DaNoob was let go recently after 5+ worthless years at Oracle. Caught up in the massive marketing layoff. Years later than he should have.
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A lot of DaDweeb apologists here.
The fact of the matter is that he coasted pretty badly at least the last 2-3 years at Oracle. He was not really accepted at all by the OCI leadership. I know from first hand conversations that his “messaging” and “cloud guru” persona was sneered at and looked down upon by OCI leadership.
While he is a good person, and I’d say a pretty smart guy, he is greasy and oily and sales-y in his approach and that just doesn’t work in the cloud word. He does not get that in the new cloud world, developers rule the roost, not old school hardware and data center mentalities.
Warning to ALL you Sun losers still at Oracle — your days are severely numbered. SEVERELY. You should be spending 50% of your work time now looking for a new job while milking the Oracle teeeeat while you are brushing up your skills and interviewing.
You dinosaurs are not long for this world. Oracle and OCI would rather see you collection of dead weight drown as look at you. Your day was long past a decade ago, and you should be thanking your lucky stars that you’ve been able to hang on as you have for the past decade.
2021 is your year. Your year of your dead weight SUNW ilk being cut free from Oracle .... for good.
And not a moment too soon.
Steve’s a good man, and all you “fans” out there should look inward and figure out the “why” behind spitting vitriol at a human-being you haven’t had the fortune of spending time with.
Recap response to some slanderous allegations below:
- Highly intelligent and well educated
- He made millions, not hundreds thousands of dollars
- He never smelled bad, he wears high-end cologne and is very clean
- He was well respected by TK and the Oracle Executive team
- He’s highly dedicated to his work, and commonly sacrificed gym sessions for his team
- He’s not greasy (where did this even come from!?)
- You’re presuming he was terminated :)
Again, none of y’all even have been fortunate enough of to spend time with someone of Steve’s caliber - hence the defamatory remarks, y’all wish. :)
Sending everyone well wishes and happiness.
Dadweeb never really did anything original T Oracle. No question he had an extremely cushy SVP job. He coasted for years.
Will be interesting to see where he ends up. I don’t think Google will take him. Dadweeb was definitely not respected by TK and his minions either, just like he wasn’t accepted or respected by OCI.
I expect he’ll end up running marketing at some startup in Silicon Valley.
His tenure at Oracle was pretty pathetic.
"Now that I think about it, pretty much all of Donatelli's old directs are gone. The biggest loser of them all was Camillo Speroni - thank the stars that he's out. Good luck Cap Gemini..."
+1
CS is a narcissistic, self-absorbed, child. Aside from that, he was totally ineffective at Oracle. Waste of space – total hot air...
His name is NOT DaNoob.
It’s Dadweeb.
How's this then?
DaNoob = loser/dork/cretin
Let me know if you feel better now, ok? Now go get another job that you aren't qualified for.
Bye!
Don’t you people have anything better to do than sit around and slander me with your amateur hour, uninformed “analysis” ? Sheesh. Get a life, people. You should analyze yourselves.
My $0.02... SD ends up at Google. He can get a fresh start there and I wish him the best.
Jeeze. People have way too much time on their hands!
As has been said, Steve Da-dweeb was an interesting combo of greasiness, swagger, machoness and yet was a nice guy in person. For a while (particularly after TK left the company) he was one of the only execs who could spin a cloud story and make it sound half-way decent. And as was said, he tended to re-use the same, stale, old slideware.
Dadweeb was fully protected as long as T–D and DD were around, but his days were numbered after DD was ousted (many years too late!), and after AK was brought in to run marketing, the handwriting was clearly on the wall for Dadweeb. There was just no place for him in the "marketing" hierarchy.
Yes, he was lazy and he was flailing the last year he was with the company, basically from the moment that DD was pushed out. Had several roles (one of them running Oracle PR, LoL !!) but all short term things that merely delayed his inevitable exit.
