Former sales head leaves Sun

Robert Youngjohns, the executive who led Sun Microsystems' sales team during two tumultuous years of revenue declines, has left the company to head start-up Callidus Software.

Robert Youngjohns
CEO, Callidus

Youngjohns is now president and CEO of Callidus, a San Jose, Calif.-based company that makes software to help companies tie employee compensation to business goals. Callidus is a Sun customer, according to a Sun internal memo announcing Youngjohns' departure, dated Thursday and seen by CNET News.com.

"Robert has given this move a lot of thought and ultimately decided the time was right for him to realize his goal of leading a company," Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said in the memo.

Youngjohns was named head of sales at Sun in July 2002. He held the post until he was replaced two years later by Robert MacRitchie, and became executive vice president of strategic development and of Sun's financing unit.

Most recently, he led initiatives such as Sun's utility pricing service, in which the company charges $1 per processor per hour to use a bank of Sun computers.

During his years leading Sun's sales, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based server and software company saw consistent declines in its quarterly revenue, which had boomed during the dot-com era. Revenue growth returned during his last quarter in the job, but it shrank again during the most recent quarter.

Stuart Wells, who joined Sun in 1988, will take Youngjohns' post. Wells will report to Schwartz, Sun said in a statement Thursday.

Riddle me this: How come failures like this are rewarded?

I don't get it. The guy presides over two years of disaterous revenue results, and gets rewarded with a CEO job. What am I missing here? Why is it these top level folks can fail so badly and then end up rewarded so handsomely?

Riddle me this: How come failures like this are rewarded?

I don't get it. The guy presides over two years of disaterous revenue results, and gets rewarded with a CEO job. What am I missing here? Why is it these top level folks can fail so badly and then end up rewarded so handsomely?