How many former Sun folks are in senior engineering management at Broadcom? Might as well have just posted the person’s name.
> Companies that have disdain for their own customers will be reviled in return. Such companies may be able to thrive in the short term, but they do not endure in the limit.
Oracle has endured nearly 50 years. Sun did not endure.
I don't want to live in a world where one of the most successful and widespread corporate strategies is also disturbingly un-humanistic, but we're never going to find a better way unless our mental models for how customer relationships map to business success actually align with reality.
>> Certainly, these companies not endure as innovators: when coercion is your business model, innovation is not merely unnecessary but actively antithetical.
Oracle and VMware do seem like just rent seekers. I'm sure those rents do pay for plenty of nice things, but it's really hard for me to ever understand Oracle or VMware as an "innovator", beyond their initial innovations (their flagship DB, x86 virtualization).
> Oracle has endured nearly 50 years. Sun did not endure.
IMHO it's perfectly fine for companies to live well, and then be sold. AFAIAC persistence is only proof of persistence. Sun created plenty of wealth/millionaires too. And, by Bryan's lights, it did so mostly ethically. That's a good life.
This is an entirely fair/accurate. I suppose what I am getting at is that these are just 2 different business models, and, the world can sustain a multitude of business models. There need not be only one (har har).
It's also fair to believe there is a moral dimension to one's own model which doesn't extract maximum value from the customer. Because IMHO "let's kick them in the dicks again" isn't an especially likable model, even if it is successful, and it's fair to avoid doing business with such people.
Imagine trying to sell your partners on doing business with Broadcom. If your core principle is "Broadcom needs to be around in 10 years", maybe the persistence/"kick them in the dicks" model is appealing, but otherwise, its fair for their competitors/Oxide to point out how awful dealing with a corporate sociopath might be.
There are plenty of customers that jump into deals with e.g. Oracle for a variety of reasons, and it's definitely worthwhile to spread the news far and wide about how difficult it is to work with these companies, doubly so if you're ideologically and economically competing with them.
I guess my point is that it's worthwhile to spend time understanding why this business model works in spite of all the shittiness, since the "hoping their poor treatment of customers will blow back on them" approach hasn't worked yet.
vintagevibe•12h ago
joa-•9h ago
When 2 enterprises love eachother very much,they don't sue eachother, they don't lie and tell customers they are the only one having this problem and most importantly,they stay together in a partnership and maybe work together to improve the product.
Valuable advice I once received was: sales is about trust, and this kind of breaks that. I think that the sane customer would explore option to migrate their services to other things.
BSDobelix•8h ago
I absolutely want a good partnership with the people who make my enterprise software. If I end up loving one of them, even better. However, paying Oracle, for example, and constantly fearing being sued sounds more like domestic violence, a bit like #WhyIStayed