The bulk of the comments in here are focused on comparing Larry Ellison to a lawn mower, so I'll try a new tack and say that I'm genuinely confused at what the value prop of Oracle is.
Given the history of their business model being licensing of important databases that are hard to switch off of, I've actually made a point to avoid using Oracle as much as possible (even so far as to leave MySQL when they acquired it, and I've never started a fresh project in Java, which they used to drive a lawsuit they had with Google).
From my chair, they make an expensive database they try to sell to golf executives. There are innumerable equal (better?), free alternatives, and most startups are founded by broke coders in bedrooms that choose those instead and stick with the devil they know. And they have an un-competitive cloud service? Enlighten me on what I would use Oracle for, I'm genuinely curious.
show comments
dafelst
More victims of AI.
Not actually of "AI is replacing jobs", more "oh shit we are spending too much and the product isn't good enough for us to ever make a return on our absurd over-investment".
show comments
chekibreki
Full text of e-mail:
We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position.
After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day.
We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us.
After signing your termination paperwork, you will be eligible to receive a severance package subject to the terms and conditions of the severance plan. You will receive an email from DocuSign to your Oracle email address with details on your severance and termination date.
Immediate Action Required
To receive important follow-up information, including FAQs and separation documents to help you through this transition, you must provide a personal email address.
Please click here to submit a personal email address immediately. If you make a submission error, please re-submit a new form. Please Note: The personal email address will only be used for correspondence regarding separation-related information and severance agreements.
Access to your computer, email, voicemail, and files will be deactivated soon, and you will be unable to log into your computer. As a reminder, you are prohibited from downloading, copying or retaining (including emailing yourself) any Oracle confidential information.
Thank you for your contributions to our organization. If you have additional questions, please reach out to the HR team via the Ask HR page or at (888) 404-2494.
My Amazon layoff notice came at 5am. Same deal. I thought it was fake because it came to my personal email. Then I logged into my work computer and found that all my email had been erased except for a copy of the layoff notice and an invite to a 10am Zoom with HR. The funny part was the invite had everyone who had been laid off in the To: line.
I was able to send internal only emails until 1pm, and then it logged me off and the computer was a brick.
show comments
quelsolaar
Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison.
show comments
dolphinscorpion
Unless you're being offered a very good package, any firing email is cold. Let's be honest
show comments
esaym
> The layoffs are directly tied to Oracle’s aggressive and debt-heavy expansion into artificial intelligence infrastructure. According to analysis from TD Cowen, the job cuts are expected to free up between $8 billion and $10 billion in cash flow — money the company urgently needs to fund a massive buildout of AI data centers.
Interesting that they admit that the layoff off is due to a pivot from software to hardware.
wnevets
Very often people will defend these kind of layouts as the result of overhiring but then shouldn't the leadership that over hired 30K people also be held accountable?
show comments
kwanbix
Those super yatchs of larry have to be paid somewhow.
xtracto
Is this related to the massive layoffs in the Mexico/GDL offices that happened a couple of days ago?
My LinkedIn was full of people opening for work. Pretty sad.
renegade-otter
That CapEx must be really out of control. Soon enough they will be left with 200 data centers and 300 poor bastard running the ship.
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asah
"cold" is redundant/implied for Oracle.
show comments
bix6
It feels like Oracle has made some massive strategic missteps in the past year. I’m curious if they can turn it around.
show comments
keeda
Huh, layoffs in India? That's weird, because most tech companies are freezing headcount and laying off people in the US and increasing headcount in India. I wonder if that says something about the prospects of NetSuite, which is the org they've been cut from...
show comments
kleiba
Between employers and employees, loyalty is only expected one way.
show comments
Jaco07
Another consequence of the AI boom. Not in the simplistic sense that “AI is replacing jobs,” but rather in the sense that companies are realizing they have overspent dramatically on a product that still is not strong enough to justify the scale of that investment or deliver a meaningful return.
bux93
"Any unvested restricted stock units, however, were forfeited immediately."
How can we teach customers to never ever do business with oracle?
butterlesstoast
If it's anything like the layoffs I went through at my company, it's always nuanced.
Lots of talented hard working engineers are laid off at the same time that they lay off people just checking Slack on their phone on the plane to avoid taking PTO.
Reading the r/employeesOfOracle is a bit gutting. Hoping for the best for the people. Don't really care much for Oracle; especially their business model.
elzbardico
Ethical Dillemas.
You found the cure of cancer. If you release it now, you'd giving back humanity millions of LifeYears, but if you release it in a few years, Larry Elison won't be able to take advantage of it.
