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Oracle slashes 30k jobs

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Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#271

Post by pydry »

post-it wrote: post #173
kyledrake wrote: post #157

The bulk of the comments in here are focused on comparing Larry Ellison to a lawn mower, so I'll try a new tack and say that I'm genuinely confused at what the value prop of Oracle is. Given the history of their business model being licensing of important databases that are hard to switch off of, I've actually made a point to avoid using Oracle as much as possible (even so far as to leave MySQL when they acquired it,…

Every company I've worked for has avoided Oracle software of any kind. My hunch is that big consulting firms like CGI might use it, and therefore the customers of those firms use it? But I haven't worked at any of those.

I worked for one company that used it. Everybody on the ground hated it but the costs of migrating away were enormous because every system they relied upon was tightly coupled to every other system. It would have been a multiyear project to get off it.

Their software wasn't just more expensive than using open source equivalents it was worse, too. It's just very, very sticky.

At the same time the sales team wine and dine key decision makers and try to strike the fear of god in to them so they don't rock the boat.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#272

Post by butterlesstoast »

jen20 wrote: post #229
tombert wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple used Java in a ton of backend stuff. At least the entire backend for iTunes (Jingle) was written in Java and very very small amount of Clojure.

One only need look at the job postings for Apple to see quite how common Java backend is there.

Checks out https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?search=java&sort=relevan...

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#273

Post by iamjake648 »

samuelknight wrote: post #136
bux93 wrote: post #124

"Any unvested restricted stock units, however, were forfeited immediately." wow.

This is standard in every tech RSU vest schedule I have seen.

Yes, it's the standard in every legal doc I've ever seen too, but most companies have typically done some accelerated vesting as part of severance. Of course they don't have to, but it's a generally lower cost way of showing some good will.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#274

Post by api »

newsoftheday wrote: post #183
kyledrake wrote: post #157

The bulk of the comments in here are focused on comparing Larry Ellison to a lawn mower, so I'll try a new tack and say that I'm genuinely confused at what the value prop of Oracle is. Given the history of their business model being licensing of important databases that are hard to switch off of, I've actually made a point to avoid using Oracle as much as possible (even so far as to leave MySQL when they acquired it,…

[flagged]

Google Cloud's bandwidth pricing is much more reasonable. That's one thing I see. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon still charge the standard big cloud absolutely ludicrous bandwidth markup, stuff like $0.08/gig.

If you know what bandwidth actually costs, that's like $500/gallon gasoline.

Oracle is still expensive relative to wholesale bandwidth but it's at least not absolutely insane.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#275

Post by wiseowise »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #75
renewiltord wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the ideal things that companies can do is not hire people. A company that never hires someone will never let anyone go and consequently is the only ethical company. The worst thing that a company could do is pay someone to do a job for a while. In fact, one thing we could do is make sure that all jobs should be perpetual. If someone hires you, they can't stop paying you until they die or declare bankruptcy. Th…

It’s not unethical to lay someone off

It is unethical, if there was nothing wrong with their performance and the company never tried to find a replacement position within the company. Stop licking boots, I heard they don’t even taste that good.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#276

Post by killerstorm »

seanhunter wrote: post #248
kyledrake wrote: post #157

The bulk of the comments in here are focused on comparing Larry Ellison to a lawn mower, so I'll try a new tack and say that I'm genuinely confused at what the value prop of Oracle is. Given the history of their business model being licensing of important databases that are hard to switch off of, I've actually made a point to avoid using Oracle as much as possible (even so far as to leave MySQL when they acquired it,…

Short answer: today I think there is genuinely nothing that anyone should use oracle for, but their database used to be seriously far ahead of the competition. A very long time ago (circa 2000) there were basically 2 databases that worked for use cases where you needed high availability and vertical scalability and those were Oracle and Sybase and Oracle was really the only game in town if you actually wanted certain…

What's about DB2? I have no experience with it but I guess IBM specifically designed it for enterprise-scale transaction processing workloads...

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#277

Post by WalterBright »

troyvit wrote: post #84
SoftTalker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no real way to sugar-coat losing your job. I think an email is as good as anything. Ensures everyone gets the same message at the same time.

I think the headline is not the best headline, but what it meant by "cold" is that there was no advance warning. So like cold-calling somebody, but to fire them, and an email instead.

The problem with advance warning is the employee who decides to sabotage in revenge.

For example, a company I knew in the 80s had a wholly owned subsidiary. It was losing money, so it was decided to close the subsidiary. Management decided that they'd be nice guys, and notified the subsidiary that it would be closed in 90 days and then everyone would be laid off.

90 days later, management arrived to close the facility. It was empty, stripped clean of everything. Not a lick of work was done in the 90 days, and nobody was there. There were reports that trucks had come to the loading dock, and took everything they could carry.

The cost of that led to the collapse of the company.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#278

Post by seanhunter »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #267
seanhunter wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer: today I think there is genuinely nothing that anyone should use oracle for, but their database used to be seriously far ahead of the competition. A very long time ago (circa 2000) there were basically 2 databases that worked for use cases where you needed high availability and vertical scalability and those were Oracle and Sybase and Oracle was really the only game in town if you actually wanted certain…

Just curious, how was SQL Server perceived at the time compared to Sybase and Oracle? I know it originated as a port of Sybase.

I remember talking to one tech leader at the time who described it as "surprisingly good, for a microsoft product" which sort of summed it up. But it had similar characteristics to sybase except more so because you had to run it on an NT server (iirc) and so there was an even harder cap on the scale of hardware you could run it on, whereas you could run oracle on really top-end sparc hardware that was way more powerful than anything that ran windows.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#280

Post by lljk_kennedy »

guywithahat wrote: post #246
dafelst wrote: post #2

More victims of AI. Not actually of "AI is replacing jobs", more "oh shit we are spending too much and the product isn't good enough for us to ever make a return on our absurd over-investment".

I don't understand this sentiment. I'm absolutely significantly more productive with AI; so much moreso that I now have freetime and we haven't needed to replace an engineer who left. On the flip side my coworkers who think they're above AI are drowning. I think there is an endemic problem of senior engineers who think they're above learning AI and agents who don't want to use them, and these cuts are about forcing t…

Are you paid significantly more for your newfound productivity?
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