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Oracle slashes 30k jobs

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Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#631

Post by tombert »

codemog wrote: post #6

Don’t work for evil companies.

Easier said than done. Most of us end up working for monsters if you go high enough up on the ladder.

I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't have boundaries; there are certain companies that I will absolutely not work for no matter what they pay me (e.g. Palantir). I'm just saying that if you draw the line at "don't work for bad company", it's going to be hard to pay your bills since due to the lovely world of capitalism the people on top are usually sociopaths.

To be clear, I do agree broadly; if you can find a company that has decent people running it and doesn't appear to be evil to you, you should probably work for that company. The problem is that the job market is very competitive and you often have to take what you can get.

I'm in a privileged position to where I can be a little choosy with my work (for now!), but I can't really judge someone who has a family to take care of for doing what they need to to pay the bills.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#632

Post by topspin »

kpil wrote: post #603
lateforwork wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle database has unparalleled scalability. Ask someone who works at Microsoft SQL Server division what their bug database looks like. They will tell you that a single SQL Server instance cannot scale to the entire SQL Server division. Oracle on the other hand has a single database for the entire company. No other database is this scalable. But Oracle is not just a database company. Oracle started as a database com…

I'm actually impressed by the amount of abuse our Oracle instances are able take from our developers. Massive amounts of parallel single reads and writes with millisecond responses mixed with mega-joins of incorrectly indexed tables that works flawlessly "on their machine" that limp on well enough to sneak past performance testing with just the planner silently writhing in agony.

The original question does discount the capability of Oracle's database too much, as only something "golf executives" buy. When you have a large problem that is best solved with a relational model, Oracle delivers and can indeed be worth all the money and license hell involved.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#633

Post by CaptainZapp »

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.

SQL Server was Sybase until (I think) version 4.9, just rebranded as Microsoft SQL Server.

Then the two versions split and I don't think that any of the Sybase source code remains in what is SQL Server today.

That said, a lot of the concepts (like a significant number of system stored procedures) and also TSQL remain almost the same, with small differences (except for system functions, which SQL Server has a lot more functionality).

When you come from the Sybase world getting a start on SQL Server is quite straight forward when it comes to handling the database.

Internals and other low level nuts and bolts differ nowadays, of course.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#634

Post by bombcar »

reactordev wrote: post #323
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…

I was around back then and I call Bullshit on everything you claim. There were more database options in 2000 than there were in 1996. Even before that there was FoxPro… c’mon man. Oracle’s only value was they built a NO EXIT clause into their contracts…

Nobody was building WoW on FoxPro, c'mon.

You'd have to assume businesses were insane/stupid to go with Oracle to the tune of billions and billions of dollars if you believe that they had zero value to sell.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#635

Post by sharadov »

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…

SQL Server was pretty good until they went the Oracle way with their licensing shenanigans, but even with that they were a lot cheaper than Oracle. In fact SQL server was one of the few great products that came out of MS.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#636

Post by wiseowise »

sneak wrote: post #498
wiseowise wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A job today isn’t (and shouldn’t be) any guarantee of a job tomorrow. Also relationships, kids and stability. Spend all your life in perpetual anxiety, rent all your life, you will own nothing and be happy! Also, here’s a bowl of insect protein while we’re at it.

You can quit your relationships at any time, too. That's a fundamental tenet of our society - consent to an interaction between free people can be withdrawn at any moment for any reason. That's not perpetual anxiety - that's the way things work today, and the way things have worked for generations. Anyone pretending otherwise is fooling themselves with lies.

Before I continue with this thread, how old are you? And have you ever been in a long time relationship with someone? Do you own a house? Have kids?

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#637

Post by tombert »

troyvit wrote: post #165
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly what for profit company is on the side of the angels?

Why stick with for-profit companies? But on measure I'd say System76, n8n, Nextcloud, GridX, Odoo, Tuxedo, GitLab, Uplight, Aurora Solar, Bandcamp (maybe), Bitwarden, Canonical (maybe), Scribd, Arcadia, Wikihow. Basically any time you find yourself enjoying a product you're using, see who made it and if they're hiring. Sure it's an uphill battle. This is late-stage capitalism after all and unless you're comfortable w…

I'm not unemployed right now, but in the past have applied to literally every one of those companies and been declined from every one of those companies.

It's hard to find jobs at companies that aren't run by monsters; even if you can identify a company that isn't terrible, there's still a relatively low likelihood of getting a job there.

I'm not blaming the companies for not hiring me, I'm sure they have their reasons for their terrible decision of passing up on someone as handsome and smart as me [1], and I am certainly not entitled to a job, but when I run out of companies that seem ethical, what do you do then?

It's easy to say "well start your own company!", and sure if you have the ability to do that then that's great, but I don't even really know where to begin with finding investors for stuff I'm working on, and I'm not sure that anything I'm working on would be interesting to investors anyway.

[1] It's true, my mom told me!

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#638

Post by tombert »

troyvit wrote: post #394
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because for profits have the most employment opportunities? All of the companies named in replies to my initial comment hire a minuscule number of people.

If you're looking to scale, then you're looking for companies that scale, and if you're looking for companies that scale, you're not looking for angels. I used to think Cloudflare was an exception to this belief but today I'm not so sure.

Wait what's wrong with Cloudflare?

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#639

Post by on_the_train »

ahtihn wrote: post #493
niek_pas wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a result, today is your last working day. As a European, I never realized that this is allowed under US labor law. That is absolutely insane. EDIT: some commentors have pointed out that the workers collect severance and unemployment --- I was not aware this is law in California, and that changes matters. I would, though, still find being suddenly out of a job fairly traumatic.

As a European, this seems normal? When someone is fired, they generally stop working immediately while getting paid through the notice period.

No they don't? You keep working for 2-10 months until you can leave whatever your contact says

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#640

Post by bombcar »

giobox wrote: post #478
steve1977 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time (around the beginnings of Mac OS X) when Java was considered a first class citizen in Mac OS X, next to Objective-C. Some NeXT products like WebObjects got ported to Java (and ran not only the iTunes backend but also things like the original Dell online store) and there was something called the Java bridge which allowed you to program Cocoa applications with Java. https://developer.apple.com/library/…

It wasn't just Apple, in the late 90s/early 2000s there was a not insignificant number of folks in business/academia who thought Java would take over the world. Windows XP also shipped with an embedded JVM for running Java apps out of the box at one stage too, just before Microsoft doubled down on c#/.NET. Along with MacOS X, Apple's Xcode IDE even had native java project support briefly in this era as well.

Java really could have taken over the world, and it can be performant, too.

One of the versions of the most popular game in the world is written in Java, and it's quite capable of being very fast.

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