How do you proceed?
show comments
vincentastral
Warren's inquiry into meta, amazon layoffs would probably be a warning sign that all the large tech companies are up to no good. Anybody who operates tiktok is on my suspicion short list to start out with.
baal80spam
Let's not forget that ORACLE is actually an acronym.
show comments
giancarlostoro
I've heard of people working there that has cozy, low effort jobs, I'm not surprised. More surprised if took them this long.
show comments
xvxvx
Anytime there are mass layoffs like this, I like to look at the company career page and revel in the HR horseshit they jam down everyone’s throats: https://www.oracle.com/careers/
show comments
silveira
At least they had a decency of avoiding the ambiguity of doing this during April 1st.
bipinrimal1
Does everyone at this point wonder, when is it going to be my time next at the company?
thomasgeelens
Every time I think: "do I live in a dystopia yet?" I get confirmation with these messages.
jaygray0919
this is the cost of getting into the movie business
shmerl
> The layoffs are directly tied to Oracle’s aggressive and debt-heavy expansion into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The actual culprit.
show comments
amelius
With those software engineers gone, they can now return to their core business: suing people.
snihalani
Do people here believe in karma? I can't empathize with these management practices.
fredgrott
Context of scale....
They took on 58billion in debt which halved their stock price...
Expected savings is only 8Billion
What you are seeing is Oracle in death pains.....
If you or the org you are working for uses Oracle products fast find a way to migrate away from Oracle as it will cease to exist in 2027 at this rate.
rishabhaiover
I find it bizarre than no one here seems to be commenting on the insane amount of capex redirected towards AI infrastructure build out as a reason for such decisions. I only hear bad product or covid over hiring but they seem like cope to my cynical mind.
indigodaddy
Free up some $ for Skydance WB acquisition if needed?
neya
Every other company sends out cold emails to prospects outside of the company, but Oracle is the only company to send out cold emails to their own employees. Gotta give it to them...
nickvec
Are there any serious union efforts happening in big tech right now? It’s asinine to me that tech workers haven’t unionized at this point and that folks still fall head over heel just to get a job somewhere that would dispose of you without a second thought.
dryarzeg
Am I the only one who, when they see this, feels that it's already tough for Oracle and that many companies betting on "AI" have finally understood the real risks involved, and that they risk simply failing? I mean, if Oracle is doing that, they're clearly having some problems. I don't know how to properly express that (I'm sorry, I'm not very fluent with English), but for me it seems as some kind of signal of potential start of the downfall. It's like they stepped on the path that leads them to fall, and while they still can change it, if they don't, they're doomed.
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passive
So Ellison's big investors wouldn't back his ridiculous (-Disney) Warner Bros bid without him juicing the performance of Oracle in this way?
(thanks for the reply correcting the company)
show comments
sublinear
Why doesn't anyone ever mention project stargate when discussing these financial struggles of Oracle and OpenAI? That's your answer.
paxys
It's a trash source. No one has confirmed 30k job cuts. They just made it up.
show comments
WhereIsTheTruth
Billions of dollars, yet not for thee
The game where you, the people, will always be the loser
codemog
Don’t work for evil companies.
show comments
grossiweb
Honestly, isnt this going to happen in every SAAS based company? My feeling is the bigger and more staff they have the more they will unload. I feel like its almost a necessity otherwise some 3-5 man team agentic first solution will just come with the same offering at 80-90% discount and eat their lunch.
HardCodedBias
I think its clear that a lot of companies over hired during the pandemic, and it seems like we are getting more out of our entire staff with AI tools.
Given that it makes sense to cut if the company doesn't have new product ideas to spend that excess resources.
ozzafar
Java isn't really uncommon
diehunde
Could this be the start of the AI bubble bursting? There are so many rumors going around about data centers not being built, GPUs waiting to be installed, debt, and much more. Crazy times.
show comments
lenerdenator
> RHS (Revenue and Health Sciences) — employees described a reduction in force of at least 30%, with 16 or more engineers from individual business units cut in a single action.
Hm. So, likely old Cerner operations.
Y'know, the ones that keep EMR systems running.
Ol' Larry just doesn't see the value proposition in making sure that your health information is accurate.
As a side, the fact that you can just slash someone's job without any warning needs to be addressed by law.
rvz
This is AGI.
thiago_fm
It's still a company worth $400B that makes $3B of profits and not even $20B of revenue.
And full of debt from AI datacenters full of hardware with a 6 year depreciation cycle, possibly even lower depending on what NVidia releases next.
So overvalued!
show comments
10ca1d1me
Come work for me instead!
micromacrofoot
open ai sitll pouring money into oracle btw
yieldcrv
an unceremonious email blast is more than I expected from Oracle
josefritzishere
It's almost like Larry Ellison is a bad CTO and needs to step down.
gethly
companies overhired when money was cheap during covid to inflate their numbers and push their marketcap. since cheap money is gone, they have no incentive to keep the workforce. this has nothing to do with AI.
nunez
Disgusting.
