Sun to Cut 5000 Jobs 214
codemachine writes "In one of Jonathan Schwartz's first acts as CEO, Sun Microsystems has announced that they are cutting up to 5,000 jobs over the next 6 months. The company plans to sell property it owns in Newark, Calif., and to exit leases at a site in Sunnyvale, Calif. Analysts will be pleased that Sun has finally taken steps to cut costs, but what will this mean for the future of the company?"
Doh (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Doh (Score:2)
Re:Doh (Score:3, Interesting)
Disclosure - I am a Sun employee. Hopefully unaffected by this move. I am speaking for myself here, not for the company.
Having said that, this is a targeted cut. Not a cheese-paring '10% everywhere' as has happened in the past. The execs have taked a hard look at our business and decided that we'll focus on what makes sense for Sun. Areas that don't make the cut will be, well, cut. What's remaining will be left intact.
In fact, my group has open [sun.com] reqs [sun.com] that we are actively filling. Unusually, these are ent
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
You know what this means... (Score:5, Insightful)
5000 disgruntled ex-Sun employees band together to form a new company, Black Hole, billing themselves as the "anti-Sun" development company and creating a programming language called "Borneo." I can see it coming; it's written in my tea leaves.
Let's hope Sun gets smart and gets rid of the excess layers of middle management and their entire marketing staff, along with a few maintenance guys. If they let go too many programmers, the competition may reap a windfall.
Re:You know what this means... (Score:3)
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2)
How about New Coke?
Just kidding. Seriously, I would use Sega Dreamcast as an example.
What was the marketing failure? (Score:2)
Java is probably the best example of great technology held back by completely incompetent marketing.
I had heard about numerous problems with Java in the past (JVM performance, licensing issues, etc.) but had not known its marketing was widely perceived to be one of them. I'm curious ... what was it that the Sun marketing staff did that was so "incompetent?" Did they do something that turned off users or developers in the way it was marketed? Did they run big ads saying 'Java causes intestinal cramps' or
Re:What was the marketing failure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2)
Java is probably the best example of great technology that's killing the company that produced it. Java may well be the very thing that is killing Sun microsystems.
Java makes the hardware platform largely irrelevant, except in terms of raw performance and reliability. Sun Microsystems is a hardware company. Thus, the more popular Java is, the less relevant Sun Microsystems is. If you are using Java, why woul
Re:You know what this means... (Score:3, Informative)
The "success" the Amiga had was because of the folks in Engineering, and it's user base.
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2)
This is basically what happened to Apple about the same time. The main difference was age. After commodore, Jack Tramiel was pretty much ready to retire, whereas Steve Jobs was able to return to Apple and fix some things.
Tramiel did buy Atari, but after briefly returning it to profitability, h
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2, Funny)
Now THAT's a non-compete clause.
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2)
And what, may I ask, are you using to compile it?
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2)
A new Linux utility I created -- tmake.
Re:You know what this means... (Score:2)
Management material! (Score:2)
Layoffs are not done based soley on skill level and experience. Some good programmers will be cut with the chaff. Good people are going to get hurt. For some it may be an opportunity, for others it will be a tragedy.
New Rule: Don't judge people by their employer. There may even be some good develope
Re:Insightful??? (Score:2)
I have to admit, I was a bit stunned myself... but hey, them's the breaks with moderation!
The company?!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2)
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2)
Sun and Microsoft signed their deal what, 2 years ago? 37,000 people should have just suddenly given up on their jobs, benefits, perks, projects because...why again?
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
They'll go get new jobs. We have a great economy and we're at more-or-less full employment.
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cross-sector numbers across an entire country are one thing, accurate numbers pertaining to a specific industry and location are quite another...
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
But keep in mind that this is result of the awesome economy that we had under clinton. During his time (with his opening of the internet), we saw such great expansion. Basically, the tech jobs that were created were way too many. Many ppl who came in had no real knowledge (a training class in windows sys-ad or programming is NOT real knowledge) and really did not gain much experience. Most have been forced into other jobs as incompetent companies went under.
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2)
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, its also stupid. The company must survive to provide jobs for the other 25,000 people that work for Sun. If firing these 5000 workers will allow them some much needed restructuring of operations, then the rest of their workforce will be better off for it, and will allow them to make money and eventually hire more people.
Certainly, its not fun or easy that 5000 people lose out so 25000 people can gain. However, Sun is really not a place wh
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you know, it's possible to have a little compassion for the people who are going to lose their jobs without suggesting that Sun was wrong to let them go. Nowhere in the parent post was it implied that the RIF was wrong or even unnecessary. So why all the righteous indignation? It's one thing not to have empathy, but quite another to be actively offended by it in others.
