Re: Tom Kyte a false idol?

Geomancer wrote:
>
> Umm, I'm realy confused by this Gog-like worship of Tom Kyte.
>
> To me, "Tom Kyte" is the name of a product, a figurehead for a huge
> corporate marketing machine, and it strikes me a ludicrous that a
> group of intelligent people would not be aware of this.
>
> Some folks feel that "Tom Kyte" is just another Oracle marketing tool,
> and no more real than Santa Claus.
>
> As I see it, the real credit goes to an entire staff of real DBAs (and
> the Oracle development staff) who crank-out material with his name on
> it. As a VP, he has dozens of people to produce the voluminous
> examples on his web site.
>
> One need to look no farther than his web site. During the week he
> spent at OracleWorld, hundreds of lines of answers were provided on
> his web site. No way he wrote all that at the same time he attended
> the conference.
>
> It's easy to be right when you have the resources of a multi-billion
> dollar company behind you. I was also suprised to find that Kyte is
> not "worshipped" by everyone, and there are those who say that he is
> arrogant, snitty and insulting. I've been told that he sometimes
> refers to questions as "stupid" on his asktom web site, and openly
> insults people at public appearances.
>
> Personally, I admire Steve Adams and Jonathan Lewis (and even Connor
> and HJR) far more, because they are self-made and have gained their
> reputations without the benefit of full-page ads in Oracle Magazine,
> etc.
>
> I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I like the self-made experts. .
> . .

Some things worth my 2c worth...

1. "No way he wrote all that at the same time he attended the conference."

Actually I bumped into Tom most days at the conference - typically sitting on a bean bag with his laptop answering asktom question via wireless. Even the night I had dinner with Tom and a few colleagues, he left somewhat early to get in a few questions answered before returning to meet us at the bar

b) "because they are self-made"

If I recall correctly, Tom "cut his teeth" on this very newsgroup. He only stopped posting here somewhere around year 2000 when asktom came into existence

c) "openly insults people at public appearances"

Unlike myself (because I'm much more of a bitter twisted bastard) I've never heard Tom turn an objective debate into a subjective debate unless it was either initiated by the other party or the objective advice was ignored.

Cheers
Connor

-- 
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Connor McDonald
http://www.oracledba.co.uk

"Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue"