
Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe - teklaperry
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/oracle-swings-the-layoff-axe-and-clearcuts-teams-of-engineers
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pololee
I was one of the people being let go in this round. I moved to Seattle and
joined OCI as a Senior Engineer at the end of Jan 2019. Yesterday when I came
to the office and was doing my work at 9:00 AM, the whole team about 20 people
were called by VP to have a meeting at 10:00 AM. He said the whole team got
terminated. We had to turn in the computer by 12:00 PM and leave the office by
3:00 PM. There was no buffer time at all.

Me: "Do I have to pay back sign on bonus and relocation? I've been here for
less than 2 months."

VP: "You were supposed to, but I pushed it back to the management. Now you are
forgiven. That's a very good question."

Me: ......................&^#^ _(%# &_)@!

Today mark as my first out-of-employment day. I am on H-1B, which is an even
worse situation. I'll need to find a new job ASAP :(

~~~
pololee
The VP also mentioned they were thinking about the plan in Jan. So why the
hell did you hire me then? I joined at the end of Jan.

~~~
nradov
Mass layoff decisions like this are typically made at a higher level of the
organization. The executives don't give much advance notice to the middle
managers who make hiring decisions for most engineers in order to prevent
leaks.

~~~
mgarfias
hiring at oracle is weird. when i worked there my offer had to be approved by
larry.

~~~
whatshisface
If Larry is approving hires it's just as a rubber stamp. There's no way anyone
at the head of a company that size could think about _anything_ at the
employee level.

~~~
johan_larson
At Google, hires had to be approved by the founders as of 2013. This was when
the company was hiring a few hundred people per week, so the founders got a
spreadsheet with links or something like that. And apparently they did
sometimes say no to some people.

It seems like a bonkers practice to me. I understand that it is important to
hire good people. But this could be delegated several levels down, at least
for entry-level hires. I suppose the top dogs could worry about promotions and
hirings starting at the level of the junior managers, if they wanted to.

~~~
shalmanese
For the longest time, APMs had to have a phone screen with Marissa Mayer
before they got hired. My main question when she asked me if I had any
questions was whether this was the best use of her time. I don't know if that
had any influence or not over their decision.

~~~
jtreminio
Don't leave us hanging - did it have a negative or positive effect on the
outcome?

~~~
shalmanese
Candidates aren't told why they were accepted/rejected from a job.

------
abvdasker
A close family member of mine worked for Oracle as a mechanical engineer for 6
years. He had survived many rounds of layoffs at Sun before it was acquired by
Oracle and at StorageTek before it was acquired by Sun.

He described a depressing corporate culture at Oracle with a seemingly
infinite number of middle managers. One of his co-workers spent most of his
time in the office managing his real estate business. Larry Ellison is
universally hated by the employees. The company is full of academically
talented but practically useless people because Oracle will only give
interviews to people with a degree from their small list of Ivy-tier
universities.

Not long ago he retired and left Oracle. As a result of his experience there
I'm now of the opinion that these older tech companies frankly can't die fast
enough.

~~~
president
What you're describing is general corporate culture after a company has
experienced its hayday. Usually all the passionate people including original
founders have cashed out, exited the company, and there is nobody left that
actually cares about the company. There is a lot of room for mistakes and not
delivering results because money grows on trees. People end up skating by and
milking their one-hit-wonder cashcow product for years. Politics becomes
rampant and an endless supply of bad hires cause the company to slowly rot to
its death.

~~~
monocasa
Oracle's something special in this regard though. It's not like Sun was top of
the world when they acquired StorageTek, but having worked in the tape library
industry in CO at the time, Oracle seems to be a special section of hell.

~~~
nate_meurer
Many, many, people who worked on Java and Solaris would agree with you.

------
nate_meurer
Here's a useless anecdote: I was fired from Oracle a couple years back, and it
was done as pleasantly as one could expect. It completely depends on who's
running your department. I was in storage testing. My direct manager had
mediocre people skills, but the director is a superb manager in all respects,
and she was the one who pulled the trigger in a face-to-face meeting with me.
She made it as clean and honest as it gets. I'm not a huge fan of the company,
but I wouldn't hesitate to work for her again.

Obviously the experience of a singe drone has little bearing on anyone else. I
feel bad for everyone getting pushed out of the boat this month.