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2)
I have empathy for those that were fired. And the GGP DID imply that the decision was wrong, based on the context and who they were replying did, so This posts GP is silly. Hence my post.
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2)
You could see that as a win-win situation for the redundant staff, or at least revenge.
Although at least the staff knew about this before it appeared in Slashdot (I had a CV from a really interesting Sun employee who had just taken voluntary redundancy, and thought 'I didn't know they were making cuts'). It's hardly an unexpected turn of events.
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sun has been going down the tubes for years, any idiot could have seen this coming - especially once it was announced that McNealy was stepping down as CEO. Sun employees have had plenty of time to find jobs at profitable, well-run firms, or to at least stash away money to live on. I see little reason to worry about their futures - anyone getting canned has had plenty of time to jump ship.
Re:The company?!?!? (Score:2)
In a modern capitalist society such as the US, everyone has the ability to own something. It's the choice of these workers if they decide not to own anything that can make money for them and depend solely on the pay of an employer to subside on. As such, they shouldn't cry when said employer lays them off and no one else s
in last 5 year, this is best time (Score:2)
Of course, according to the gov. numbers, they would be wise to pick up jobs real quick, rather than taking too long.
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:5, Insightful)
And honestly, why should we care? What do you expect us to do about it? They're doing what they feel is right to put the company back on track.
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Point proven, I'd say...
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Nnot exactly, they're doing what they feel is right to maximise shareholder value which doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing.
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
Now
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
In SUN's situation I'm not sure of their future.
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
Sun is obviously not using these workers to their full potential. They have many highly qualified engineers and not enough customers. These employees will find work elsewhere. Most of these people anticipated this outcome to one degree or another, and should have prepared.
Losing a job is just part of a career. It's not necessarily bad. Loyalty on either side is only efficient to a certain point before it becomes a burden.
And
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
You mean like feel what they are doing will keep the company alive for another decade, or feel what they are doing will make for a nice CEO stock option bonus?
What one feels is always subjective to perspective.
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:2)
What am I supposed to about 5000 employees jobs?
Re:Nobody Cares (Score:4, Insightful)
IMHO, Sun has been completely mismanged for a long time and these cuts might not even be enough to save them. It's a good thing that they are finally cutting people in order to try to stay open and continue providing jobs to those who are left. The people who get cut will presumable go out and find another job. Such is life...
We expect you to CARE, not do anything (Score:2)
Such is life? Such is life now, not in my grandfather's day when CEOs actually felt a little loyalty to the workers who had made them rich. Some of us don't like the
Re:We expect you to CARE, not do anything (Score:2)
As far as CEO salaries/bonuses are concerned, I'm somewhat torn. It's not their fault that companies are willing to pay them that much (blame the board if you want to blame anyone). Companies are willing to pony up for good reason though. A great CEO can take a company from being small time employing a few people and making a little money to being huge and employing thousands while making lots of money. Of course they don't do the day to day wo
Not true (Score:3, Informative)
Anybody who still or might some day work for said company cares. People still working want to know what happens since companies are creatures of habit when it comes to lay-off policy. If it's 3 hours notice and zero severence, people will step up the job hunt and take just about any offer to get the hell out. If it's a nice pacakge, they'll take stock in thier own finances and weigh the bail-out-now option against it. Anyone who might want
Re:Not true (Score:2)
Or perhaps hiring them in the fi
Why I don't care (Score:2)
These people are highly educated professionals. They already live in Silicon Valley. Most will have new jobs within weeks, perhaps with a minor pay cut. A few may have to relocate. Nobody will be living on the street.
I know this sounds like a disaster for people in many parts of the world, but pretty much everyone in Silicon Valley has been laid off a few times. It's just how things are here, and for most people it doesn't mean much more than a bit of a vacation.
And there are
Yeah, it sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember when Amazon refocused. They were selling so many ridiculuos (to ship) items, there were many products you could get at a local store that cost more to ship than the product itself!
Why do they have so much fat to trim? (Score:2)
It means they are cutting the fat.
Let's see. Last year they RIF'd some people. Then they bought StorageTek which added 7000. Now they're RIF'ing 5000.
Trimming the fat?
Since the dot com bubble burst, Sun has been laying off many thousands of staff per year, but at the same time acquiring other companies. Remember Cobalt? Within a year of the acquisition, the product line had withered on the vine, most of the staff had been RIF'd and the Cobalt founder left to start another company.
