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Oracle slashes 30k jobs

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Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#591

My Amazon layoff notice came at 5am. Same deal. I thought it was fake because it came to my personal email. Then I logged into my work computer and found that all my email had been erased except for a copy of the layoff notice and an invite to a 10am Zoom with HR. The funny part was the invite had everyone who had been laid off in the To: line. I was able to send internal only emails until 1pm, and then it logged me…

I'm not sure if companies understand the emotional impact on the laid off and the layoff survivors. It almost seems like a terror campaign, whether intended or not.

When i was first laid off during the dot com bust I was working on a sales floor. All open no cubes. We didn't know layoffs were coming. Manager walks in and taps this one guy on the shoulder, says grab your personal things and come with me. Manager came back in did the same to a few others. Then it was me. Talk about embarrassing! Also, was 2 weeks before quarter ended. If you were not working for the company at the end of the Q, no bonus. 2 weeks! I'll never forget that. That was my first taste of how nasty a company can be. Not the layoffs, hey things happen. But the timing. Feels diabolical.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#592

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,…

[deleted]

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#593

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…

> 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 both of them were Postgres.

I used it in the late 90s for the backend for websites written in PHP3, but everyone said this was ridiculous and silly and don't you know that everyone's using the MySQL thing.

So I used this MySQL thing, but by about 2005 I'd gone back to powering my lawnmower with a 500bhp Scania V8 because I just preferred having that level of ridiculous overkill in an engine.

Nowadays? Key/Value store in RAM is probably fine for testing -> Sqlite is often Good Enough -> Ah sod it, fire Postgres into a docker container and warn the neighbours, we're going down the Scanny V8 route yet again.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

DB2 was crazy good for certain use cases but very weird. For one, the pattern for DB2 efficiency was pretty much the exact opposite of every other database. Every other database would say "Normalize your tables, use BCNF, blah blah, small reference tables, special indices etc". DB2, the pattern was "denormalize everything into one gigantic wide table". If you did that it was insanely fast for the time and could handl…

> DB2, the pattern was "denormalize everything into one gigantic wide table". If you did that it was insanely fast for the time and could handle very large datasets.

Nobody got fired for buying IBM^W NoSQL

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#595
post #124

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

Ouch. Imagine being let go just a few weeks from vesting. Doesn't seem fair to let someone work for months and months in anticipation of their big prize and then yank it away at the last minute.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#596
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My experience at the time was that it was perceived as not serious enough and lacking important features. If my memory isn't very bad, I believe as late as 2000 SQL Server still only supported AFTER triggers. In my experience in the late 90s and early 00s, besides Oracle and Sybase, DB/2 and Informix were also regarded as good. Oracle was considered the best though.

2000 for sure had instead of triggers.. I used them :-)

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#597
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can do a lot of job hunting with a year of severance. Valid point about employees on visas though.

Maybe they could be kept on the payroll without access to actually work. But the real problem is any law that would deport someone 30 days after they were laid off, even if they had been working for years. That should be 6 months minimum.

Keeping them on the payroll also enables companies to easily manage and extend medical insurance. I’m pretty sure that what you propose is what a lot of companies actually do, too. They keep them on the payroll for the duration of their severance but do not expect them to actually work.

Agree that no one should be getting deported on 30 days because they got laid off.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the number is 10% they want the company to take risks. Big tech shareholders number one goal is not becoming IBM

anyone can get any random shower thought funded by this logic. Thats not how investing works.

Then why dont executives got punished by investors when they take risks and fail? The answer clearly is that investors want the risks to be taken and understand the downside that comes from taking risks.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

MS SQL Server was forked from Sybase in 1993. Not sure how much the code had diverged by 2000. Informix was also a contender back then.

7 was a rewrite, from c to c++, also went from 2k pages to 8k pages

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#600

My Amazon layoff notice came at 5am. Same deal. I thought it was fake because it came to my personal email. Then I logged into my work computer and found that all my email had been erased except for a copy of the layoff notice and an invite to a 10am Zoom with HR. The funny part was the invite had everyone who had been laid off in the To: line. I was able to send internal only emails until 1pm, and then it logged me…

I'm not sure if companies understand the emotional impact on the laid off and the layoff survivors. It almost seems like a terror campaign, whether intended or not.

Do not say “companies”. They are managers who do this. It is them who are to blame.
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