Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

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

#101

Post by forinti »

jcgrillo wrote: post #78
shrubble wrote: post #70

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…

Absolutely unhinged behavior. If orcl goes nuts over chatbots and dies that will make this strange and profoundly icky era in tech all worth it.

The good bits will be sold off. Some of their products are very valuable, even if you don't like them.

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

#102

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

servo_sausage wrote: post #40
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…

Depends on which jobs; at a big enough scale you have people who are so deep in the hierarchy that their real connection to the domain is low. Seems possible to flatten out a company, in a way the domain knowledge is kept. That being said, I haven't seen many layoffs that actually seem directly AI related, because the main effects are not hiring junior Devs, and not outsourcing to low cost/skill areas.

> Seems possible to flatten out a company, in a way the domain knowledge is kept.

This definitely seems possible, but I've rarely seen it work. That being said, the follow on from any layoffs (reduced morale, more switchers) make it hard to be certain here.

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

#103

Post by missedthecue »

breckenedge wrote: post #36
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…

Oracle overcommitted on behalf of OpenAI, taking on debt to meet their obligations. Not that healthy companies are not also doing ridiculous layoffs, but in this case, Oracle does have to do some drastic things to get out of this tailspin.

Tailspin? Last quarter was their best quarter ever in terms of topline, and they cleared over $4B in profit.

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

#104

Post by jcgrillo »

forinti wrote: post #101
jcgrillo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely unhinged behavior. If orcl goes nuts over chatbots and dies that will make this strange and profoundly icky era in tech all worth it.

The good bits will be sold off. Some of their products are very valuable, even if you don't like them.

Yeah I don't dispute they have (had?) successful products. Just saying for a company to abandon successful products in favor of a wildly costly gamble is insane. To even arrive at the point where it seems like a "tradeoff" is delusional thinking--like, "we're going to stop supporting this successful product because the future value of this other thing is greater"... what? They've contorted themselves into believing that the future value that product is irrelevant, and all their customers whose trust they're burning are irrelevant, because... chatbots?

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

#105

Post by missedthecue »

reliabilityguy wrote: post #28
VladVladikoff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 because the models keep getting better and the tools are slowly getting good enough to replace people? I am not sure we are there yet. In my experience even the SoTA models are faaaaar away from replacing humans, maybe making them a bit faster.

This conversation always gets lost in the weeds. You don't need a SOTA model to replace an entire engineer role from the time he gets into the office until he leaves.

If you have a team of 10 and make them all a little faster, you can do the same amount of work with 9. Run this out over the entire industry and it's hundreds of thousands of roles that are redundant.

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

#106

Post by angoragoats »

missedthecue wrote: post #105
reliabilityguy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe because the models keep getting better and the tools are slowly getting good enough to replace people? I am not sure we are there yet. In my experience even the SoTA models are faaaaar away from replacing humans, maybe making them a bit faster.

This conversation always gets lost in the weeds. You don't need a SOTA model to replace an entire engineer role from the time he gets into the office until he leaves. If you have a team of 10 and make them all a little faster, you can do the same amount of work with 9. Run this out over the entire industry and it's hundreds of thousands of roles that are redundant.

Do you have any research, empirical data, or other hard evidence that shows that a model (especially a non-SOTA model) makes engineers even "a little faster"? I'm aware of anecdotes, but nothing more.

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

#107

Post by forinti »

jcgrillo wrote: post #104
forinti wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good bits will be sold off. Some of their products are very valuable, even if you don't like them.

Yeah I don't dispute they have (had?) successful products. Just saying for a company to abandon successful products in favor of a wildly costly gamble is insane. To even arrive at the point where it seems like a "tradeoff" is delusional thinking--like, "we're going to stop supporting this successful product because the future value of this other thing is greater"... what? They've contorted themselves into believing t…

It seems reckless and unnecessary even if the gamble were 100% a sure thing, which no gamble ever is.

Even if AI is a game changer, it doesn't mean that your business model will have a role in it.

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

#108

Post by NickC25 »

tw04 wrote: post #33
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.

Larry has embedded the company way too deeply into the intelligence and military apparatus to ever go belly up. He’d be first in line for a government handout.

> He’d be first in line for a government handout.

And he'd take a good chunk of that money for himself, and a good amount of that to also "donate" to a foreign, nuclear-armed, hostile country's "defense" force. But don't you dare question him.

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

#110

Post by catigula »

protonbob wrote: post #89
catigula wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does firing people resultant of the most disliked and unpopular technology on the planet, and avoiding marking it off on an obvious entry-point into regulatory burden "make them look better"?
Post reply on HN