Note: This was originally published as a LinkedIn post on December 20, 2025.
There were many reasons why I left Oracle shortly after it acquired Sun, but first among them: I could not stomach the disdain that Oracle had for its own customers. Sun — for all of its (many!) other faults — loved its customers.
I bring this up because I was recently contacted by a former Sun colleague, who had some technical questions about Oxide. His career had taken him to VMware and now to Broadcom, where he has a senior engineering management position. After answering the questions, I asked him how things were going at Broadcom. He left Sun before the Oracle transition, but I could see potential cultural similarities in the Broadcom acquisition of VMware — and I imagine it could be jarring.
The response surprised me: "It’s much needed. Broadcom is a breath of fresh air." Now, sometimes an acquirer makes important decisions that employees feel are overdue. Still, though, I’ve talked to a lot of former VMware customers, and… "breath of fresh air" is decidedly not how they describe it. So I asked the obvious follow-up: "How are customers feeling about it?"
His response speaks for itself: "Actually the majority of them are extremely happy about the product changes. I think the transition to subscription and to core licensing is never easy but we got past that. We have customers signing very long contracts right now which means they are not looking to change. Btw some that tried came crawling back lol"
That last sentence — "some that tried came crawling back lol" — made my stomach turn, reminding me viscerally of the contempt that Oracle had for its own customers that I had found so loathsome. I was a bit stunned; had my former colleague taken nothing away from Sun with respect to earning customer trust?! And my response was arguably a bit flip: "Just don’t ask AT&T, Fidelity, Tesco and United Healthcare, I guess? Or do those get counted in the 'crawling back' category?" (Of note: these VMware customers have all litigated against Broadcom.)
His response was consistent with what he’d already revealed about his own character — but no less galling: "Yes actually they all did. Again litigation doesn’t mean they moved on."
So I guess it needs to be said: suing your customers is gross — and being sued by your customers is shameful. Companies that have disdain for their own customers will be reviled in return. Such companies may be able to thrive in the short term, but they do not endure in the limit. Certainly, these companies not endure as innovators: when coercion is your business model, innovation is not merely unnecessary but actively antithetical.