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?
Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
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Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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’…
What are they calling “cloud”? Netsuite does own the largest cloud-based ERP
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number 6 on the Forbes list of software companies, with a market cap of 176 billion. Their main product is very heavily used by a heck of a lot of companies. It's just a bit messy and configuration-intensive, so it doesn't get a lot of respect among the techerati. A software engineer looking for work could do a lot worse.
None of that means they make great products. Have you ever dealt with their support or engineers? Ugh.
It is both the best and worse SaaS I have ever used, though my company may be switching to NetSuite ERP soon (technically also now an Oracle product).
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Worklif…
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’…
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Oracle will only give interviews to people with a degree from their small list of Ivy-tier universities. That's only for new grads with no work experience. It's a stupid policy, but in my corner of the company we generally made good hiring decisions. I disagree that the company has a lot of useless academics. IME, engineering and product management are full of very smart, capable, hard working people, some of them…
> Oracle will only give interviews to people with a degree from their small list of Ivy-tier universities. I cannot imagine that a company with a healthy culture could allow such a boneheaded policy to persist.
I don't take referrals lightly, because my reputation is at stake too. In this case, most of my former colleagues were H1-B from India, all of them highly experienced, expert software engineers, dedicated workers, established long-term residents, and personally delightful. These are people I can recommend for any job and I know they'll make me proud.
My boss refused to even look at these men's resumes. It was never said out loud, but I was made to believe that there was an informal policy at Sun/Oracle at that time, that non-citizens would not be considered for employment, and my boss justified it by saying, "there are enough Americans who need jobs".
Of the three white guys I referred, two were hired. How's that for unhealthy?
Edit:
Going through my old emails, it actually looks like I went 3 for 6 on the white guys. Nevertheless... [edit: needlessly inflammatory comment removed].
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#76I 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)
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#77I 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…
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#79I 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…
Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe
#80A 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…
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 pr…