| Despite its brief history of just over twenty-five | | | | years of constant growth and innovation. He stepped |
| years, Sun MicroSystems' record of eminent | | | | down as CEO in 2004. Jonathan Schwartz took over |
| employees is a long list indeed. Some are | | | | the position, although McNealy remains at Sun as |
| long-standing staff who helped Sun accomplish its | | | | Chairman of the Board of Directors. |
| innovative advances in the technology industry. | | | | Other notable Sun employees include people who |
| Others are people who have worked with Sun for a | | | | worked at Sun before leaving to start their own |
| few years before moving on to do greater things | | | | legendary businesses. Chris Malachowsky and Curtis |
| with their own companies. Still others are computing | | | | Priem, for example, worked together at Sun for |
| pioneers who were brought under the Sun umbrella | | | | several years before leaving to found NVIDIA, the |
| when Sun acquired their companies. Although there is | | | | video graphics card giant. Jon Bosak of Sun led the |
| not near enough space in this article to do give each | | | | creation of XML at the World Wide Web Consortium. |
| of them their due, we can at least briefly examine | | | | Many former Sun employees ended up at Google, |
| some of the more distinguished individuals. | | | | Inc. Peter Norvig, a Senior Scientist at Sun, is |
| To start, the founding members of Sun | | | | currently Google's Director of Research. George |
| Microsystems - Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, | | | | Reyes, a former Sun Vice President, is Google's CFO. |
| Vinod Khosla - must be examined. Andy Bechtolsheim | | | | And Eric Schmidt, the former Chief Technology |
| designed Sun's first Unix workstation while still a | | | | Officer of Sun, went on to become CEO of Novell, |
| graduate student at Stanford Universtiy in Palo Alto | | | | and currently is CEO of Google. |
| for the Stanford University Network communications | | | | Finally, many computer systems giants were brought |
| project. In 1982, fellow students Vinod Khosla and | | | | into the Sun fold when Sun acquired their companies. |
| Scott MnNealy joined him in founding Sun | | | | For instance, Michael Widenius, the author of MySQL |
| MicroSystems in California's Silicon Valley. Bill Joy of | | | | and co-founder of MySQL AB, is now associated with |
| Berkley joined them shortly after that, and is | | | | Sun Microsystems after Sun purchased their |
| considered one of the company's founders. | | | | company in 2008. Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL |
| Vinod Khosla left Sun three years later in 1985 to join | | | | AB, became a senior vice president of the database |
| a venture capital firm as a general partner. | | | | groups at Sun. |
| Bechtolsheim left Sun in 1995 to found Granite | | | | The role call could go on and on. In many ways, the |
| Systems, a company developing high-speed network | | | | list of names of people who have passed through |
| switches, which was bought the next year by Cisco | | | | Sun's doors reads like a biography of computer |
| Systems. Bill Joy remained at Sun until 2003, where | | | | science history. On the other hand, given Sun's |
| he a primary developer of BSD Unix, the vi editor, | | | | influential position within the computer industry and its |
| NFS, the Java programming language, and was a | | | | long history of being on the cutting edge of |
| leading figure in the development of Sun's SPARC | | | | computing innovation, its association with so many |
| microprocessors. Scott McNealy became CEO of Sun | | | | titans of technological history is not terribly surprising. |
| in 1984 and guided it through twenty-two successful | | | | |