crismanNoble/Review of Scott McNealy's talk

## Review of Scott McNealy's talk
Scott McNealy's Talk at 1871 on 1/22/2013

5 Lessons:
1) Have a Cause
  - They didn't have a cause until like 2000 or so, but when they did people worked harder
  - Their cause was to go green
2) Make Quality / Customer Service Top Priority at ALL levels
  - Quality issues should always be #1 on the agenda
3) Define the decision making process (absolute v consensus v participative)
  - Unless you are Steve Jobs you can't do absolute
  - Unless you are a commie you will realize consensus can't work
  - Participative was his invention where everyone gets a say, but he gets final say
4) Your board matters
  - Attitude and culture gets driven from top down.
5) Open sourced R&D is awesome
  - At the time they were the only company doing open source R&D
  - Using Open Source and giving back to the community was a big help to everone.
  - Oracle's new CEO is "a exteremly good capitalist" and no longer supports open source, he took a dig at that and the recent bugs in JAVA.

5 Mistakes:
1) Being stiff armed by staff member is a red flag
  -He said that the CEO should be invited and welcomed into staff meetings, not shunned.
2) The CEO should / can't be replaced by a COO, it should be someone "on the floor"
  -He tried to groom his replacement for 22 years before realizing that all his former top managers were CEOs elsewhere by now
3) Let people go sooner
  -interestingly he said they never fired anyone at Sun, but didn't mention how he nudged them out the door
4) What are we going to make vs. buy
  -He told a story of how they decided to stop outsorcing sales b/c it cost too much, and that was a terrible decision.
5) Hold off on selling stock as long as possible, don't go public because there is so many more rules to follow.
  -But when you do, sell as much as you can right away and quit because the government will "think they own you"
  -It is worth noting he is a self professed "Raging Capitalist" and seems to really hate the Government especially teachers Unions and Obama, eg. "I work well into the fall for the Government" and "I [non trollingly] speak on Fox News"

Other:
He met with Gates about using the Windows UI on Sun Machines, but didn't want to pay $85. Then he went to Apple to ask for their UI, the CEO (not Jobs) said "f off ima do a book tour". He then went to see Steve Jobs at his house, Steve was sitting under a large oak tree, no shoes and ripped clothes reading "How to Make an Atomic Bomb" which Scott thought was wieird but never mentioned how the conversation went. They never did get to use the Apple UI API stuff...
	Scott McNealy's Talk at 1871 on 1/22/2013

	5 Lessons:
	1) Have a Cause
	- They didn't have a cause until like 2000 or so, but when they did people worked harder
	- Their cause was to go green
	2) Make Quality / Customer Service Top Priority at ALL levels
	- Quality issues should always be #1 on the agenda
	3) Define the decision making process (absolute v consensus v participative)
	- Unless you are Steve Jobs you can't do absolute
	- Unless you are a commie you will realize consensus can't work
	- Participative was his invention where everyone gets a say, but he gets final say
	4) Your board matters
	- Attitude and culture gets driven from top down.
	5) Open sourced R&D is awesome
	- At the time they were the only company doing open source R&D
	- Using Open Source and giving back to the community was a big help to everone.
	- Oracle's new CEO is "a exteremly good capitalist" and no longer supports open source, he took a dig at that and the recent bugs in JAVA.

	5 Mistakes:
	1) Being stiff armed by staff member is a red flag
	-He said that the CEO should be invited and welcomed into staff meetings, not shunned.
	2) The CEO should / can't be replaced by a COO, it should be someone "on the floor"
	-He tried to groom his replacement for 22 years before realizing that all his former top managers were CEOs elsewhere by now
	3) Let people go sooner
	-interestingly he said they never fired anyone at Sun, but didn't mention how he nudged them out the door
	4) What are we going to make vs. buy
	-He told a story of how they decided to stop outsorcing sales b/c it cost too much, and that was a terrible decision.
	5) Hold off on selling stock as long as possible, don't go public because there is so many more rules to follow.
	-But when you do, sell as much as you can right away and quit because the government will "think they own you"
	-It is worth noting he is a self professed "Raging Capitalist" and seems to really hate the Government especially teachers Unions and Obama, eg. "I work well into the fall for the Government" and "I [non trollingly] speak on Fox News"

	Other:
	He met with Gates about using the Windows UI on Sun Machines, but didn't want to pay $85. Then he went to Apple to ask for their UI, the CEO (not Jobs) said "f off ima do a book tour". He then went to see Steve Jobs at his house, Steve was sitting under a large oak tree, no shoes and ripped clothes reading "How to Make an Atomic Bomb" which Scott thought was wieird but never mentioned how the conversation went. They never did get to use the Apple UI API stuff...