<stolen from Yahoo! Finance> Now for a few words that may give you some guidance on life as it is. Last week, my pal Mike Long and I had dinner at a Thai place in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Then we walked one long, steep block to Barnes & Noble so I could buy a few photo books of D.C. to send to my friends in California. The store was almost empty, possibly because of a powerful rain that was falling. I found several lovely books and brought them to the sales counter, where two young salesclerks, a man and a woman, were lounging. I told them I wanted to buy the books and have them mailed or otherwise sent to three addresses in California. Deer, Meet Headlights The young clerks looked worried. "We don't know how to do that," one of them said. "You don't ever send books?" I asked. "Hey, we're students at George Washington University," the young woman said. "We don't know how to do much." "But surely other customers have wanted to send books," I said. They shrugged. "Can you call over a manager?" I asked. "Yes," the young woman said eagerly. "Yes." Soon, a pretty young woman with short hair appeared. To make a long story short, she was indeed the manager, but she didn't know how to send the books, either. In fact, even after I'd carefully spelled out all of the addresses, they couldn't figure out how to send anything. Worse yet, just the effort "froze" the checkout computer such that it couldn't even let me buy the books to mail myself. When I wanted to buy some note cards with photos by the great Fred Maroon, they could only take cash and not give me any change. No one ever expressed any apologies. The Nakedly Indifferent Civil Servant Now, bear in mind, this is in a time when people are supposedly suffering financially and need jobs. As Mike and I walked back to my apartment, I said, "That was amazing. Those people didn't know how to do a basic transaction like mailing books." "No," he corrected me, "they don't want to do it. They didn't even really try very hard. They're college students. That means they don't care at all. They're getting paid whether they send the books or not. They're like civil servants -- only civil servants have a good attitude, and these guys have a poor attitude." "You're right," I said. When I got home, I went online and in five minutes had ordered and shipped the books. No fuss, no muss. Not a good omen for Barnes & Noble. Piecework Nation After that, I called information to get the telephone number for a luxury hotel in Chicago. The operator couldn't find the number -- I got it online, too. Then I called the hotel. The clerk at the front desk couldn't find my reservation. I retrieved it online. The next day in Chicago, I spoke to a gathering of physicians at a convention. After the speech, they told me that their No. 1 problem (after Medicare reimbursements) was finding workers who were actually willing to learn and work. "It's not a case of workers begging for jobs," said the man next to me at a post-speech lunch. "We're begging for qualified workers." There's a point to be gleaned from this, and my friend Mike made it well after our debacle at Barnes & Noble: "I wish every worker in America had to be a freelancer at selling or writing or painting or carpentry or computer repair or law or something for two years. I wish Americans could have a period in their lives when they only got paid for what they sold and produced. It would do this country world of good." Whistling Past the Graveyard There's another point here. First, it's true that we may well be in a recession. I didn't think it would happen, but a combination of Wall Street idiocy and greed, Federal Reserve tardiness and caution, and a deluge of fear dumped on consumers by the media may have done it. But even in a recession, there's always a shortage of talented, hardworking people in every field. Be one and, even if the recession gets really bad, you can whistle past the graveyard. You may have to move locations. You may have to learn new skills. But a willingness to work will get you everywhere you want to be. And if you aren't willing to work, I don't see why those of us who are should bail you out.
We've written more than any other publication about the tension that existed between Tucci and Greene. Such bad blood seemed inevitable once EMC decided to offer part of VMware up in an initial public offering. You've got the stodgy parent company trudging along with a crepe-flat share price, while the young upstart soars into the stratosphere. In fact, at one point not long after the IPO, it looked as if VMware's market capitalization would shoot past that of EMC. Since it still held more than 85 per cent of VMware, EMC benefited from its virtualization arm's gains. Its share price finally started moving up after years of languishing. Thing is, it was Greene's team and not Tucci's that was to thank for the surge. EMC came to look like a hindrance. It was the boring disk seller trying to hold onto to a piece of the future with all its might. Tucci must have hated being put in that position. He'd driven EMC to consistent double-digit growth, but no one cared. And then here comes this hippie wind-surfer from California who receives all of the accolades and pats on the back for her business acumen. People often underestimate Greene. This is understandable to a degree. She's rather short. She's not a bombastic type in public. She comes off as much more of an engineer than a ruthless capitalist. She's a nerd who happened to end up running a company. Those inside of VMware know a much different Greene. She's a hard-driving perfectionist who loves nothing more than to get her way. Employees have talked to us about going into meetings with Greene and crawling into their foxholes, hoping to avoid being struck by criticism or worse, a tirade. We suspect that Tucci became less enamored with Greene's style as VMware's fortunes rose. He would have very little leverage over the firebrand in Palo Alto. She was responsible for making him look good. She wanted too much control of this VMware gem. She caused too many headaches. People kept thinking maybe she should have the EMC CEO post. Ultimately, she had to go. Lucky for Tucci, investors, as they are wont to do, set unrealistic expectations for VMware. The company had doubled revenue every year since its birth. Why expect that party to end just because VMware's revenue had swelled past $1bn? Why think that Microsoft entering the market with a server virtualization product tied to Windows would harm VMware's fortunes? So, with VMware failing to meet these insane goals, Tucci found the opportunity to justify Greene's dismissal as a business decision when it's anything but. Greene always knew what was coming. That's why she drove her team so hard to build out an incredible number of management products over the past few years. It's these products that surround VMware's core hypervisor and which should provide the revenue for VMware in the future. VMware may have grown a bit full of it itself after the IPO, but it never turned complacent. The software maker continued to pump out product after product and to use its new found wealth for acquisitions and finding talent. We suspect VMware will lose some of that focus now that Microsoft ex Paul Maritz has tumbled into the CEO post. Not because Maritz is an underwhelming leader but because VMware will have lost that spark and singular passion that only CEO/founders are usually able to provide. (VMware's chief scientist Mendel Rosenblum, also Greene's husband and company co-founder, can't be long for the company either.) It's nothing less than shocking that Tucci would push to remove Greene just as VMware needed her most. Here comes Microsoft with Hyper-V finally ready, and you're going to rattle the whole ship because of a personality conflict? Er, VMware may have tweaked its revenue forecast for 2008 to be "modestly below" previous guidance of 50 per cent growth. Few executives of multi-billion dollar companies usually get fired for 49 per cent growth, especially with an imploding worldwide economy in the background. But why let such ideas get in the way, Joe? Let's just wave Greene, 30 per cent of VMware's share price and 10 per cent of EMC's share price away because the short lady was kinda hard to get along with sometimes.
Stolen from The Register.
Comment By firing VMware chief Diane Greene, EMC's top dog Joe Tucci has sent a message to investors that his personal likes and dislikes come before their broader interests. That's not exactly what you want to see from an executive who has already done so very little for investors over the past five years.
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