Sun Cuts Bill Joy

Nate Orenstam
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

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Nothing Personal, Bill

(Highway View, Calif.)  Sun MicroSystems announced that as part of a drive towards reduced expenses they were forced to cut company co-founder Bill Joy from the payroll.  Joy, along with 6,999 other employees ranging from receptionist to marketeer, third class was officially terminated from the company last friday.

"It's a sad moment for all of us," said Sun CEO Scott McNealy, "but especially for me, since Bill owes me fifty bucks and I don't know how I'm going to get it now."  McNealy went on to thank Bill Joy for all his hard work over the years including the development of the BSD release of Unix on which Solaris is based, the SPARC processor, the Java programming language and the bean burrito served in the Sun cafeteria.  "Frankly, the only thing Bill hasn't been willing to do is empty my trash and wash my car.  Who knows, if he had, maybe things would have worked out differently for him."  McNealy insisted that there was no irony to the layoff of his last co-founder, it was simply a case of economics.  "The problem with founders is they cost so much and do so little," he said.  "So if you're going to found a company, it's best to be CEO." 

Bill Joy could not be immediately reached for comment due to the invasion of nano-technology robots that were surrounding his house.

About the author
Nate Orenstam is a leading J2EE programmer and a founding member of the dBase II Forever user group.