Have a look at Sun's h
Re:Yeah, it sucks More Brains?... (Score:2)
--a "corporate root canal"
-- corporate bone marrow extraction
-- corporate cartilage snipping
-- corporate tendonits
Strike the corporate tendon and cartilage and they will swagger like the zombies in Return of the Living Dead that shouted "LIVE BRAINS", "MORE BRAINS"...
(I never liked cartilage in my food, either, nor the veins in
It's a good thing: time to refresh things (Score:5, Insightful)
Their feistyness has been one of their biggest stumbling blocks for years. This gives them a chance to rebuild, cut some of their more insane projects and financial bleeding, and get back into action.
Sun has very goofy, fence-straddling legacy madnesses: Java programs, licensing issues, relationship issues, Microsoft litigation legacies, and all sorts of baggage. The faster they shed the baggage and go with producing assets, the better, IMHO.
Re:It's a good thing: time to refresh things (Score:2)
What assets?
Solaris seems to be constantly losing ground to Linux and since it's open source now anyway, they're basically on a level playing field with other UNIX support contract vendors (like Red Hat), except they have to pay all the development costs of their product whereas Red Hat/Novell/Canonical only pay some.
SPARC once had big advantages over more mainstream architectures. Nowadays its main play is huge paralleli
Loads of assets..... (Score:2)
Java? Nice technology with a crummy marketing plan. The Java Desktop is pretty cool stuff.... and needs lots of sandpaper and varnish to make it work well. Do they have an in
I must respectfully disagree..... (Score:2)
Multi-core Itaniums lead, followed closely by multi-core AMDs, followed by uSparc Ts, then the Power family.
This, using Linux 2.6 kernels in minimal/sparse installs, and LMBench3.
Contract Workers are Still Needed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Contract Workers are Still Needed (Score:2)
As one reply noted, Sun is terminating a bunch of contractors as they lay off employees. But lets assume that what the parent article says is accurate. Sun is, in effect, doing what Microsoft tried to do before TechsUnite successfully sued them. Sun is creating three levels in their work force. At the bottom there is offshore outsourcing to India. The next level are US contractors, who can be terminated at any time and, on a cash hourly basis are probably not paid much more than Sun employees (e.g., $4
Forget , what about stock options? (Score:4, Interesting)
I really like Sun's stuff and I hope that they are able to make a big comeback; but they are not going to do it counting on the folks that were in my class.
Re:Forget , what about stock options? (Score:2)
-matthew
i doubt these jobs are disappearing (Score:4, Interesting)
business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:business model? (Score:2)
This is quite an important aspect..
Re:business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Lawyers? (Score:2)
How many of these jobs were for lawyers who write up new "open source" licenses?
More informative link (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry=p
Explains the new Sun building in Hyderabad, India. (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't worry. The economy is boomin'! (Score:2)
There's been a steady stream of layoff announcements over the past 6 years. And yet, Bush and many economist pundits claim the US economy is strong.
Intel too? (Score:2)
Sun's On-Going Business Strategy (Score:2)
This is just yet more of the same from Sun. The business strategy since the bubble bursts seems to be:
Fire 9-11% of the staff to "cut costs"
Take an accounting hit to reduce tax
Acquire many smaller companies adding thousands more staffers
Continue everything else the same
Increase revenue hopefully
Not quite make a profit
Repeat.
pSo, what other secret laws of tax, accounting and business does this exploit, and why is it a good strategy?
ouch (Score:2)
Nothing new, abandoned Sun buildings already (Score:2)
http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/sun_micros ystems.htm [abandonedb...gotten.com]
Sun expanded by leaps and bounds during the DotCom boom, and has been contracting ever since the DomCom bust. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Sun will be around for a long time to come, just not as large as during their "glory days" of the 1998 Foosball/Aeron/Nerf DotCom era that we all miss.
Re:Will they still be powering eBay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing. It's really hard to make Solaris crash. I can throw a system load of 80 at a two-processor box and still get a response (enough of one to fix the problem causing a load of 80). It can run on a 216-processor single-system-image NUMA box efficiently, including some "self-healing" properties. Bank of memory throwing correctable ECC errors? Map it out. Processor that has ECC errors in it's cache? Map it out. Hotswap the board containing the processor or memory without a reboot. Users don't notice. On lower-end hardware, like the new AMD-based boxes, it will just map out and stop using the offending hardware until you have a chance to fix it. Isn't it better to have a machine drop from 8G of memory to 4G of memory until you can schedule downtime rather than just crash?
