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Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

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81–90 of 135 posts

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

#81

What's even weirder is the Founder of canonical has a #hiring badge on their LinkedIn profile. What kind of message is that?

They are hiring. I've seen one role listed for more than a year, and it's because of their hiring process. Here's a random job, by way of example: https://canonical.com/careers/3433732/application Search for "how did you perform", and be baffled at their recruitment strategy.

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

#82

I’ve just been thinking about this and would like to ask those of you with more experience in the industry: do you prepare yourselves in any way for crises? Do you have any techniques for dealing with uncertainty? Let’s say someone is entering the IT job market today. How should they prepare for the responsibilities of adulthood, starting a family, buying (perhaps on a mortgage?) their first flat, and planning for a…

Live within your means. Save aggressively. Invest wisely.

(Source: I'm one of the 21,000, let go via a 6am email after 15 years with the company in engineering and management roles.)

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

#83

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 maintenanc…

You can use AI to eliminate Oracle from your org's dependencies.

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

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it’s not sudden, the AI excuses have been gradual and ramping up for a couple years now.

Maybe because the models keep getting better and the tools are slowly getting good enough to replace people? Keep in mind we’re talking about oracle here, it’s not like we’re talking about humanity’s best and brightest.

Maybe. But the models weren't good enough 2+ years ago. And to cite just one example, in February 2024 Grammarly laid off over 20% of its employees, citing AI. So you'll have to forgive me if I am extremely skeptical of CEOs citing that as the reason today.

It's a very convenient excuse, especially given the apparent lack of public backlash to it, compared to, say, "the business isn't profitable and we need to save money."

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

#85
post #55

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?

LLMs can certainly make sales faster and more efficient by automating things like updating CRM, prospecting, finding contacts, drafting emails, etc. There's a whole niche industry building AI sales tools now and some of them work extremely well. But in the end you still need human salespeople (often with lawyers backing them up) to close major enterprise deals.

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

#86
post #73

I’ve just been thinking about this and would like to ask those of you with more experience in the industry: do you prepare yourselves in any way for crises? Do you have any techniques for dealing with uncertainty? Let’s say someone is entering the IT job market today. How should they prepare for the responsibilities of adulthood, starting a family, buying (perhaps on a mortgage?) their first flat, and planning for a…

There's really nothing special about the current situation. Throughout history, jobs have been rarely anything close to guaranteed. You save a good deal of cash for emergencies, live below your means, keep your skill set up to date and face the world.

The speed of change is what’s special this time. Careers are being eliminated faster than people can reskill or change careers.

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

#87
post #86
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really nothing special about the current situation. Throughout history, jobs have been rarely anything close to guaranteed. You save a good deal of cash for emergencies, live below your means, keep your skill set up to date and face the world.

The speed of change is what’s special this time. Careers are being eliminated faster than people can reskill or change careers.

I'm not sure that's true. Jobs have moved overseas at a rapid rate in the past. What careers have been eliminated, and over what time period?

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

#88

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?

Oracle is still mostly generating income from an old school model, a bit like IBM and SAP used to. They have huge contracts with mega-corps bringing in millions per year for a license. The have been pivoting to other things like consulting, cloud, AI for years but I still feel most of the income comes from these original db and product licenses. As someone who worked with Oracle since 1998 I'm kind of amazed they've kept at it for so long major Healthcare, Utilities, Banks still locked in and in some cases buying new contracts.

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, WARN filings in NYC require to indicate whether lay-offs were due to AI. None of the filings of the past year checked that box [1] [1] https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2026-02-11-ai...

We had the cops investigate themselves and they found no evidence of wrong-doing.

Businesses are incentivized to say it’s because of AI because it makes them look better. So not saying that when actually asked by a government entity is meaningful.

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

#90

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 maintenanc…

That's rational. Oracle has bet the farm on AI, if they don't make it work they will fail.

It doesn't seem rational to me that such a big company wouldn't prefer to diversify.
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