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Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

bbc.com

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Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#61

Post by coldpie »

DanielHB wrote: post #53
GL26 wrote: post #30

Now is precisely not the time to cut jobs, but to invest in people's usage of AI. You have domain expertise, and you are going to burn tokens trying to replace people's jobs, but the AI revolution is not at all about people replacement, its about a change of paradigm. Watch them closely rehire thousands of new employees (who won't have the domain expertise) once they see that you actually need people to operate their…

What I don't get is why these companies are in all the rush to replace people with AI tools. Stuff is changing so fast that capital investment right now will just need to be reworked on after a few years when things settle down a little. And that is not even considering how much it costs to run AI right now at scale AND retraining people to use the new tools AND possible disruption in existing workflows. If I was run…

It's because these are public companies. Public companies are not in the business of developing good products and selling them to customers and having a sustainable long-term vision, they are in the business of selling their stock. Right now, thanks to a very effective marketing campaign driven by people who are invested in AI companies, the stock market wants to see stories about employees being replaced with AI, so that's what these companies are selling.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#62

Post by xpct »

ransom1538 wrote: post #46
GL26 wrote: post #30

Now is precisely not the time to cut jobs, but to invest in people's usage of AI. You have domain expertise, and you are going to burn tokens trying to replace people's jobs, but the AI revolution is not at all about people replacement, its about a change of paradigm. Watch them closely rehire thousands of new employees (who won't have the domain expertise) once they see that you actually need people to operate their…

I easily do more than x 5 the workload I did in 2020. Replacing an employee with domain knowledge (only thing valuable now), with someone with zero domain knowledge is corporate suicide in 2026. However, if you are oracle sending out consultants with zero domain knowledge around to help.... I would rather just use claude.

What type of work are we talking about here?

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#63

Post by DanielHB »

strongpigeon wrote: post #44

What’s crazy is how Oracle’s free cash flows have gone from “money-printing machine” to deep in the red due to their data center investments. My guess is that some of those cuts are to try to balance that?

Well you have to somehow both indicate that you are not behind in the AI race but also that you are not hemorrhaging money. That means crapping all over your org in order to fund the data center spending.

All in the all-mighty fiduciary duty to your investors of course.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#64

Post by soundwave106 »

psychoslave wrote: post #47
skerit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which AI bubble? The stock bubble one or the imagined "one day all the LLMs are going to disappear from the face of the Earth" one?

Dot-com bubble crashing didn’t mean the web disappeared.

Some of the shakier dot com companies did, though.

And the dot com bubble collapse of Nortel and Worldcom shows that even well-established companies with significant non-bubble investments are vulnerable if the companies make poor economic decisions (in both of those cases, the collapse was driven by excessively aggressive acquisitions).

Likewise, LLM's won't disappear completely with a stock market crash. But the weaker players might.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#65

Post by lenerdenator »

I'm trying to remember which Marvel capeslop movie it was where the kid gets a bunch of Oracle professional-grade computer hardware or something as a gift. Larry makes a cameo, of course. Maybe it was Iron Man 2?

Like, mate, if you want to be a superhero in real life, stop laying off thousands of people and working the remaining people ragged. That's all you gotta do.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#66

Post by DanielHB »

hunterjrj wrote: post #13
xbmcuser wrote: post #6

where its sits with the AI bubble I think Oracle is the 1 of the major companies apart from the OpenAI that would go belly up once the AI bubble crashes.

I think you underestimate just how entrenched Oracle’s database offering is in the enterprise.

I did a project for a big telecom in Brazil where they kept everything in one massive Oracle database that ran out of 2 oracle refrigerators[1]. They kept freaking logs on the database, like normal application level logs.

DBA would go around screaming if you were logging too much stuff. I assumed they had some sort of periodic cleanup because I couldn't see that stuff being practical long term.

Technically it was 2 databases, one was a read replica for longer running data analysis of course.

That telecom has at least 100 million paying customers (maybe much more). I don't see they ever moving away from Oracle, they are more likely to go bankrupt than ever leaving.

[1]: Oracle RAC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_RAC

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#67

Post by 2000UltraDeluxe »

mrtksn wrote: post #55
WoodenChair wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's stopping anyone else from using AI and eat into Oracle's market? Open source databases have already been doing this for decades. You can’t just clone its products and expect to eliminate it. Oracle is driven by a strong sales culture and ruthless business strategy.

And why AI can't do all that? Apparently it can be a doctor, engineer, musician etc. but when it comes to do the jobs of certain class of people suddenly can't do that. It doesn't add up, maybe sales isn't as impossible to learn and do?

Claude has neither golf buddies nor a business network.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#68

Post by poisonfountain »

cryo32 wrote: post #56

None of this is due to AI. That’s just the cover story that stops the stock crashing. The reality is the market is contracting and it’s doing that because the extraction and monthly financial models are hurting other businesses which are also contracting because of lower customer demand.

It is, but about AI CAPEX.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#69

Post by samiv »

mrtksn wrote: post #55
WoodenChair wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's stopping anyone else from using AI and eat into Oracle's market? Open source databases have already been doing this for decades. You can’t just clone its products and expect to eliminate it. Oracle is driven by a strong sales culture and ruthless business strategy.

And why AI can't do all that? Apparently it can be a doctor, engineer, musician etc. but when it comes to do the jobs of certain class of people suddenly can't do that. It doesn't add up, maybe sales isn't as impossible to learn and do?

It doesn't play golf at the club with the C level.

Re: Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

#70

Post by shrubble »

A friend met with Oracle salesdroids (his company has spent a few million with them in the last few years).

They told him everything is oriented towards AI, to the point that otherwise profitable software is not being updated and development has stopped on anything new.

Oracle has a lot of niche solutions and the one my friend’s corporation uses is profitable but not on the AI path, so it is being put into maintenance mode.

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