2OEH8eoCRo0
Imagine slashing 30,000 jobs for a measly 2% share price bump.
show comments
AtlasBarfed
30000 jobs equals 10 billion dollars?
10,000,000,000 / 30,000 = 333k per employee?
I guess that tracks for a company that is 50% lawyers for suing their own customers /s
mandeepj
If larry hadn't sucked dRump's c*ck that hard, he'd not be in the free downfall that he is in today. He's dismantling America brick by brick. I hope he goes bankrupt soon.
The bulk of the comments in here are focused on comparing Larry Ellison to a lawn mower, so I'll try a new tack and say that I'm genuinely confused at what the value prop of Oracle is.
Given the history of their business model being licensing of important databases that are hard to switch off of, I've actually made a point to avoid using Oracle as much as possible (even so far as to leave MySQL when they acquired it, and I've never started a fresh project in Java, which they used to drive a lawsuit they had with Google).
From my chair, they make an expensive database they try to sell to golf executives. There are innumerable equal (better?), free alternatives, and most startups are founded by broke coders in bedrooms that choose those instead and stick with the devil they know. And they have an un-competitive cloud service? Enlighten me on what I would use Oracle for, I'm genuinely curious.
More victims of AI.
Not actually of "AI is replacing jobs", more "oh shit we are spending too much and the product isn't good enough for us to ever make a return on our absurd over-investment".
Full text of e-mail:
We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position.
After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day.
We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us.
After signing your termination paperwork, you will be eligible to receive a severance package subject to the terms and conditions of the severance plan. You will receive an email from DocuSign to your Oracle email address with details on your severance and termination date.
Immediate Action Required
To receive important follow-up information, including FAQs and separation documents to help you through this transition, you must provide a personal email address.
Please click here to submit a personal email address immediately. If you make a submission error, please re-submit a new form. Please Note: The personal email address will only be used for correspondence regarding separation-related information and severance agreements.
Access to your computer, email, voicemail, and files will be deactivated soon, and you will be unable to log into your computer. As a reminder, you are prohibited from downloading, copying or retaining (including emailing yourself) any Oracle confidential information.
Thank you for your contributions to our organization. If you have additional questions, please reach out to the HR team via the Ask HR page or at (888) 404-2494.
Oracle Leadership
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/employeesOfOracle/comments/1s8jadx/...
My Amazon layoff notice came at 5am. Same deal. I thought it was fake because it came to my personal email. Then I logged into my work computer and found that all my email had been erased except for a copy of the layoff notice and an invite to a 10am Zoom with HR. The funny part was the invite had everyone who had been laid off in the To: line.
I was able to send internal only emails until 1pm, and then it logged me off and the computer was a brick.
Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison.
Unless you're being offered a very good package, any firing email is cold. Let's be honest
> The layoffs are directly tied to Oracle’s aggressive and debt-heavy expansion into artificial intelligence infrastructure. According to analysis from TD Cowen, the job cuts are expected to free up between $8 billion and $10 billion in cash flow — money the company urgently needs to fund a massive buildout of AI data centers.
Interesting that they admit that the layoff off is due to a pivot from software to hardware.
Very often people will defend these kind of layouts as the result of overhiring but then shouldn't the leadership that over hired 30K people also be held accountable?
Those super yatchs of larry have to be paid somewhow.
Is this related to the massive layoffs in the Mexico/GDL offices that happened a couple of days ago?
My LinkedIn was full of people opening for work. Pretty sad.
That CapEx must be really out of control. Soon enough they will be left with 200 data centers and 300 poor bastard running the ship.
"cold" is redundant/implied for Oracle.
It feels like Oracle has made some massive strategic missteps in the past year. I’m curious if they can turn it around.
Huh, layoffs in India? That's weird, because most tech companies are freezing headcount and laying off people in the US and increasing headcount in India. I wonder if that says something about the prospects of NetSuite, which is the org they've been cut from...
Between employers and employees, loyalty is only expected one way.
Another consequence of the AI boom. Not in the simplistic sense that “AI is replacing jobs,” but rather in the sense that companies are realizing they have overspent dramatically on a product that still is not strong enough to justify the scale of that investment or deliver a meaningful return.
"Any unvested restricted stock units, however, were forfeited immediately."
wow.
This was leaked weeks ago https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/oracle-layoffs-tech-...
How can we teach customers to never ever do business with oracle?
If it's anything like the layoffs I went through at my company, it's always nuanced.
Lots of talented hard working engineers are laid off at the same time that they lay off people just checking Slack on their phone on the plane to avoid taking PTO.
Reading the r/employeesOfOracle is a bit gutting. Hoping for the best for the people. Don't really care much for Oracle; especially their business model.
Ethical Dillemas.
You found the cure of cancer. If you release it now, you'd giving back humanity millions of LifeYears, but if you release it in a few years, Larry Elison won't be able to take advantage of it.
