiles in his [Ellison's] living room" or frequently use Larry and Oracle interchangeably -- "Larry divides the world into two things -- the stuff he owns and everything else. And Oracle wants to own everything." That's just vindictive. I think it's telling that Larry is one of the least generous billionaires [businessweek.com] out there ($ 69 million as of 2002, or 0.4% of his wealth), while Gates is one of the most generous ($25.6 billion as of 2002, or 60% of his wealth) [businessweek.com].
I get the impression that Larry is a total narcissist and a bad person, concerned with beating everyone and looking good (to the last point, look at his materialism and the way he dresses and puts himself out). He's ruthless like a mobster is ruthless -- kill or be killed, and everyone's a potential killer. Whereas Bill is entirely socially-inept, and runs his business like a game without realizing its real-world effects, but is basically a good guy (nowhere near as materialistic, doesn't really care or even understand fully what people think of him). He's ruthless like a ruthless Monopoly game player -- bend the rules, maybe even cheat, be a poor loser, but it's still just a game.
Put it this way: if Larry were to lose Oracle and all of his money, I think Larry would be plotting someone's death. If Bill Gates were to lose Microsoft and all of his money, I think Bill would just start over and try to do something else.
Re:Microsoft too (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course M$'s employees are treated well. The amount of money M$ receives per employee is extraordinary, probably the highest in the world. It is being paid $35,000,000,000+/year for a few programs it largely wrote more than a decade ago.
---
It is wrong that an intellectual property (IP) creator should not be rewarded for their work. It is equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and curtail business excesses.
Re:Ellsion Was defined by Negative Space of Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
That said...
This is the same company that put out memos using gross terminology like "knife the baby" and "cut off the air supply". This is serial killer talk. I don't know if the terminology originated with gates but he did not raise any objections to it.
First of all, these are corporate memos, not letters from Bill to his grandmother. I believe those quotes came from the various memos (e.g., the Halloween memos) that have been leaked in the past, which were written by employees. I don't think any of them were Gates's terms. You're right, though, he didn't object to them. But those quotes are clearly metaphorical, not literal; there's absolutely no question that a baby and someone's trachea were not being targeted. Larry, on the other hand, was being literal, although he was joking. There's a giant difference. Larry was talking about Bill's HOUSE, not MSFT's offices! He was buying an actual fighter jet that at some point in its history was able to shoot those missiles!! I know it was a joke, but it doesn't come off well when he jokes about real-life things like that. Even you attribute the "knife the baby" quote to Bill, there's absolutely no possible way to say that Bill himself is joking about knifing an actual baby. I just don't interpret the Bill quotes as personally malicious -- they're clearly talking about a company, or open source software in general -- but I do interpret Larry's to be that way.
In other words, I don't get the impression that Bill has ever threatened, joked, or even contemplated hurting a person (e.g., Jim Clark or Linus Torvalds). Larry, on the other hand, has publicly joked about blowing up Bill's house.
You are making up to be some sort a bafoon. Sure he wants to project that image (and many people have bought it apparently) but I think you are very wrong. Good honest decent people don't lie, cheat, steal, and break the law habitually.
I'm not making him out to be some sort of a buffoon. I'm saying that he runs his business like a game -- that is, he's willing to bend and break rules as if the rules aren't all that significant. My impression is that he sees a difference between business rules and life rules. Fair enough, although of course it's all a matter of perspective, and business rules still do have real life effects. He's apparently an extremely tough manager with a volatile management style; he's a perfectionist and a control freak. But I don't get the impression he's that way outside Microsoft. And that's perfectly normal, IMHO. My SO, for example, is known at her company as an extremely tough manager, a perfectionist, a control freak, very, very, very impatient, and, um, loud. But outside of work, with me and her friends and family, she's the sweetest girl in the world (well, she's still somewhat impatient). She just views work differently than her personal life. I know, therefore, she's a good, wonderful person, even though she may have a different reputation at work.
"Put it this way: if Larry were to lose Oracle and all of his money, I think Larry would be plotting someone's death."
That's just bullshit. How did you arrive that bit of anlysis? You have psychic abilities or something.
