Schwartz: There's always been a pretty aggressive debate between myself, Scott and Greg (Papadopoulos, former chief technology officer and now head of Sun research and development). We are always arguing all sides and all facets of an argument.
McNealy: And he switches back and forth. He'll switch back, and then I'll take his side, and then he'll take (the other). We're just trying to sort the issues out. We all think out loud a lot, but it isn't really arguing.
Schwartz: There have been acquisitions in which I'll call up Scott and say, "We've got to go get this done," and he'll tell me I'm an idiot. Then he'll call me back and say, "We've got to get this done," and I'll tell him he's an idiot. It's an active dialogue, but that is part of the decision-making process at Sun. Sun is not a place where you come to work, and you walk into your boss's office, he or she tells you what exactly to go do, and you just get it done. Sun is a place that's built on debate, built on transparency and built on dialogue. The fact that our email addresses are open to everybody — not just inside Sun, but in the marketplace — means (we) want the input.
McNealy: If you go and ask folks about the last four years and how well the team has worked together — you know, we used to spend our leadership conferences trying to work on teamwork and conflict resolution and all the rest of it. It's just not a topic I need to even bring up anymore.
Back when Ed Zander left as COO and president, Sun lasted about two years before you got a new COO, which was Jonathan. Now that Jonathan is chief executive, is that too much for one guy? Do you envision having a COO to help you at some point?
Schwartz: The title is president and chief executive, and there is no COO. There is plenty of operational discipline all across my staff, and all throughout Sun, so, I have no intention of having a COO.
And how about the executive vice president of software position?
Schwartz: Right now, I'm the acting EVP of software. Obviously that's not sustainable in the long run, although I'm finding I'm getting along with my boss really well in that role. (Laughter.) We are able to drive a tremendous amount of organisational change with complete alignment and support from the acting EVP of software.
We are continuing to talk to folks out in the industry, and we've seen a pretty significant outpouring of interest, but we've got lots of good candidates internally.
We are a big leadership factory. We build people here who can go do bigger and better things. We are not just building R&D; we are building the capability and leaderships to take that R&D and go change the world.
But are you going to keep those leaders in house, as opposed to running Motorola or Autodesk or other places?
Schwartz: I think it's certainly in our best interest to.
McNealy: We've got them coming back in droves — Andy Bechtolsheim and Mike Lehman and Peter Ulander and Karen Tegan. There's a boomerang hitting my door, it seems, every five emails these days.
Schwartz: We're one of the few places in the world that's going to put a couple of billion dollars in fundamental research and development to work. If you're an engineer or you're a technologist, you want to come to a place that appreciates technology and engineering. This is one of the places that you go do it.