How do you proceed?
Warren's inquiry into meta, amazon layoffs would probably be a warning sign that all the large tech companies are up to no good. Anybody who operates tiktok is on my suspicion short list to start out with.
Let's not forget that ORACLE is actually an acronym.
I've heard of people working there that has cozy, low effort jobs, I'm not surprised. More surprised if took them this long.
Anytime there are mass layoffs like this, I like to look at the company career page and revel in the HR horseshit they jam down everyone’s throats: https://www.oracle.com/careers/
At least they had a decency of avoiding the ambiguity of doing this during April 1st.
Does everyone at this point wonder, when is it going to be my time next at the company?
Every time I think: "do I live in a dystopia yet?" I get confirmation with these messages.
this is the cost of getting into the movie business
> The layoffs are directly tied to Oracle’s aggressive and debt-heavy expansion into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The actual culprit.
With those software engineers gone, they can now return to their core business: suing people.
Do people here believe in karma? I can't empathize with these management practices.
Context of scale....
They took on 58billion in debt which halved their stock price...
Expected savings is only 8Billion
What you are seeing is Oracle in death pains.....
If you or the org you are working for uses Oracle products fast find a way to migrate away from Oracle as it will cease to exist in 2027 at this rate.
I find it bizarre than no one here seems to be commenting on the insane amount of capex redirected towards AI infrastructure build out as a reason for such decisions. I only hear bad product or covid over hiring but they seem like cope to my cynical mind.
Free up some $ for Skydance WB acquisition if needed?
Every other company sends out cold emails to prospects outside of the company, but Oracle is the only company to send out cold emails to their own employees. Gotta give it to them...
Are there any serious union efforts happening in big tech right now? It’s asinine to me that tech workers haven’t unionized at this point and that folks still fall head over heel just to get a job somewhere that would dispose of you without a second thought.
Am I the only one who, when they see this, feels that it's already tough for Oracle and that many companies betting on "AI" have finally understood the real risks involved, and that they risk simply failing? I mean, if Oracle is doing that, they're clearly having some problems. I don't know how to properly express that (I'm sorry, I'm not very fluent with English), but for me it seems as some kind of signal of potential start of the downfall. It's like they stepped on the path that leads them to fall, and while they still can change it, if they don't, they're doomed.
So Ellison's big investors wouldn't back his ridiculous (-Disney) Warner Bros bid without him juicing the performance of Oracle in this way?
(thanks for the reply correcting the company)
Why doesn't anyone ever mention project stargate when discussing these financial struggles of Oracle and OpenAI? That's your answer.
It's a trash source. No one has confirmed 30k job cuts. They just made it up.
Billions of dollars, yet not for thee
The game where you, the people, will always be the loser
Don’t work for evil companies.
Honestly, isnt this going to happen in every SAAS based company? My feeling is the bigger and more staff they have the more they will unload. I feel like its almost a necessity otherwise some 3-5 man team agentic first solution will just come with the same offering at 80-90% discount and eat their lunch.
I think its clear that a lot of companies over hired during the pandemic, and it seems like we are getting more out of our entire staff with AI tools.
Given that it makes sense to cut if the company doesn't have new product ideas to spend that excess resources.
Java isn't really uncommon
Could this be the start of the AI bubble bursting? There are so many rumors going around about data centers not being built, GPUs waiting to be installed, debt, and much more. Crazy times.
> RHS (Revenue and Health Sciences) — employees described a reduction in force of at least 30%, with 16 or more engineers from individual business units cut in a single action.
Hm. So, likely old Cerner operations.
Y'know, the ones that keep EMR systems running.
Ol' Larry just doesn't see the value proposition in making sure that your health information is accurate.
As a side, the fact that you can just slash someone's job without any warning needs to be addressed by law.
This is AGI.
It's still a company worth $400B that makes $3B of profits and not even $20B of revenue.
And full of debt from AI datacenters full of hardware with a 6 year depreciation cycle, possibly even lower depending on what NVidia releases next.
So overvalued!
Come work for me instead!
open ai sitll pouring money into oracle btw
an unceremonious email blast is more than I expected from Oracle
It's almost like Larry Ellison is a bad CTO and needs to step down.
companies overhired when money was cheap during covid to inflate their numbers and push their marketcap. since cheap money is gone, they have no incentive to keep the workforce. this has nothing to do with AI.
Disgusting.
Imagine slashing 30,000 jobs for a measly 2% share price bump.
30000 jobs equals 10 billion dollars?
10,000,000,000 / 30,000 = 333k per employee?
I guess that tracks for a company that is 50% lawyers for suing their own customers /s
If larry hadn't sucked dRump's c*ck that hard, he'd not be in the free downfall that he is in today. He's dismantling America brick by brick. I hope he goes bankrupt soon.