We can get a mainstream
operating system for free, some
award-winning developer tools for free and an enterprise standard
application server for free. By implementing the
open source strategy,
Sun isn't going to get any significant quick profit in the short future. But why I say Scott, the CEO of Sun Microsystems is a good boss? Though he isn't necessarily a good business man.
Because I've worked with those bosses who have only short sight. They're only looking for short term income, they're only interested in solving at hands but not potential problems and they're only capable of figuring out visible costs.
The answers of below questions might be able to tell us whether our bosses are good:
1) Is it possible that you can be dedicated to a project for developing a justifiably good internal-use system?
2) Is it possible for you to request 5 man days more for a task which is only allocated for 2 man days initially?
3) Are you allowed to sit on a sofa doing nothing during office hours and no one will question you?
4) Does your team still have the same group of people after the project end?
5) Does any of your ideas get implemented?
If you get all "yes", congratulations! you've got a good boss.
After all this while reading the
blogs of some Sun's employees, I'm highly impressed with their working environment, their freedom of work and the way they're managed. In this kind of environment, you're hardly to be unproductive and not creative.
Yes, they don't see profit, their stock price is still not up to expectation. But there have one of the best engineering team and working environment in the company. Do you doubt the future of a company which is having strong, intelligent and highly committed teams?
Scott believes in his vision and works extra hard to achieve it. And more importantly, he is doing an excellent job on keeping the good talents.
My current company is still hiring, last week an anonymous asked me how nice is the working environment in the company, please let me first give a short answer: I've answered four "yes" out of the five.
