Last year's position : 33

Talk about an embattled CEO. He's recently had co-founder Bill Joy say "I'm off", in addition to the loss of forceful COO Ed Zander, and now finds himself technology-rich but with wars to wage against HP, IBM, Dell and Microsoft. McNealy is undoubtedly one of tech's personalities, a man who is as animated talking about beating Jack Welch at golf or classic cars as the way we use IT. But can he keep it up? His beloved Sun has struggled and his opponents can't be defeated by one-liners alone. Still, up 11 places on a year ago.