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Oracle slashes 30k jobs

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Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#791

Post by WalterBright »

wiseowise wrote: post #501
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.

> Back in Great Depression Why not civil war? > It took him a while, but he paid the bill in full. How long was “a while” specifically? And how much did it affect your grandfathers life?

> Why not civil war?

My great grandmother's brother, Frank Taylor, fought in the Union Army. He later became a bodyguard for Buffalo Bill. And that's all I know about him, and the personal side of the Civil War.

Keep in mind that doctoring was pretty primitive in those days. A doctor could set your broken bones and sew up wounds, and that's about it. You got better or you died. Doctors were called "sawbones" in those days.

> How long was “a while” specifically?

If I recall correctly, it took him 3 years. I don't know much about his finances.

I do know that his first job was shoveling coal in a steamship, which is a filthy, rotten job.

https://walterbright.com/trip/chas.html

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#792

Post by WalterBright »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #773
WalterBright wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit maximization makes for the high standard of living we enjoy.

ah yes, the high standard of living inlcuding checks notes world-leading medical bankruptcies, collapsing life expectancy despite insane healthcare spending, crippling student debt, unaffordable housing that requires a trust fund just to rent, and wages that stagnated decades ago while corporate profits and CEO pay skyrocketed. i spent $57 on a regular size pack of paper towels and toilet paper in the bay area yester…

Interestingly, you mentioned the trifecta of industries most interfered with by the government - healthcare, education, and housing.

The government puts its foot on the scale there.

In contrast, look at the software industry. No regulations, yet highly sophisticated software where the price went to zero. I just reinstalled Ubuntu on my (now fixed!) computer, and every bit of the software was 100% free. And I give away the software I write for it!

$zero!! Can you believe it?

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#793

Post by WalterBright »

wiseowise wrote: post #507
WalterBright wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t give me a sob story about mom and pop shop The grocery stores were run by national chains. Starbucks is global. > What’s your point? It's symmetric. Companies employ at will, and workers work at will.

> The grocery stores were run by national chains. Starbucks is global. So you’re confirming my point that billion dollar companies (like Starbucks killing mom and pop shop) have disproportionately more power over individuals or what are you saying? > It's symmetric. Companies employ at will, and workers work at will. Workers don’t work at will. Last time I checked UBI is not there, so workers work to pay the bills an…

> billion dollar companies (like Starbucks killing mom and pop shop) have disproportionately more power over individuals or what are you saying?

They have zero power over individuals. They cannot make you work. They cannot prevent you from working for someone else. They cannot arrest you. They cannot confiscate things from you. They cannot tell you were to live. They cannot shoot your dog. They cannot evict you. They cannot fine you. They cannot tell you what to do after hours. You can quit at any time for any reason. Your rights are completely intact.

> Workers don’t work at will.

"at will" has a legal meaning, meaning they can work or quit or change jobs at any time. No law or company rule can prevent that.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#794

Post by smarks »

bcantrill wrote: post #730
oblio wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, at least it's better than your other one. https://landley.net/history/mirror/linux/kissedagirl.html

For whatever it's worth (perhaps not much?), I was actually asked about this three-decade-old post (!) recently on the Peterman Pod[0], which allowed for a slightly more nuanced discussion. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhSL-5GtmQM&t=3757s

Oh! This is a great explanation, thanks. I remember your original exchange (and I found it baffling and uncharacteristic), and I remember the William Shatner SNL Trek convention sketch, but I never made the connection between them.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#795

Post by WalterBright »

Synthetic7346 wrote: post #682
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.

Heavily interfered how? Canada / UK / Australia have healthcare which is "heavily interfered" as you call it, and they're better off for it

How? The government runs it, and/or heavily regulates it, and shifts costs.

> and they're better off for it

In the US, the cost of medical care rose in step with inflation until 1968. After that, it rose at a much steeper rate, and has not slowed down. 1968 was when the government got involved with health care.

Countries with a heavily-interfered health care system are poorer as a result.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#796

Post by alephnerd »

lenerdenator wrote: post #776
alephnerd wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What larger procurement teams are saying is "we would rather pay Accenture+Anthropic $50M for 2 years and if they fail, sign a $75M contract with Epic in 3 years instead of spending $150M for 5 years". Even at the lower ends of the funnel, companies are now extracting significant discounts from market leaders as well as their incumbent vendors becuase they are quote shopping. Oracle isn't in a position to push back b…

From what I remember, EMRs - particularly parts that do things like manage blood banks and medication dispensers - aren't just something you can have a team of consultants from Accenture vibecode, or even plancode. In several countries, they fall under the same regulations as medical devices and are subject to the same scrutiny. I wouldn't want to be the hospital executive sitting for a deposition on a medical malpra…

All of what you are saying is absolutely true, but frankly doesn't matter at the executive level.

If it is a board priority to extract favorable terms from vendors (and it absolutely is right now), we will get it done consequences be damned. If you can't do it, we'll fire you and replace you with someone else. You saw this with enterprises making 12-18 month roadmaps to completely tear out VMware ESXi and migrate to Nutanix.

Unlike Broadcom which has a much more diversified business and purchased actual market leaders which allows them to be so vicious, Oracle's SaaS products have a much weaker hand as the headline of churn is much more destabilizing for a market laggard like Cerner or NetSuite than choosing to drop from 90% gross margins to 40% gross for strategic customers - and purchasers know that.

As such, as a business who is not in a position to protect against strongarming purchaser you need to preemptively build additional margins slack where possible, and it is in this vein that the NetSuite and Cerner layoffs happened today.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#797

Post by sellmesoap »

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,…

The technology is irrelevant, at one point in my career I worked for a ~200 person co. that was aquried by another massive (20,000+ seat) company who was even less useful than Oracle; trying to figure out the rough mechanics of why such a useless tower of people is built and maintained, I realized the magic: big juicy government contracts!

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#799

Post by pjmlp »

ifwinterco wrote: post #604
8ytecoder wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were building a payments system in the early 2000s and got a diktat to not use Oracle. The amount of things we had to build to satisfy the availability and durability requirements were so huge it consumed the first few years of work. We didn’t get to the business side of things until much later. Funny thing is we ended up giving up on MySQL and went back to oracle after all that work. The whole thing was scraped a…

We should really be more thankful for the existence of PostgreSQL

Still lacks several features, or you have to pay as well for parity.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#800

Post by pjmlp »

dcrazy wrote: post #768
sharadov wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SQL Server started as a source fork of Sybase.

Having done both, with much better tooling. Sybase never had anything comparable to SSMS.
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