~~~
toyg
I left when the writing was on the wall; it took another 4 years for them to
pull the plug on the rest of the (UK) group, because the slow-erosion strategy
wasn't working quickly enough; but they were given a pretty fair treatment, by
all accounts.

Oracle is a massive company, even with trade unions here in Europe. They will
not screw you over, as long as you agree that their first and foremost
priority is their bank account and act accordingly.

~~~
solarkraft
Could you describe the slow-erosion strategy?

~~~
nate_meurer
In its most honest form, it's just letting attrition work naturally.

Slimy companies do things to undermine morale and make work untenable for
established employees, especially the expensive senior ones. Good example is
IBM abruptly banning remote work. Marissa Mayer was known for this kind of
thing at Yahoo too.

------
samstave
I wouldnt be able to say why anyone would want to be working at oracle these
days.

What compelling reason does oracle even have to attract talent?

(Im not being snide, seeious questions)

~~~
anti_milestone2
The new cloud infrastructure group is kind of hidden gem. Its very different
than the rest of Oracle. It started in Seattle about 4 years ago and is like
40% ex Amazon and 40% ex Microsoft.

They also pay very well, because Oracle doesn't have a great reputation.

The work is good, with a TON of room for growth and leadership.

The goal is ambitious (take on the big players) and well funded.

The people are good. Worklife is good.

They are also still hiring.

~~~
alexeldeib
Why do you think Oracle has a chance at cloud? Honest question.

Their competition at the low end is Google, which doesn’t bode great on
quality, and with AWS and Azure they’re fighting on quality and against strong
enterprise groups. Not sure who would predict that would go well, but it’s a
big market and I suppose they have to try.

I’ve seen Oracle cloud jobs and admittedly balked, no bone to pick with them
but don’t see a bright future.

~~~
Twirrim
> Why do you think Oracle has a chance at cloud? Honest question.

Because Oracle still has an extremely large customer base, and an
exceptionally good and extensive sales organisation that's really good at
selling stuff to people.

The enterprise market is still not that well tapped by existing cloud
providers. Look at the kinds of sales figures enterprise serving companies
pull in, and consider that only a smaller fraction of them have moved to the
cloud.

Anecdote: When OCI was announced ("Oracle Bare Metal Cloud") about 2 1/2 years
ago, the staff who were there launching it at the Oracle conference had CIOs
and the like coming up to them, even then, saying "So what really is this
'cloud' thing"

> I’ve seen Oracle cloud jobs and admittedly balked, no bone to pick with them
> but don’t see a bright future.

Succeed or fail, it's still interesting work. It pays well. Flexible on hours.
Good co-workers, good sense of direction. Lots of interesting problems to
solve. None of the bullshit "work everyone to the bone" that I kept seeing in
AWS. Good opportunities to make a difference.

In all honesty, I was burned out at AWS and thought "Well.. I've put up with
absolute hell in prior tech jobs, and have built up a reasonable resume. I can
always move on if it turns out to be hell". My expectations were pretty low. I
knew the director I was going to be working for, having worked with him in
AWS, and knew he actually gave a damn about operations. It turns out to have
been one of the better career decisions I've made. Which is definitely not
anything I would have associated with a job working for Oracle.

~~~
milemi
I feel so old because to me OCI means Oracle Call Interface, their DB client C
API. I guess nobody cares that it may confuse people like me.

~~~
gautamdivgi
Oh wow... finally another person who has used it. I remember writing a C++
class library to wrap base OCI functions about 15 years ago.

~~~
milemi
No need to do that anymore because they now have their own C++ api, and it's
called ... OCCI!