Like I said, I'm not analyzing anything; I'm just talking about my impressions. Of course I don't have psychic abilities, but I'm sorry if you can't understand how people form impressions of other people based on more than the one or two most obvious factors. I do hope that you're not as simplistic as to think, for example, RMS is a great guy simply because of what he believes in and Bill Gates is a bad guy because of how he runs his business. RMS could be a complete asshole and a really bad p
Re:Ellsion Was defined by Negative Space of Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
They may be metaphorical but in the entire universe of metaphors top level MS executives chose ones that are gross and violent. As I said this is serial killer talk not normal people talk. I use metaphors all the time but I would never have chosen imagery like that.
It's obvious to me that this kind of talk goes on all the time at MS headquarters.
"Gates could be the nicest guy around, but still run his business ruthlessly"
I could not disagree with you more. The definition of morality does not change when you clock in to work and when you go home. If you are an honest, ethical person then you will behave that way no matter what. I acknowledge that some people have sliding scales of morality or situational ethics but by definition those people are immoral and unethical. Morality is built into your character and shows in all your actions.
Bill Gates is immoral in his business dealings which makes him an immoral person. Ethical people don't spend 8 hours a day screwing people, it just does not work that way.
Re:Ellsion Was defined by Negative Space of Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not. These two phrases don't stand alone. They are taken in context with a world of words and actions from the same top level execs at MS.
"I hesitate to judge the PEOPLE as evil simply on their choice of words. "
First of all it'e perfectly OK to judge people by what they say. You are judging Ellison by what he says aren't you? Secondly I am not "simply" judging them by what they say I am aslo judging them by what they do.
" for example, leveraging your monopoly position in a market is immoral! It's illegal, it's unethical (because it's illegal and general business practice avoids it), but immoral? Whose morals?"
Wow what an odd statement. First of all Bill Gates has done much worse then things then leveraging his monopoly. He has also stolen technology from his partners, he has reneged on contracts, he has stolen customers from his partners, he has lied repeatedly and backstabbed just about everybody he partnered up with.
Secondly yes being unethical and breaking the law is immoral. Whose morals? Well just about anybodies. Did your mother tell you it was OK to be unethical? Did your mother tell you to break the law in order to make money? What moral system approves of unethical and illegal behavior. I can only think of one structure of thought that has no problem with unethical and illegal behaviour and that is satanism.
"Judging from your signature, I would think that you probably believe manufacturers who help design and build bombs or guns or other military goods are immoral. Am I right? Do you think capitalism is immoral? [I suspect you do.]"
I believe that everybody in the chain of an immoral act bears some responsiblity no matter how small. I as a taxpayer bear a minute percentage of responsiblity for the bombs that fall on innocent children in afghanistan. There are others that bear more responsiblity with the brunt of it being borne by the pilot who released the bomb. My signature refers to our obsession and love affair with war. The US is unable to go 10 years without declaring war on somebody or another. It's necrophelia love of death, love of corpses. We revere war, we revere warriors.
As for capitalism I do think it's immoral in the christian sense. Christianity (as thought by christ) and Capitalism are mutually exclusive. Love of money is the root of all evil and capitalism is based on love of money. It is harder for a rich man to get to heaven then for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Capitalism is based on the deadly sins. Where would capitalism be without Greed, gluttony, covetousness, pride, sloth, lust etc?
"What universal mores did Microsoft people break? What laws did Microsoft people break?"
Lying, cheating, stealing to start with. Are you aware that there was a trial and that MS was found guilty?
"Also, I'm quite surprised by your belief that people who have a more fluid idea of morality -- e.g., looking at the context ("situational" morality, as you put it) -- are themselves immoral and unethical!!"
I never said such a thing.
"but what about "environmental terrorists"? Are they immoral for causing such destruction in the name of protecting the environment? Are they unethical?"
If they caused destruction then yes they were immoral. Why is that so hard to understand for you? If you kill people, destroy other peoples property, lie, cheat, steal etc you are immoral. In most cases you are also a criminal and deserve to be punished according to the law. If you are an environmentalist and you destroy a logging truck then you should be tried for vandalism and be fined or jailed. Why is that concept so foreign to you?
"Is he immoral in all his business dealings?"
No. Does he have to be? Is it OK for him to be immoral in 90% of his business dealings? Is it OK to be 10% immoral? He is immoral in a lot of his business dealings.
"But I seriously don't th