There's another, even larger factor. The government (one of Sun's biggest customers) likes Solaris. A lot. And they especially like Trusted Solaris, for which there's basically no *certified* comparable Linux distro. There's a lot of stuff painted Army green or Navy gray that has Solaris machines inside.
Did Sun mismanage things? Hell, yes. Was the major problem that they didn't throw out 20 years of engineering work to switch to Linux? Hell, no.
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
I can throw a system load of 80 at a two-processor box and still get a response (enough of one to fix the problem causing a load of 80). It can run on a 216-processor single-system-image NUMA box efficiently, including some "self-healing" properties.
The same with Linux (well, the biggest box I have used was a 16-way NUMA SGI Altix, but there are 512-way Altixes out there).
Bank of memory throwing correctable
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
To answer the other question, yes, *part* of that is hardware. On Sun hardware, Solaris can tell you that it's DIMM 17 that has the failure, and on more expensive Sun hardware, you can hotswap the CPU or memory. Hell, on some of the har
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
Actively undermining Linux? What are you on?
They provide Java for Linux, developer tools for Linux. They produce Star Office (and the open source equivalent Open Office) for Linux. Sun ships Linux.
This is a very strange kind of undermining.... but I guess in some peoples minds the very idea that Linux might not be suitable for everything is 'undermining'.
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
Now, as to your examples, Java for Linux came from the Blackdown group (which sun then took tried to take credit for). Sun has not really done much in way of support of Java off of Solaris and Windows.
Likewise, Staroffice started on Linux, sun bought it, and now is using this to try and break MS's monopoly.
As to shipping linux, hmmmm. Yeeeaaaahhhhhh. In the sa
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
That is just rampant FUD. Sun did not fund SCO. They purchased SCO licenses to avoid legal issues. Big deal.
Now, as to your examples, Java for Linux came from the Blackdown group (which sun then took tried to take credit for). Sun has not really done much in way of support of Java off of Solaris and Windows.
Nonsense. Sun provided a lot of help with Java from B
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2)
At the exact same time, SUN pays SCO for IP and stock. But this time, SUN already owns the IP (whereas MS at least could honestly say that they did not). Sun even comes out and says that SCO may have something to their lawsuit (neither saying that they support or reject it). Sun later sells the stock.
And you think that Sun is not part of
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2, Insightful)
I was working at Sun when they paid... the story went from "we bought something from them but we can't really tell you what it is at the moment" to "we paid for their know-how in x86 drivers development for the next Solaris x86 release" over a couple of days. Now the story is "purchased licenses to avoid legal issues"... Keep in mind that this is the company that paid through the nose to bury Cobalt
Hmmmmm ... (Score:2)
Come on, Sun was targeting MS as nobody else in the industry.
BTW, theit attitude towards Linux was kind of similar (on the bigger scale) to their attitude towards Windows because both Linux nad Windows symbolized the same thing: commoditisation (sp?) of their market with squeezing ou
Re:Hmmmmm ... (Score:2)
There are attempts to target MS, but it is flakey at best. As I have said for several years, Sun's worse enemey has been McNeally. With him gone, I am hopeful that Sun has a chance to recover, assuming that they can quit with the denigi
Re:Hmmmmm ... (Score:2)
For years it was McNeely and Co's determination and tenaciousness in M$-bashing that allowed Unix as a direction to survive when clueless and faceless managers at HP et al were moving towards the "New Technology".
After Sun settled the suit agains MS for the cash payout, it was sign of them losing the war. Everything after that was different.
Re:Sun - Corporate mismanagement at its finest (Score:2, Informative)
And yes they used their "vaunted engineering skills" to help Linux. Sun is a very big supporter of Gnome Desktop
What a bunch of crap! (Score:2)
What you are offering is to become yet another (failed) Dell's competitor in a niche market (Linux market is much less that Windows one). You're offering them to become a manufacturing and marketing (+ some services) company instead of a technological one.
I don't think it is a right way.
Sun has a lot of issiues because of being a niche company in
Re:poor developers (Score:2)
-matthew
Re:Stock (Score:2)
Re:Stock (Score:3, Interesting)
Most things were down. Sun started out at +.10 when I first noticed. By the time I changed the channel, it was at +.16
I am suprised (Score:2)
I was a Dell technician who used to fly out to remote installations to fix the dumbest hardware failures that just
Re:I am suprised (Score:4, Insightful)
We're due for a major RIF, too. Too many employees for the level of business, I'm afraid.
Re:Sun funds open source (Score:2)
Amen, brother! (Score:2)
It is interesting that McNeely actually was objecting to the latest layoffs.