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Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

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Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#61

Post by j_baker »

chollida1 wrote: post #6

Interesting that they name Co-CEO's in Catz and Hurd. I wonder how that will work, especially given Hurd's "tough to work with" reputation. Interestingly Ellison will be the CTO. This could be a shit show with 3 people trying to run the show! I mean does anyone really expect Larry Ellison to start taking marching orders. Will be interesting to watch the short interest on this company! I think the two headed CEO is wh…

The thing that is weird to me is that Ellison is CTO. I don't really think he's a highly technical person, or is he?

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#62

Post by j_baker »

keebEz wrote: post #34
chollida1 wrote: post #6

Interesting that they name Co-CEO's in Catz and Hurd. I wonder how that will work, especially given Hurd's "tough to work with" reputation. Interestingly Ellison will be the CTO. This could be a shit show with 3 people trying to run the show! I mean does anyone really expect Larry Ellison to start taking marching orders. Will be interesting to watch the short interest on this company! I think the two headed CEO is wh…

Oracle has been run by the three of them for awhile now. This is most likely a reduction in the responsibilities for Larry (ie. not getting flak for skipping out on earnings calls/keynotes when he wants to watch his boat race) and thus mostly a change in title without significant change to operations (other than messaging to the Street what the succession plan is).

Yeah, I think Ellison is heading for a "phased" retirement. Eventually, he'll give up the CTO role and just be Chairman. Then he'll give up the Chairman role (perhaps when he dies).

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#63

Post by bitwize »

valevk wrote: post #9
andyl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it has something to do with him being 70?

Wow, I never knew that he is 70. I thought 40-something. But he looks really young. In this picture he is 69! [1] [1] http://www.channelweb.co.uk/IMG/834/272834/big-ellison.jpg

Most of Larry Ellison's charitable contributions have been to a foundation he set up with the goal of reversing aging in Larry Ellison.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#64

Post by swartkrans »

j_baker wrote: post #61
chollida1 wrote: post #6

Interesting that they name Co-CEO's in Catz and Hurd. I wonder how that will work, especially given Hurd's "tough to work with" reputation. Interestingly Ellison will be the CTO. This could be a shit show with 3 people trying to run the show! I mean does anyone really expect Larry Ellison to start taking marching orders. Will be interesting to watch the short interest on this company! I think the two headed CEO is wh…

The thing that is weird to me is that Ellison is CTO. I don't really think he's a highly technical person, or is he?

Why do you think that a CTO has to be highly technical? Does a CTO at a big technology company write code? Line level engineering managers don't even write code a lot of the time. You just deal in the high-level abstract.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#65

Post by mathattack »

keebEz wrote: post #34
chollida1 wrote: post #6

Interesting that they name Co-CEO's in Catz and Hurd. I wonder how that will work, especially given Hurd's "tough to work with" reputation. Interestingly Ellison will be the CTO. This could be a shit show with 3 people trying to run the show! I mean does anyone really expect Larry Ellison to start taking marching orders. Will be interesting to watch the short interest on this company! I think the two headed CEO is wh…

Oracle has been run by the three of them for awhile now. This is most likely a reduction in the responsibilities for Larry (ie. not getting flak for skipping out on earnings calls/keynotes when he wants to watch his boat race) and thus mostly a change in title without significant change to operations (other than messaging to the Street what the succession plan is).

I think you're right. At first I thought it would be to bring out a knife fight. In reflection, it seems like they're going towards a triumvirate similar to Google. Larry wants to be Eric Schmidt, but can't be if he's got the CEO title. Everyone would defer to him for everything.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#66

Post by mathattack »

swartkrans wrote: post #64
j_baker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that is weird to me is that Ellison is CTO. I don't really think he's a highly technical person, or is he?

Why do you think that a CTO has to be highly technical? Does a CTO at a big technology company write code? Line level engineering managers don't even write code a lot of the time. You just deal in the high-level abstract.

He's got to be on top of all the industry trends. Say what you will about Larry, he is on top of this.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#67

Post by mathattack »

dm8 wrote: post #26

If you want to read about Larry Ellison's personality and his management style, you should read - "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation; God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison". ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181369.The_Difference_Bet... ) It's one of the best books written on him and the way he managed Oracle right from it's beginnings. He was damn good at selling things.

Very good book.

He will be revered, but he was behind some scandals back in the day.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#68

Post by ChuckMcM »

falsestprophet wrote: post #59
ChuckMcM wrote: post #48

Demonstrating once again that tech companies really don't "get" succession planning :-) I'm kind of half joking, if you look at a bunch of 'old school' BigCorps, the progression is (CEO->Chairman, SVPx -> CEO, VPx -> SVPx) and then the Chairman of the board retires and the CEO takes on both roles Chairman and CEO, priming the pump for the next cycle. Co-CEOs have so far been an experiment in disaster, something about…

Larry Ellison may "get" more about running a Fortune 100 tech company than you give him credit for.

You misinterpret my comment. He is masterful at running Oracle, the problem is he is mortal. Successions are all about building institutions that are immortal. Which is to say they continue to exist even as humans come and go. That is one of the key differences between a democracy and a dictatorship. In the latter when the dictator dies the country goes into civil war until another dictator arises, but in a democracy the 'people' in the system are constantly replaced by the country continues. Same is true for corporations. Technology companies tend to be driven more by one or two individuals who don't design an institution so much as they just run the business. I am fascinated that places like Ford and IBM have been as durable as they have been.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#69

Post by phillmv »

j_baker wrote: post #61
chollida1 wrote: post #6

Interesting that they name Co-CEO's in Catz and Hurd. I wonder how that will work, especially given Hurd's "tough to work with" reputation. Interestingly Ellison will be the CTO. This could be a shit show with 3 people trying to run the show! I mean does anyone really expect Larry Ellison to start taking marching orders. Will be interesting to watch the short interest on this company! I think the two headed CEO is wh…

The thing that is weird to me is that Ellison is CTO. I don't really think he's a highly technical person, or is he?

Not to dwelve too far into Oracle hagiography but,

>During the 1970s, after a brief stint at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation. His projects included a database for the CIA, which he named "Oracle". Ellison was inspired by a paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems called "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks".[10] In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000; $1,200 of the money was his.

It's really not clear from the first few hits off Google what his role was in developing Oracle, the application, but he's not like, _untechnical_.

Re: Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO

#70

Post by Ologn »

MagicWishMonkey wrote: post #17
turar wrote: post #3

Co-CEOs? I only know one company that had co-CEOs, and that didn't work out well for them.

Yep, it's like Hurding Catz. Ok I'll show myself out.

Very good. I'm pointing http://hurdcatz.com and http://hurdingcatz.com to MariaDB's web site...until I get a legal letter from Oracle.

(Actually every fourth load it goes to Bluehost instead, I have to look at my BIND and Apache later...)

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