John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Sun CEO: Parting Is Such Tweet Sorrow

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz was the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to put up his own blog. Late Wednesday night, he became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to step down from that position via Twitter.

“Today’s my last day at Sun,” Schwartz tweeted. “I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more.”

Fitting to end with a haiku broadcast to a microblogging service? Really? Seems a bit…precious. As Stowe Boyd observes, “Twitter can be used productively for many things, but resigning by haiku is not one of them.”

Schwartz’s departure, an inevitability if there ever was one, follows Sun’s (SUN) takeover by Oracle (ORCL) and the end of a nearly three-decade run as an independent company.

No word yet on what Schwartz plans to do next. But he’s leaving the company with a very fat chunk of change, so he’s likely in no rush to find something new. According to Sun’s definitive proxy statement, Schwartz stands to earn about $12 million from the severance package he negotiated, plus another $5.1 million or so for the shares he still holds in the company.

FURTHER READING:

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”