NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Oracle and Sun Microsystems have been battered this week on news that top executives are getting out while the getting is, well, not so good.
The worry isn't just that these execs know something we don't. It is also that the departures will leave two of the tech world's leading personalities -- Oracle's Larry Ellison and Sun's Scott McNealy -- to their own devices, without anyone left to challenge them when they need to be challenged.
The proper care and management of oversized personalities has long been a problem for the tech sector -- and few personalities are quite so oversized as Ellison and McNealy.
Brash, egomaniacal Ellison, after all, once inspired a book titled "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison" (the difference being that "God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison"). He was also the obvious model for the scheming software executive in the movie "Charlie's Angels." (See USA Today's take on the subject here.)
McNealy, meanwhile, has one of the biggest mouths in Silicon Valley, filling his speeches with mean and often funny jabs at the expense of his company's competitors -- particularly a little company called Microsoft.
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Both Ellison and McNealy have been as central to the successes of their companies over the years as Martha Stewart is to Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO: up $0.19 to $17.99, Research, Estimates). But can they be trusted to run their companies as one-man shows?
It's a legitimate worry. Sun is losing President and Chief Operating Officer Ed Zander as well as Chief Financial Officer Michael Lehman. And McNealy has acknowledged that they may not be the last.
Oracle, meanwhile, announced this week that Sebastian Gunningham, head of Latin American sales for the company, would be stepping down. Last month a top marketing executive also said sayonara. In 2000 the sudden departures of both Executive Vice President Gary Bloom and President Ray Lane rattled investors. Lane, who'd been a sort of counterweight to the mercurial Ellison, later acknowledged that he'd had more than a few, er, creative differences with his boss.
Of course, no one would be worrying too much about all this were it not for the fact that both Sun (SUNW: down $0.42 to $6.55, Research, Estimates) and Oracle (ORCL: down $1.02 to $8.43, Research, Estimates) have been struggling. Back in the glory days, Ellison was merely "flamboyant" and McNealy's obsession with badmouthing Microsoft was sort of endearing. Sure, people were troubled by Lane's departure, but that didn't stop Oracle from shooting above a split-adjusted $40 a share later that year.
And even today, neither Ellison nor McNealy faces the sort of scorn faced by embattled Quest (Q: down $0.27 to $5.02, Research, Estimates) head Joe Nacchio. In better days they called him brash; these days, well, you can imagine. The outspoken, often abrasive Nacchio says he isn't going anywhere. Indeed, he's been known to joke that his company has a "personality defense" against hostile takeovers -- that he himself is a sort of poison pill.
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But with the once high-flying company's stock down to a little over $5 a share, that joke doesn't seem terribly funny these days, and many would be happy to see him jump (or get pushed) out of the top spot like (ex) Worldcom (WCOM: down $0.13 to $2.08, Research, Estimates) head Bernie Ebbers.
Like fame, personality is a bitch. As the New York Dolls put it in Personality Crisis, "You got it while it was hot/But now frustration and heartache is what you've got."
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