
Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO - jhonovich
http://recode.net/2014/09/18/larry-ellison-will-step-down-as-ceo-of-oracle/
======
chollida1
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 what the street expected all along as Catz has
been around for ever and alot of people thought that Hurd, the former HP CEO,
was promised the CEO title when Ellison resigned.

It looks like they, Catz and Hurd, will split the running of day to day
operations as Hurd gets sales, marketing and strategy reporting to him, while
Catz will continue to have finance, legal and manufacturing.

Its down about a dollar after the close on about a third higher trading volume
than normal. So it doesn't look like anyone is "spooked" by the news.

~~~
j_baker
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?

~~~
phillmv
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_.

~~~
nostrademons
Relevant Quora question:

[http://www.quora.com/Was-Larry-Ellison-a-good-
programmer](http://www.quora.com/Was-Larry-Ellison-a-good-programmer)

Also, apparently Bob Miner programmed the bulk of the original product and ran
engineering, but the Quora link above says Miner considered Ellison a good
programmer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Miner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Miner)

------
dm8
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...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181369.The_Difference_Between_God_and_Larry_Ellison_))

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.

~~~
mathattack
Very good book.

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

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mindcrime
Not really sure what to say about this. I don't know Ellison, nor do I own
Oracle stock, or have any particular interest in Oracle per-se. But
nonetheless, I've always seen Ellison as an important character in our
industry, and after reading a biography about him, I felt a sort of kinship
with him based on some shared interests.

At any rate, it definitely feels like the "end of an era" in a sense. I got my
start in this industry in the mid to late 90's when Oracle, IBM, Novell,
Microsoft, Borland, etc. were duking it out for supremacy, and - for better or
worse - you've never really been able to escape Oracle's shadow to some
extent. And Ellison was Oracle, in so many ways.

Edit: It's been a while, but I think this[1] was the biography I read. I'll
just say this: regardless of what you think of Ellison, he's an interesting
character and reading about the history of Ellison / Oracle is quite
fascinating.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-
Orac...](http://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-
Oracle/dp/0743225058/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411072380&sr=1-1)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I'm not sure that you want to be finding kinship with sociopaths.

~~~
mindcrime
I don't really buy that line of thinking. Nobody is perfect, and I don't see
denying "a certain sense of kinship" with a fellow human being, which is based
on certain shared interests, just because I might dislike or disapprove of
other aspects of that person's character.

That said, I don't think I'd _like_ Larry Ellison if I knew him (although I
could be wrong). I'm just saying that there are things about him where I can
see some overlap in thinking and interests. It doesn't mean I want him sainted
or anything. :-)

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smacktoward
I'm guessing he wants to spend more time wringing extortionate license fees
out of his family?

------
ChuckMcM
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 not having
an ultimate authority seems to really crimp organizations. I wish Oracle well
but they have a lot of challenges to overcome, if I were a share holder I
wouldn't be all that pleased with this arrangement as it seems to basically
leave all the same people in place with all the same problems (Amazon/Google
EC2/GCE, MySQL vs NoSQL vs expensive Oracle, Cheap Clusters with High
Reliablity vs Expensive Servers, Etc.)

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

~~~
ChuckMcM
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.

------
bsimpson
Someone in The Verge's comment section noted that this Forbes list will now
need to be updated:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/forbes-
releases-2014-list-o...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/forbes-
releases-2014-list-of-most-punchable-ceos,35694/)

------
spindritf
_The final Larry Ellison scorecard: Oracle stock is up 89,640% since he took
the company public in March 1986._

[https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/512700128801464320](https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/512700128801464320)

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

~~~
MagicWishMonkey
Yep, it's like Hurding Catz.

Ok I'll show myself out.

~~~
jacquesm
120+ points, and who says HN has no sense of humor :)

~~~
wuliwong
hahah, apparently the people that down-voted my positive response to his
comment. sheesh.

~~~
wuliwong
And the guy that downvoted that ^^

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joelrunyon
Are there any more details into why he's doing this?

~~~
andyl
Maybe it has something to do with him being 70?

~~~
valevk
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](http://www.channelweb.co.uk/IMG/834/272834/big-ellison.jpg)

~~~
mrcarlosrendon
His face looks great. I think you can see his age in his arm skin.

~~~
laichzeit0
Well he's obviously had some "work done". Which I think is great, why not?
Money is surely not the problem, life's too short to look crap.

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sebst
Oracle's stock has already dropped 2.5%.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/18/oracle-stock-
drops-2-5-on-n...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/18/oracle-stock-drops-2-5-on-
news-that-larry-ellison-has-relinquished-his-ceo-title/)

------
azifali
The end of an era for Oracle that existed as a software (licensing) company. I
think that Ellison stepping in as the CTO is probably more important than him
stepping down as the CEO.

This move will perhaps will lay the groundwork for the next tens of billions
in revenue for Oracle, in cloud based software and infrastructure.

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sebst
Will Oracle then become better? Maybe as good as Sun used to be?

just dreamin'...

~~~
valarauca1
I doubt this'll happen. I wish this would happen. But I sincerely doubt this
will happen. Sun really felt like a once in a life time company. I think the
best thing we can hope for is board room infighting will just kill Oracle.

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justinph
What is with the capitalization on the headline on Recode? I read it and
thought, who is "Will Remain"?

It should be: Larry Ellison will step down as CEO of Oracle, will remain as
CTO

Headline capitalization is pretty easy: Capitalize the first word, then any
proper nouns. That's it.

~~~
keebEz
It is correct according to most commonly used guidelines for headline
capitalization. You were describing how to capitalize stuff in a paragraph,
not a headline.

[http://www.grammarunderground.com/capitalization-of-
headline...](http://www.grammarunderground.com/capitalization-of-
headlines.html)

~~~
justinph
Well, I stand corrected. Dang.

