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Oracle slashes 30k jobs

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Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#781

Post by gamblor956 »

Twirrim wrote: post #752
ahtihn wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the US there is no notice period. In every state (with the exception of Montana), employees are "At Will" only. There is no notice period, or severance pay required by law. Health insurance goes with your job, too, as do any other benefits (something called COBRA lets you pay to continue your health insurance coverage for a few months with the expectation you'll have found a new job and/or coverage) In the US, one…

The U.S. has a 60-day notice requirement for mass layoffs, per the federal WARN Act. However, the required notice period can be waived by paying (at least) 60 days salary/wages.

Many states copied the statute.

There are some exceptions, like a company going out of business or natural disasters, but those don't apply here.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#782

Post by ZeWaka »

0______0 wrote: post #630
ZeWaka wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fresh spring grass erupting fast the distant engine purr comes ouch goes the lawnmower

Beautiful. How did you come up with that? It's strangely captivating.

Just a normal haiku pattern and waiting for tests to finish, 5-7-5.

Could be 'wrong' since erupting is "technically" 3 syllables - but I think it sounds better said fast. Becomes a 7-7-5 that way. Same issue with 'lawnmower.'

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#783

Post by gamblor956 »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #540
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.

> collect severance and unemployment --- I was not aware this is law in California, Unemployment benefits in California are capped at $450/week, and you only get 26 weeks of it. It's helpful, but doesn't even cover housing costs for many individuals, let alone for families. I don't think there's a state law requiring severance. It's often offered by the employer if the terminated employee agrees to sign an NDA.

Both California and federal law require 60 days notice for mass layoffs. The CA WARN Act has more protections for workers than the federal WARN Act, i.e., it also applies to part-time workers.

In California, it is illegal to require a terminated employee to sign an NDA to receive severance paid to waive the required WARN notice. A company attempting to enforce such an NDA would key face judicial sanction in court (including paying the former employee's legal fees) and likely pay fines to the CA Labor Dept as well.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#784

Post by exidy »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #737
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,…

If you want to build a system of monolith services and be locked into a 30 year old waterfall development model, then Oracle is for you. I’ve had this argument with several DBAs. They always claim “Oracle is the most performant,” while quite possibly true technically, they also tend to run a single massive instance that inevitably leads to a complete failure of the site under heavy load. Oracle is often designed to b…

I had to explain this to some slightly younger colleagues recently. It's hard to believe now, but in ye olde days hardware was not as cheap and abundant as it is now. So you invested heavily in your database servers and to justify the hardware and software cost, ran as many workloads as possible on it to spread the pain.

This is also the same incentives that resulted in many classic architectures from 80s and 90s relying heavily on stored procedures. It was the only place where certain data could be crunched in a performant way. Middleware servers lacked the CPU and memory to crunch large datasets, and the network was more of a performance bottleneck.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#785

Post by vips7L »

bjord wrote: post #260
jvanderbot wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle and Java are deeply embedded in US gov work. How deep? Let's just say a large number of classified developer jobs hire for Java. Ellison has been a huge proponent of a surveillance state, and that likely ingratiates him with certain three letter agencies. The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.

it's not purely gov work—lots of legacy software (especially outside of the US) is java-based and if you hire an offshore outsourcing company, odds are that they will insist on something java (spring) based, as that's where their experience is

Lots of green field apps are Java based too. I just started a new codebase in Java 25.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#786

Post by vips7L »

trelane wrote: post #251
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,…

Java is used a lot , but not Oracle's version. One of the best things Sun ever did was open sourcing Java.

They’re all Oracle’s version. OpenJdk is Oracle’s implementation of the JLS. They’re just not using Oracle’s build of OpenJdk.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#787

Post by monksy »

niek_pas wrote: post #406
chekibreki wrote: post #110

Full text of e-mail: We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position. After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day. We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us. After signing your termination pap…

> 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.

Severence is not required by law but its usually a protective measure by the company to avoid being sued for misdeeds they put people through before and during the layoffs.

Unemployment is not enough for people to live on. In some cases, it barely covers health insurance which can be 800$/month for a single person. (You can get cheaper plans but they start you back on your deducible)

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#788

Post by ab_testing »

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,…

I think saying that Oracle is a provider of database software is something that you hear from old technical folks who have not used Oracle since the 90s. In fact Oracle's revenue from database software is very tiny. Much of their revenue comes from enterprise and cloud software.

If you are a publicly traded company who needs to report audited financial results every quarter to shareholders, there are less than 10 ERP software in world for that and Oracle owns 5 of those - Fusion, PeopleSoft, Netsuite, JDE and EBS.

Also, in the last decade a big chunk of their revenue comes from cloud services where these enterprises move away from their physical hardware and onto the cloud. Here also, Oracle provides one of the most generous free limits compared to GCP, AWS and Azure. Also they provide some unique options that I have not seen in any other clouds like Bring Your Own License where you can keep running your old enterprise databases in the cloud with just paying for the compute .

Few years back they also bought out Cerner which was the largest EHR company at that time and it pushed their head count by 28000.

They grew their headcount massively during covid like any other software company and simultaneously took on too much debt to build datacenters.

But with rising cost of these capex builds, they are in consolidation mode and reducing headcounts just like other companies.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#789

Post by monksy »

tombert wrote: post #454
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.

The at-will firing is just how it is in the US, but I do find it odd how accepting we've become with these corporations massively overhiring. If they have to fire twenty percent of the company, shouldn't that be a signal to investors that the people in charge are morons for overhiring thirty thousand people in the first place? Software engineers aren't cheap; assuming an average compensation of $250,000/year (which I…

250k/year. I'm not an arch. But that was the absolute high end for IC5. (Unobtainable)

Oracle is not a high payer of salaries.

I disagree that its a "signal that they overhired". Laying off people means:

1. They didn't plan well enough

2. Their business wasn't attractive enough to customers

3. Their business people aren't good enough to support the people who are developing their product.

If anything, it should be a red flag to investors that they're working with someone they can't trust to give money.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#790

Post by WalterBright »

razakel wrote: post #711
WalterBright wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, you picked two systems that are heavily interfered with by the government. Back in the Great Depression, my great grandmother got sick and was hospitalized, and they took care of her until she passed. My grandfather did not have enough to pay the bill. The hospital told him not to worry, just pay what he could. It took him a while, but he paid the bill in full.

Was the hospital affiliated with a religious order?

no
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