Re: Tom Kyte a false idol?

I'll only respond to the factual inaccuracies of this post, as impressions of others personalities are wholly subjective and cannot be argued.

I am a co-worker of Tom's and have been asked several times by Tom to respond to questions on AskTom where I might be in a position to provide a better answer. Tom does this from time to time as he works with a number of people who are considered "experts" on certain topics which, to the benefit of his readers, Tom chooses to leverage. The important point here is that Tom gives credit where it is due and clearly states that he is not answering the question, as evidenced by:

http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:1739411218448
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:688976960025
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:4061080732051
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:2200894550208
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:6749198829295

The second point I'd like to make is that nobody else was answering questions for Tom during OracleWorld. I flew out with him and when I met him in the airport, he was sitting there with his laptop, AirCard, and external battery answering away. I caught him answering questions on several other occasions at OracleWorld. So unless you see the "I asked so-and-so to answer this for me" line in at the beginning of the response, assume it was from Tom.

If you feel that he was not responsible for the material in his books, send him an email asking him for a break-down of the chapters and who authored them. I'm sure he'd be happy to CC the co-authors in case they wish to disagree.

pharfromhome_at_hotmail.com (Geomancer) wrote in message news:<cf90fb89.0309121934.70a97463_at_posting.google.com>...
> 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. .
> . .
Received on Mon Sep 15 2003 - 09:32:00 CDT