Dadweeb was CLEARLY not a cloud guy, zero street cred on anything cloud, and anyone who is a real cloud person pretty much ignored him. OCI peeps could barely disguise their disdain for him, and this was very apparent at meetings. OCI never consulted him on anything and never used him for anything – Dadweeb was tainted by his DD and T__d affiliation, and thus was a persona non grata in OCI. Not welcome, not relevant, not useful.
As was said Dadweeb, particularly the last six months with the company, did literally ZERO. He would attend Zoom meetings from his fancy wood paneled home office, never add anything to the conversation, wasn't driving anything, and was just showing up and going through the motions. As was said he spent hours per day at the gym, that was his priority.
I worked with him a lot. He was far too "oily" or greasy for my taste, but personally he was a nice guy and I think meant well. As said the first couple of years he worked hard, then he gradually started coasting. He was making many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and in the latter part of things had literally nothing to show for it. I wish him well, and he will certainly end up on his feet, but unfortuantely the oiliness and grease factor that he brings to any kind of "real" cloud related discussion clings to him like a bad gym sweat odor, and will be exceedingly difficult for him to permanently remove.
Now that I think about it, pretty much all of Donatelli's old directs are gone. The biggest loser of them all was Camillo Speroni - thank the stars that he's out. Good luck Cap Gemini...
In SD's defense: There's a place for mere evangelists in this business – they don't necessarily need to be "cloud experts," "super-enginerds," professional analysts or "salesey product managers." They need to have a better-than-layman's understanding of the markets and the technology, deeply enough to be credible and factual, but mostly, communicate a message well - and yes, with a bit of pizzaz and showmanship. SD was nothing more, nothing less. He was effective at doing this for about a year... ~3-4 years ago.
Having noted this, SD's biggest problem was that he got complacent and lazy. He relied on his self-promotion and "coolness" to get by, and get paid very well for a very cushy role – and spend much of his daily time in the gym. He consistently - and astonishingly – re-purposed his same slideware over and over – essentially repeating the identical content – with essentially the same pitch, year after year. I actually witnessed a nearly identical pitch – word for word, inflection for inflection - anecdote for anecdote, 3 years in a row. He and his messaging became stale, and when his pompous sponsor DD was whacked, so went Steve's protection, chutzpah and passion. He's been flailing in the wind for well over a year, so it's good for both parties that he was cut loose. He's actually a nice guy, but was put into a cushy role and got too cushy. Could happen to the best of us...
Like everything in life, there are multiple sides:
What I liked:
- Hard worker – I saw him roll up his sleeves and create content from scratch when the stuff others created for him was beyond atrocious.
- Hard worker – Was thrust into a position bigger than he signed up for when SP got ill / passed away.
- Genuinely tried to bring multiple pillars together to drive the business forward.
- Seems like his core skill set is messaging and content: Had the b*lls/courage to utter the phrase "Customer Empathy" in public at Oracle.
What I disliked: Way out over his skis
- Lacked basic understanding of the cloud business, product, and economics.
- Trust over competency: Took direction / queues from misguided (but well connected) folks.
What I abhorred:
- Was intellectually dishonest in believing he could lead Oracle's cloud strategy
- Political: Pushed good people like AS out of the way to get more power / control.
- Failed miserably at aligning product, marketing and sales.
- Multiple examples where he highlighted successes that were in fact, abject failures.
Post from TheLayoff.com
And there we have the problem at Oracle, lots of people are allowed to hang out for years. Oracle is the slowest company I've ever worked at, in terms of cleaning out people that are doing nothing.
Well not the worst! He didn’t come up with New Coke, but close
Worst marketing executive ever.
To me SD wasn’t the real problem but merely a symptom M T–d & DD were the teal problems w Oracle marketing. Under them, no on could do anything except update Sale Central. They saw no value in marketing campaigns, speaking at industry events or even new branding. It was crazy for a large enterprise software company trying to get into tts cloud.
Absolutely agree. What a waste of time. Had zero clue - He loved to describe himself in the press as the Cloud Leader and Expert. A complete disconnect from the reality of what c-ap Oracle was selling. This lead sales folks to consistently over commit on capabilities and availability. What a knob - hipster doofus
Thank god. The guy was a total DaBag.