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Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

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Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#151

Post by inferiorhuman »

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 see a lot of (well-justified) anger on HN against H-1B etc. but most citizens don't know what perversities our so called 'highly qualified' labor pool has to deal with. These are unique to the United States, btw. No other developed country has such a ridiculous work visa system.

As an American-born person my frustration with H-1B is twofold: lower wages and abusive treatment of employees. Perspective taking and empathy can be hard when you're talking about a situation you can't relate to but that hardly excuses the atrocious behavior on the part of employers.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#153

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

wangchungtonite wrote: post #132
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#154

Post by joneholland »

longcommonname wrote: post #123
joneholland wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m hiring Sr developers right across the street at Expedia. Shoot me a note: joholland at expedia.com

Do companies like expedia look to hire people moving from the GDS? I'm not sure I want to stay in the travel industry, but I really like the challenging problems. Just not sure I want to stay with the current company I'm at.

Yes! Shoot me an email.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#155

Post by 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.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#156

Post by sys_64738 »

luckydata wrote: post #90
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…

That's complete bullshit, hiring bonuses don't have to be repaid if they terminate you for any reason. They were trying to make you feel like the manager went to bat for you, which isn't the case.

My employer has that language in the employment offer. If for any reason during the first 12 months then the pro-rated remainder needs to be returned.usually through withholding future earnings.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#157

Post by sys_64738 »

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.

This has happened to me. Two weeks in the door and a massive layoff of peers occurs but I survived the hatchet as I came via a recruitment agency charging 20% of base salary. Higher ups can’t disclose plans until they’re executing them as it’s a warning sign something is afoot if a sudden hiring freeze occurs mid-quarter. Could be seen as disposing financial info unfairly.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#158

Post by shalmanese »

johan_larson wrote: post #142
whatshisface wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#159

Post by ineedasername »

crispyambulance wrote: post #150
ineedasername wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 ha…

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 :)

Re: Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe

#160

Post by sanderjd »

nate_meurer wrote: post #134
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 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 offi…

No this is very illuminating. For what it's worth, I work with ex-Sun people who were laid off pretty soon after the acquisition and have nothing positive to say about Oracle. But I guess on thinking about it, they probably would not have quit because they liked their projects at Sun. So it seems consistent with your account. What a bummer all around.
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