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Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year

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

#121

Post by anecd4t4 »

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…

Anecdote time; startup I worked for was bought by Oracle in 2015

Oracle was all in on spinning up a less corporate bubble that felt like the startup zeitgeist; we had Slack while Oracle legacy units had in house XMPP

Management was dumping everything into data center and cloud growth and trying to catch up

I stayed for a couple years to help my team migrate and prepare for release the product Oracle bought the startup for. Not long but long enough to get a sense of the internal story and driving themes

No doubt in my mind this is Oracle trying to get ahead in this hype cycle. By 2017 upper management did nothing but lament how far behind Oracle was.

Cut n run from everything early this time to go all in on new meme is exactly the kind of choice Larry would make given constant anxiety on display about missing the cloud bubble.

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

#122

Post by kstrauser »

toast0 wrote: post #112
kstrauser wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s makes sense in its way, if they’re convinced and absolutely certain that’s the future. By analogy, I bet there were some carriage manufacturers who bet the farm on internal combustion engines when horse drawn carriages were still popular. It would seem insane at the time for them to give up their reliable business for something risky and unknown. However, in retrospect it would seem like bad business to throw…

> However, in retrospect it would seem like bad business to throw resources after dead-end product lines, even if they’re valuable, because each dollar not advancing their automobile R&D was a dollar wasted on legacy stuff. If each dollar you throw at dead-end product lines returns $1.20, that gives you more to spend on R&D for the new hotness. Shutting down the old business doesn't maximize spending on new R&D. Now…

That's a valid point, and to be clear, I'm not claiming Oracle's making a wise choice. Among other business risks with the plan is that customers who've been burned by Oracle abandoning the specific product line they needed might not be quick to start using Oracle for all their AI stuff. Like I don't think anyone likes using Oracle's products, and if you're starting your company's AI plan from scratch, that might be an excellent time to consider not-Oracle as your provider/partner/contractor/whatever.

However, if your dead-end investment has a 20% ROR, and you think your AI investment will have a 1000% ROR, you'd kinda be foolish not to throw every possible resource at the new venture. I'd bet that a lot of the people maintaining Product A could be switched to the AI project. It's going to need lots of people supporting the networking, CRUD APIs for various things, sales, tech support, legal, etc. The product itself will be different, but much of the underlying support might look the same between the two. Why "waste" someone maintaining Product A's CI/CD pipeline when they could be helping the AI project move faster?

And again, I'm not arguing that they're right. It's more that if they're completely convinced that this is the future of their company, then that could be a rational, defensible decision. There's a lot of "ifs" in all this, to be sure. And in any case, don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison.

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

#123

Post by fartcoin67 »

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.

[dead]

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

#124

Post by protonbob »

catigula wrote: post #118
angoragoats wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, we (humans) appear to be more accepting and less critical of companies giving AI-related layoff excuses, vs. perhaps telling a more truthful story like "we are losing money and are scrambling to reach profitability" or "we'd like to make the stock price go up." Though I do agree there are a vocal group of people that are loudly outspoken about AI. I would guess that those people are a minority of the tot…

No, the majority of the population is hostile to AI. This has been surveyed time and time again. I definitely disagree with your premise.

The majority of shareholders (not retail 401k) are not as hostile at all.

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

#125

Post by j_w »

kstrauser wrote: post #98
trollied wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LOL, I’d forgotten about that idiocy. Imagine being a staff engineer and having an interviewer ask about your high school math performance. 1. I was in the top 0.01% in my state. (Actually true; who gives a crap; it was a quarter century ago and literally no one other than Canonical cares.) 2. You can’t prove me wrong. I can’t prove me right, because I’m not the kind of loser who has a wall of their high school accom…

Number 2 is the thing, right?

Why bother asking? Is a recruiter going to fly out to my high school and see if they can get records? Interview a teacher that still works there?

You also are likely selecting not for high school calculus geniuses, but for people willing to lie. Presumably they ask because there is a more desired answer, so if you want to get a job you should provide the more desirable answer.

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

#126

Post by kstrauser »

j_w wrote: post #125
kstrauser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, I’d forgotten about that idiocy. Imagine being a staff engineer and having an interviewer ask about your high school math performance. 1. I was in the top 0.01% in my state. (Actually true; who gives a crap; it was a quarter century ago and literally no one other than Canonical cares.) 2. You can’t prove me wrong. I can’t prove me right, because I’m not the kind of loser who has a wall of their high school accom…

Number 2 is the thing, right? Why bother asking? Is a recruiter going to fly out to my high school and see if they can get records? Interview a teacher that still works there? You also are likely selecting not for high school calculus geniuses, but for people willing to lie. Presumably they ask because there is a more desired answer, so if you want to get a job you should provide the more desirable answer.

Those are other great points! Yeah, as if my high school has any record of my transcript. After maybe a decade at most, that's about as relevant to an HS grad's life as their shoe size at the time.

I wouldn't personally lie about it, because 1) I'm not going to lie, and 2) I do not want any job where my coworkers are rewarded for lying. But for anyone who just wants to get in and extract some salary while it's there for the taking, morals be damned, that would be the obvious course of action.

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

#127

Post by HlessClaudesman »

kstrauser wrote: post #96
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…

That’s makes sense in its way, if they’re convinced and absolutely certain that’s the future. By analogy, I bet there were some carriage manufacturers who bet the farm on internal combustion engines when horse drawn carriages were still popular. It would seem insane at the time for them to give up their reliable business for something risky and unknown. However, in retrospect it would seem like bad business to throw…

Even if AI is the next combustion engine, would you bet the farm on a C tier buggy whip manufacturer like Oracle being the next Ford or General Motors?

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

#129

Post by donavanm »

thorin wrote: post #88
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?

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…

Youre out of date. The revenue numbers from cloud infrastructure (iaas) are HUGE the past few years. DB licensing etc are mixed in to “ Cloud services & license support” so it is hard to pull out. But youll notice that:

- “iaas” (OCI) is growing 50% yoy and the bulk of the revenue. - “cloud license and on prem license” (new software licensing) is $5B or ~10% of the segment - ERP, peoplesoft etc arent broken out but are also very large in their market categories.

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #127
kstrauser wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s makes sense in its way, if they’re convinced and absolutely certain that’s the future. By analogy, I bet there were some carriage manufacturers who bet the farm on internal combustion engines when horse drawn carriages were still popular. It would seem insane at the time for them to give up their reliable business for something risky and unknown. However, in retrospect it would seem like bad business to throw…

Even if AI is the next combustion engine, would you bet the farm on a C tier buggy whip manufacturer like Oracle being the next Ford or General Motors?

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