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Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

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Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#131

Post by MrTonyD »

sanderjd wrote: post #127
nate_meurer wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

What honestly confuses me is why people of that caliber continue to work for Oracle when everybody has read umpteen stories like the OP and lots of us even know people who can attest to the toxicity of the company first hand. The usual counterbalance to a company treating employees like crap is that it tarnishes the company's reputation, making it harder to find talent. Oracle's reputation has been below rock bottom…

I was a PM at Oracle - our team VP reported to Larry. Everybody I worked with was very experienced and very sharp. On the other hand, we regarded most of the company as "sheep" who executed our plans. Completely expendable and generally unenlightened. Obviously there were other bright people around the company, but by and large they had no clue about our strategy or direction or the way that real decisions were made (and we kept a lot of the real reasons for things secret - we didn't want competitors to know what we were really doing or why.) You don't become a business the size of Oracle by being completely stupid.

One example - since then I've worked for about 5 or 6 companies who boast about how they hired Oracle salespeople, so now they are energizing their sales. But at Oracle we spent a lot of time and effort at HQ doing things to make Sales and the Salespeople effective. So at company after company they can't figure out why hiring the "right" Salespeople isn't solving their problem. But they aren't doing any of the things that we did to support Salespeople (things throughout the rest of the company and outside the company.) We kept most of it secret from Sales, so even they didn't really know what we were doing. So are the Sales people smart? Yes. And are they sheep? Yes.

Similar arguments apply to most of the other PMs outside of core database (who companies also mistakenly hire to "turbocharge" their products), most of the Engineering groups, most of the support teams, and generally everybody outside a relatively small group of people.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#132

Post by wangchungtonite »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #83
kplex wrote: post #39

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?

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 ag…

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.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#133

Post by throwaway98109 »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #109
BurningFrog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The H-1B situation, at least back in my day, is that formally you need a new job within X days, but in reality no one cares as long as you don't leave the country. If you're unsure/nervous, talk to an immigration lawyer. A 1 hour consultation is quite affordable.

It's not that simple. Whenever you report the exact dates of employment (which you can't easily fudge as they have to match with what the employer can / will attest to), such as for applying for a Green card, it will be clear that you have been in violation of status, in case you were out of work for >60 days. And then you are at the mercy of USCIS/DHS. You also have to attest that you have not been in violation of s…

IANAL, but consider whether you can apply for transition to a B-1/2 visa today while your H-1B is still. They take 6 months to grant and allow valid stay while you're waiting. Talk to an immigration lawyer for details on whether this works for your case.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#134

Post by nate_meurer »

sanderjd wrote: post #127
nate_meurer wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

What honestly confuses me is why people of that caliber continue to work for Oracle when everybody has read umpteen stories like the OP and lots of us even know people who can attest to the toxicity of the company first hand. The usual counterbalance to a company treating employees like crap is that it tarnishes the company's reputation, making it harder to find talent. Oracle's reputation has been below rock bottom…

I only have experience with the former Sun storage bits: Solaris, ZFS, storage appliance, networking. I worked in a former Sun building, and with just one exception everyone in the chain between me and Larry was a Sun employee.

Sun was a really cool place to work. The periodic demoralizing layoffs were a bummer, but they didn't seem toxic; it was common for people to come right back, sometimes back to their same offices, after the company started hiring again.

Sun's technology was hugely attractive. Solaris was the best Unix. ZFS, dtrace, etc. Dozens of other projects and thousands of people doing cutting edge work. Even the older stuff like tape and SAM/QFS was really cool to work on. The fact that so much of it was open source gave me a moral imperative to contribute, and I know a lot of other people felt the same.

I think the shear awesomeness of the technology that Oracle inherited from Sun (and other companies) drove the demand for Oracle jobs at that site for years after the acquisition. Oracle has done their best to squander this good will, and I won't be surprised if they find it harder to attract talent going forward.

I'd say the company did not generally treat us little guys like crap. I had great bosses, except for the last one, who I suspect was a hit man hired specifically to thin the ranks. Overall, I feel I was treated fairly, perhaps even better than I deserved.

