Schwartz's Haiku, And The Problem With Blogging CEOs

February 05, 2010

Ex-Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has Tweeted his resignation haiku, and now promises to return to blogging--now that he's no longer in a position of influence and power. And that's what's wrong with CEO bloggers.Schwartz was the best of the CEO bloggers for awhile. Remember when he blogged passionately on why Sun was changing its ticker symbol to JAVA, only to take a holy flogging by many who thought he was fiddling while Sun burned? Schwartz laid out his thinking and let those comments rage unobstructed.

Yet for the past nine months, when people were most interested in what he was thinking, he didn't blog. His explanation is in his post from late January, that with the Oracle deal pending there was simply no option:

You've probably seen the news -- the Sun/Oracle transaction has closed. With the passing of that milestone, I can once again speak freely.

We've created the situation where, in times of uncertainty, when we most care what a CEO has to say, silence is considered the letter of the law and candor is verboten. Regulators have all but mandated this muzzle, in the face of the undeniably difficult task of balancing information flow and the risk of market manipulation. But are we really better off for not hearing boo from Schwartz for nine months?