------
garyclarke27
Maybe Postgres plays a part in this?? I used to have a business that sold
Microsoft Dynamics ERP/CRM which required Enterprise version SQL licences, at
truly insane prices per core ie $100k+ per server. At that time Oracle was
even more expensive. When I started a business based on Postgres, I found it
incredible that we could get a (much better dev platform for our needs)
completely free! Recently Postgres has added many Enterprise features inc
parallel query, logical replication etc Enterprise db offer Oracle
compatibility. This must be taking significant business away from Oracle.

~~~
fgonzag
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but anyone here works in a medium to
large company using Postgres (especially one that switched from multi million
dollar licensing), convincing the hire ups of setting a up a small yearly
donation or buying a support contract from a core developer is how we can give
back.

I honestly think PostgreSQL is one the core pillars of the open source
community, and one of the more underfunded ones.

~~~
anarazel
Hear hear.

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0x0000000
Oracle's M.O. is to be very quiet about these things. Same day notification,
no heads-up. Over at thelayoff, where you do have to take everything with a
grain of salt, users suggest they structure the layoffs specifically to avoid
WARN laws.

They reportedly laid off hundreds of employees via robocall within the last
couple years: [https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3016768/oracle-
engineer...](https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3016768/oracle-engineers-
working-on-sparc-and-solaris-unix-operating-system-terminated-by-robo-call)

------
0xDEFC0DE
I've been seeing quite a few layoff posts since the new year.

Is this just my own bias or has anyone noticed an uptick in massive layoff
events?

~~~
nathanaldensr
Speculation, but I think corporations are expecting a recession... and thus,
making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

------
SoulMan
Heard there are some layoffs in India as well
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/oracle-lays-off-100-in-india-as-part-of-its-
restructuring/articleshow/68514821.cms)

------
shmat
I left Oracle 2 years ago when I decided to retire early. I was the developer
contact for a set of internal APIs that are used by many Oracle products, so I
worked with developers from all over the company in dozens of countries. The
quality and culture of Oracle development organizations is all over the place.
There are areas with great developers that are happy and (more) places with
lousy developers and hellish cultures. And everything in between. I also know
a few people from the Seattle OCI group. That might as well be a different
company. They don't have to use any of the sh*tty internal tools and aren't
subject to the really bad, political management that is taking over more and
more. The question is whether that group will eventually be subject to the bad
management that has made more and more of the development org a living hell.

------
kplex
Who is actually spending money on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? Is it just
organisations who are too deep into the Oracle ecosystem to go anywhere else?

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
The government. The government has been funding Oracle from the start, and
it's never stopped. Who do you think the NSA and CIA use for all of their data
storage and warehousing? It was the FBI that started this mess, and it's the
rest of the government that continues it. Ellison often comes off as
untouchable in this stories, and that's because he is. He made it possible for
the spooks to build "Echelon" 30 years ago. God knows what that's morphed into
now. He's a hero to them.

Yes, I'm being purposely sardonic, but only a little.

~~~
wangchungtonite
We know what echelon morphed into. Much of it was in the Snowden docs. If you
are highly technical it’s not hard to imagine a few steps forward from what
was in that release and realize just how massive the infrastructure and
internet vacuum is.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Good point. More specifically, I was thinking about the supposed "acres" of
underground computers that was slurping up phone call data when the program
was discovered. I wonder how much storage and equipment it all takes now.

~~~
kf77ffkaa
Railroad Lake, Henderson, NV

------
fencepost
It would be nice to be able to expect better from Oracle, but I don't.

~~~
JohnFen
Yeah this behavior sounds entirely on-brand to me.

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krn1p4n1c
I was in the OCI group, left just over a year ago, and just heard from a
couple of my old colleagues that they were just let go. Unreal since our group
was one of the few really really profitable ones.