This is actually a pretty lame answer, sorry. My experience was too narrow to give me any useful insight.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#135

Post by nate_meurer »

MrTonyD wrote: post #131
sanderjd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What honestly confuses me is why people of that caliber continue to work for Oracle when everybody has read umpteen stories like the OP and lots of us even know people who can attest to the toxicity of the company first hand. The usual counterbalance to a company treating employees like crap is that it tarnishes the company's reputation, making it harder to find talent. Oracle's reputation has been below rock bottom…

I was a PM at Oracle - our team VP reported to Larry. Everybody I worked with was very experienced and very sharp. On the other hand, we regarded most of the company as "sheep" who executed our plans. Completely expendable and generally unenlightened. Obviously there were other bright people around the company, but by and large they had no clue about our strategy or direction or the way that real decisions were made…

See, this just proves what I said in another comment -- that the different parts of Oracle are like completely different companies. I don't doubt what you say. But in ZFSSA QA, it was the opposite. Our director held regular all-hands meetings specifically meant to keep us all up to date on product strategy and direction. She wanted all of us to know exactly how our efforts were contributing to product revenue and to the company's strategic goals. Detailed stuff that made us (me, anyway) feel important. I've actually never seen anything like it anywhere else I've worked, even startups.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#136

Post by throwaway663 »

pololee wrote: post #47

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…

What a win.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#137

Post by wyclif »

pololee wrote: post #50
pololee wrote: post #47

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…

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.

Sounds to me like "the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth" at Oracle. At least with regard to your department. But I agree with the other guy in this thread who said not to take it personally. You shouldn't. It's more a commentary on the state of corporate flux than it is on your work, that's the healthiest way to view things.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#139

Post by _jgdh »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #109
BurningFrog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The H-1B situation, at least back in my day, is that formally you need a new job within X days, but in reality no one cares as long as you don't leave the country. If you're unsure/nervous, talk to an immigration lawyer. A 1 hour consultation is quite affordable.

It's not that simple. Whenever you report the exact dates of employment (which you can't easily fudge as they have to match with what the employer can / will attest to), such as for applying for a Green card, it will be clear that you have been in violation of status, in case you were out of work for >60 days. And then you are at the mercy of USCIS/DHS. You also have to attest that you have not been in violation of s…

I emigrated to Europe but I have about 20 friends who are on the H1B living in the US. I think folks on the H1B put up with awful treatment and don’t even know how awful it is because they haven’t seen a country that’s actually welcoming to immigrants.

I’ve pointed out this awful situation where you can not afford to ever get let go from your job under any circumstances without jeopardising your life and your family’s life. In response I get “well if they’re so highly skilled, why are they getting let go?” Ask that question to the top comment on this thread, if you think it’s a fair one.

Every year H1Bs need to go back to their home country to get their visa stamped. Why can’t they just go to a government agency within the US? Fuck if I know.

Switching jobs again is a huge pain. A friend of mine has been waiting in India for a few months for his visa to be transferred from one company to another. Imagine if he had kids who were going to school.

But you think this is temporary right? Eventually you get a Green Card and everything gets much better. Wrong. If you’re Indian it could take anywhere between 15 to 20 years to get that Green Card. You will be living the life of a H1B until then.

Contrast all this to my experience in Europe. I got my visa within 2 weeks. I’m treated with respect here. There’s a clear path to Permanent Residency here - just stay in the country for 5 years on my current visa. There’s a clear path to citizenship if I want it - just be a Permanent Resident for 1 year. I don’t get jerked around with stamping requirements. My spouse can work without worrying about rule changes.

Of course, the vagaries of the H1B program along with the indignities and suffering that people go through might actually be a feature, not a bug. The goal could be to create a “hostile environment” to keep the bad sort out. In that case it’s doing really well.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#140

Post by wyclif »

pololee wrote: post #50
pololee wrote: post #47

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…

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.

Sounds to me like "the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth" at Oracle. At least with regard to your department. But I agree with the guy who said not to take it personally. You shouldn't. It's more a commentary on the state of corporate flux than it is on your work, that's the healthiest way to view things.
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