I wish more people in this industry could be as pragmatic, and well, classy as Jim Grisanzio.
John Loiacono recently left Sun to join Adobe.
Here is what Jim says:
With his optimism and his drive and his willingness to learn and do whatever was necessary to get the job done. He’s a class act. He always treated me well, too. Many times executives don’t notice us little guys, but I never had that impression with him. Every time I spoke with him I felt he was genuinely listening. Johnny also helped me get this job on OpenSolaris. A few years ago, I had heard that we were going to open Solaris, and I was all over it. If true, it would represent the single biggest opportunity at Sun in a very long time. Well, a few emails to the boss (at the time, he ran Solaris engineering), and he connected me with the team staffing up to do just that — open source Solaris. Very cool.
It seems that maturity broke out all over the place. Here is Johnny on his departure.
I’ve known Scott for all 19 years. I travelled with him, wrote his speeches a hundred years ago, know his mom, wife and kids. And with Jonathan, well, he rolled the dice and put me in charge of a business unit after being CMO—a big risk on his part. Later, he asked me to fill his huge shoes and run all of software when he was appointed Sun president and COO. These were very tough conversations. They were both surprised, but they were also cordial, professional and each a total class act.
I agree with Jim – John is a class act. If by any chance things don’t work out at Adobe then no bridges have been burned between him and his previous employer. That is goodness.
It will be interesting to see how John fares as an iron discipline editor. I am pretty sure Adobe isn’t looking for Crazy Ivan moves…
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