I agree with the comments about the quality of people in OCI, it was a big
step up from the first pass with the PSM group. Much more of the move-fast and
do things right kind of mentality and a lot of hires of people with real scale
experience trying to do it better the next time. I hope everyone affected can
find better jobs.

------
Karrot
I was one of the very first groups to be let go early morning on the east
coast. I still have access to the blind app oracle channel, and it looks like
layoffs are going to continue until September.

No notice, no thank you for your work, just goodbye. DCO is filled with people
who do nothing, and have data backing up how inefficient they are, but not a
single layoff over there. Too many people were hired just because they knew
someone.

From what my ex-coworkers have told me is Oracle slack is freaking out.

------
RickJWagner
As a programmer, I'm no fan of Oracle. I think customers feel badly about a
lot of things the company does, too. Obviously employees are going to think
badly of Oracle as well.

But they are sharp in business dealings. If I had to pick one company to own
for just pure business efficiency, Oracle would be high on the list.

~~~
rooam-dev
Really? Oregon vs. Oracle doesn't inspire much trust.

[https://www.marklogic.com/blog/oracle-oregon-
lawsuit](https://www.marklogic.com/blog/oracle-oregon-lawsuit)

~~~
sidcool
That is quite damning. Had no idea of this incident.

------
yeukhon
This makes SAP layoff more sane. At least my friend got about 3-4 months to
actually find a job (with severance)

------
nightfly
Anyone know if Oracle still has anyone left working on Solaris at this point?

~~~
servrite
Yes, a very very small core team remains. Many were let go this past Thursday
(most remote sites outside HQ were shut down).

------
patientplatypus
I worked (mercifully briefly) as a sales engineer for the cloud platform. I
left because it seemed my job was primarily built around lying to customers
about what the product could do and most of what we were selling was half
baked and frankly broken. Like "massive java monolith with buried buried
_buried_ menus to get anything done, and then it still breaks" broken. If
you're still using Oracle products in 2019 you're probably either corrupt,
incompetent, or probably both.

~~~
ineedasername
They are, unfortunately, entrenched in certain enterprise products. The major
ERP products that run the Higher Education industry, for example. They mostly
use Oracle on the back end. And it doesn't help that one those (lesser used)
ERP systems is a customized version of people soft.

Cloud options are chipping away at the edges of this. For example, Admissions
offices have largely ditched portion of these ERP systems designed for them in
favor of more flexible SaaS offerings. As a consequence, if you're into data
plumbing, data integration jobs are flowering in Higher Ed.

~~~
crispyambulance
We use Oracle EBS at work. It's a horrible, counter-intuitive, everything-but-
the-kitchen-sink nightmare. Manufacturing, operations, employee self-serve,
order entry, and many other functions all rolled into one hot mess complete
with a disinterested non-communicative support guy in India.

Part of it is a shitty html-based interface and part is a nearly unusable
suite of java applets with inscrutable UI that would have been considered poor
even in the late 90's.

I got hand it Oracle engineers, though. What magic to they use to induce
C-levels to buy this stuff? They must have mastered the art of inducement with
steak, strippers, martinis and lies.

~~~
ineedasername
About 10 years ago my organization opted for the People Soft ERP, a version
customized for the industry. We were sold on it because we were demoed
capability that literally did not exist. A year into the implementation as we
were about to go live on a major component, they were still building major
parts of it.

In one truly bizarre meeting, they gleefully announced that a feature--
basically the ability for a user to submit word document or similar into the
web interface, was done. Great! I thought. Then I asked the question, "Okay,
so where do you go to review the submissions once they're made?" There was no
response. I asked again. Then it came. "You want to be able to see them?
That's not part of the product. Well, I guess your DBA can query them or
something. If you want more, that will be a user customization, our estimates
put that around $100,000.

That of course wasn't the only issue of this sort. When we refused to sign off
on a major deliverable that really hadn't been delivered, literally overnight
they walked off the job. Dozens of people. We cancelled the whole project and
switched vendors. There was a lawsuit. They settled with us-- those initial
demos had been recorded :)

