When Scott McNealy came on at Sun in 1984, because the board voted to give themselves veto power over his retention for five years, it turns out his status amounted to being a temporary employee. That "temporary" status continued for 22 years because, as he told Marketplace reporter Kai Ryssdal, it took that long to find an appropriate successor in Jonathan Schwartz. Read the transcript of Ryssdal's lengthy interview online.

A big part of McNealy's legacy at Sun, he told Ryssdal, is the creation of the corporate culture. "The thing I get the biggest kick out of is an employee who will come to me and say, 'I just put my kids through school' or 'I bought a new house' or, you know, 'Sun's the best place I've ever worked and I've learned more and done more.' You know, that's always a big kick. It's also fun to go see how our technology is used, whether it's used in facial reconstruction in healthcare or whether it's used to save lives in the Defense Department or Homeland Security or whether somebody is doing distance learning and teaching people how to learn using our technology."

On the issue of riding the dotcom bubble up and then down, McNealy asserted that investors who have stuck with Sun long-term have done respectably. Sun's performance in the last two quarters are sufficient confirmation for him that the company is heading in the right, and profitable, direction.

McNealy conceded that he might have been too slow to respond to the need to reduce employees during the downturn but keeping the R&D budget at high levels, he believes, is paying off now as Sun is in a position to make inroads into the market share of such competitors as Dell. He tries not to personalize the comments analysts make about his performance, he said.

On the subject of the litigation with Microsoft, McNealy said the cash was nice but even more important was the patent cross licensing arrangement between the former rivals, which has made for a more productive competitive atmosphere.

As far as the future is concerned, McNealy said Sun just needs "...to execute on what we're doing. We got to make sure we don't overreach, get overbroad in the scope and scale of what we do. I believe more things are gonna get digitized, more things are gonna get connected to the network. We're adding millions of people every week. We're adding millions and millions of devices to the network. There's RFID events getting recorded. There's Java virtual machines being put into everything, including hundred-dollar DVD players and Sony PlayStations and other technologies like that." [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter