> Accounts of former Oracle employees paint a picture of a boss with an infectious energy, and a propensity to elevate his charges to incredible heights only to dump them later. As one journalist put it, “He’s like a juicer, he squeezes people dry and then discards them.”<p>> Ellison, who before the crash, was known to brag about playing tennis on company time, and was so seldom at the office that, when he was spotted, employees joked about “Elvis sightings,”<p>It sounds like he got good employees to run his company and then treated them like shit. It's the sort of behavior that can work well for a few ceo's if only a few of them do it. But if every ceo were to behave like that, the pool of experienced employees out there would be nothing but bitter, cynical dried up husks who had sworn to themselves never to get exploited like that again.<p>This isn't a fair comparison to Mr. Ellison, but imagine if you will, an article in praise of a mob boss. "Well, he was horrible and he murdered people, but he made a lot of money." And it's true, mob bosses can accumulate great wealth. But mob bosses can only thrive two conditions are met:
1) there are people who don't engage in those behaviors for them to exploit.
2) society doesn't fight back effectively against their bull shit.<p>So, no I don't think Ellison is the equivalent of a mobster. But I do wonder why so many people put up with that sort of bull shit.
<i>> his office is plastered with Japanese art, certainly compounds his image as a wannabe Mongol warlord</i><p>Japanese art to Mongol warlord! What a conclusion!!! This makes as much sense as saying he has an Eiffel Tower poster so he'd like to live in Greece.
Being a jerk is not the success factor here. Without actual competence, Ellison would not have gotten far. It's being right and being a jerk in combination which is so powerful.<p>"he read a paper published by IBM, which outlined a way to make it easier to store and retrieve data — a prototype for the first relational database. 'I saw the paper, and thought that, on the basis of this research, we could build a commercial system.'”
<i>The incredible success that he has enjoyed is a marvel to anyone familiar with the accepted literature on what it takes to make a great leader, qualities like empathy, mediation skills and humility. ...</i><p><i>“It’s very unpopular to say in today’s world, where we have these Kumbaya theories of leadership,” says Pfeffer, “but it actually doesn’t work well.”</i><p>Exactly. The lesson here is that many management books contain mainly "leadership fantasies."[1] More from Pfeffer at the link.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/03/leadership-fantasies.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/03/leadership-fantasies.h...</a>
I'll take the risk of sounding like an overly-idealistic idiot, but if I could choose between billions of dollars and staying an effing human being, I'd probably choose the latter.
I'll agree and disagree. I have lost contracts to people who were willing to flat out lie to customers about their products, but since I moved to the bay area, I've also saved a life and got two people off drugs. That's what power is, you know.
"This is an industry in which basically growth has slowed to a crawl. The only way … you as a company can make progress is by acquisitions."<p>What a load of bullshit. You can, I dunno, build products and services and <i>compete</i>.
Does he strike you as a happy and fulfilled person, like you would want to be like him?<p>It's like with Jobs. No parent seriously wants their kids to turn out like Steve. They may mean they wish their kids to be as influential or as successful, but no wants to _be_ Steve Jobs.
> Following the ousting of HP CEO Mark Hurd, [Ellison stated], ...HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago<p>I don't know about Ellison's personal traits, but his thinking is correct here. Hurd was a great CEO - having brought in Palm - which could have been something. Instead, they fired him, hired Leo Apotheker, who completely and utterly mismanaged the company.<p>Say what you will about Ellison, but his instincts are right on the money.