Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Another Larry Ellison quote

You've got to love having Larry Ellison on stage these days. Yesterday's headline: "Google owes us $2.6B." How's that for chutzpah? Of course you see why I have made Larry the head of my Cyber Privateer Fantasy League team. Forget compromise. Wars are to be won and not to become negotiated stalemates!

In my continuing archive of Larry Ellison quotes, I remember back in the early days and Larry's penchant for hiring only the best out of graduating college classes. He once described his hiring strategy to me and to Ken Cohen. Ken disputes the exact names of the first two educational institutions, but we both remember the final punch line. According to Larry (circa 1985):
"If I want to hire someone for the Oracle kernel DBMS development group, I'll go to MIT and hire the guy who got a 5.0 GPA (4.0 was merely an "A" while the 5.0 got "As" in honors classes). If I want someone for the applications division, I'll hire a 5.0 (honors classes again) out of U.C. Davis. And if I want someone to run the mail room, I'll get a 5.0 out of Stanford [loud laugh]."
To be fair, this doesn't (I think) reflect Larry's low opinion of Stanford. It just turns out that the guy then running Oracle's mail room was a Stanford graduate.

I can't wait to see The Amazing Mr. Ellison's next encore on the public stage.

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Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?