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Oracle slashes 30k jobs

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Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#861

Post by heraldgeezer »

Aurornis wrote: post #469
heraldgeezer wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> But it goes both ways, if I want to leave I have to work the mandated period Do companies actually force people to continue working during that period? I would expect that in tech they'd allow them to leave early because employees who have chosen to leave the company are some times not the most helpful to keep around for months

You can get "arbetsbefriad" / "Exempted from work" / in the UK called Garden leave / Gardening leave and you leave early. But employer decides.

>I would expect that in tech they'd allow them to leave early because employees who have chosen to leave the company are some times not the most helpful to keep around for months

It's called work ethics. Have some pride. Also if you bail without garden leave, you have to pay.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#862

Post by nickpp »

wiseowise wrote: post #828
nickpp wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safeway won’t starve and die if I decide to buy from Fred Meyer. Ironically, you (along with a significant number of others) deciding to buy from a competitor will eventually lead to financial trouble for Safeway and thus to layoffs and losses for their investors (pension funds among them). So, do you find your decision to buy from Fred Meyer "absolutely immoral"?!

I don’t think there’s any point in having a conversation with you if you don’t see any difference between employment, community, civic duty and market. If you treat people as a market product, then we have even less to discuss.

Ignoring market realities and proclaiming to care about noble but unrealistic ideological goals is how the communist regime I grew up under managed to fail to even feed its population.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#863

Post by mike_hearn »

prepend wrote: post #511
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 disagree as I was running clustered sql server 6.5 and 7 in 1998 for hundreds of concurrent users doing millions of reads per hour on NT basically commodity boxes. Replaced it with Oracle for 100x cost and lost performance. I think even back then you were usually better off with distributed databases running mysql or postgres over Oracle. Although people liked to think a giant Oracle db was better.

What do you mean a distributed database running mysql or postgres? Even today you can't have a distribute db running (real) Postgres, it doesn't do multi-master clustering.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#864

Post by KellyCriterion »

sharadov wrote: post #841
KellyCriterion wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the risk of getting downvoted: MS SQL is today stil a very good product, using it now for more than 20 years in different applications. And: The free version with max up to 50 GB (?) of DB size is a very good option for smaller environments/apps

I was a SQL server DBA early in my career, I've not used it in the last decade, glad to hear that it's still a great product.

Actually one of the very few really good MS products at all?

Visual Studio is also great and widely adopted.

But what else do they have? I had some good experiences with Exchange years ago, but this is just my personal experience, since most people seem to hate it.

What else do they have that is considered a good/solid product that you would recommend to someone?

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#865

Post by tmoertel »

jeffbee wrote: post #313
tmoertel wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When laying people off, better companies will often accelerate vesting so that the departing employees get additional stock. For example, Google does this: We’ll also offer a severance package starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting. https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/j...

OK but for most people a 16-week acceleration is still forfeiting 92% of unvested shares.

Would you rather forfeit 100% of unvested shares? Because that's what you signed up for.

The point is, you're getting shares for 16 weeks + ${years_employment * 2} additional weeks, and you don't have to work those weeks. It's comp that, according to the terms you agreed to when you accepted the job, you are not entitled to. You're getting it as an unearned parting gift.

Yes, it sucks to be laid off. But it sucks a little less if you get a parting gift that for many of the more senior folks will run into six figures.

Would you rather have that parting gift or not? Because some companies don't give you one when when they lay you off.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#866

Post by DebtDeflation »

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…

This is why I've started telling younger people in the industry (I'm 52) "Don't worry about giving two weeks notice or doing knowledge transfer, it's not your problem. If you accept an offer and a better offer comes in before you start, take it and don't think twice. If the better offer comes in after you started, quit and take it, and don't think twice. If you're in the middle of a critical project at work and they're depending on you when a better offer comes in, take it and walk away." Loyalty in employment relations has been dead for a long time, since before I started working, but now it seems that even basic decorum on the part of employers is dead as well, and there's no reason to allow it to be asymmetric.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#867

Post by DebtDeflation »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #228
lateforwork wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? Have 30,000 meetings? How long will that take?

A great alternative would be operating a company correctly so you don't end up in a situation where you need to cut 30k jobs at once with no notice. That's a bizarre thing that's becoming practically normalized in the USA tech industry.

Agree. People understand and accept firing for performance issues. People understand and accept layoffs when they're a rare event needed to save the company from bankruptcy. What's not understandable or acceptable to most is the current trend of companies doing annual or even quarterly layoffs as an ongoing way to manage earnings.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#868

Post by nedt »

wnevets wrote: post #855
nedt wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying they shouldn't have given those 30k people a job to begin with? I don't know if that's any better.

> So you are saying they shouldn't have given those 30k people a job to begin with? I don't know if that's any better. For the long term health of the company it's near a certainty that would have been better. The effects of adding ~20K then laying off 30K in such a relatively small period of time are gonna be felt for years

Yeah, I understand where you are coming from. I'm just also thinking about the human side that is discussed here so often and having a more pessimistic view on hiring might be bad for the job market. Especially in countries that are not considered a social state. So while it's not good for the company itself it might not be so bad for people overall if those billionaire companies are wasting some of their money - at least until investors start to complain.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#869

Post by wartywhoa23 »

dominotw wrote: post #397
jaccola wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sucks for the people being laid off but what exactly should they be held accountable for? It's not like over-hiring or laying people off is a crime. The employees presumably knew the deal going in (that they could be laid off). They got compensated for the time they worked. No one owed them a job at Oracle in the first place. (Again, not to diminish how bad it feels / shocking it can be to be laid off!)

making wrong decisions at work has no consequences for you? where do you work?

Devil's Advocates, inc.

Re: Oracle slashes 30k jobs

#870

Post by Shocka1 »

niek_pas wrote: post #517
Aurornis wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest that I'm confused by the comment, too. Including the edit about how being out of work would be traumatic, as if losing a job was unique to the United States.

My point was that going from (let's say) 'employed, productive member of the workforce, with social relationships at work' to 'sitting at home collecting unemployment' with no transition, no coaching, in the scope of 5 minutes seems like a traumatic rupture. (I'm not saying I _know_ better, just how I think I would _experience_ such a thing.) Losing a job happens everywhere, but there are different ways to handle it,…

Generally losing your well paying tech job in the US is terrible and it is definitely traumatic for people. I've fortunately never been part of one, but at my first real career job at a well known tech company I watched co-workers eliminated like this. Not only was it traumatic for them, it was traumatic for our team as well. They received very nice severance packages, but they still had to find another job within 6 months so they could keep the lights on in their homes. It was a great learning lesson for me. All my career moves after that have been preemptive and from the standpoint that I'm on offense at all times. Never feeling stagnant in a position, keeping options open, etc...
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