Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

Biggest reorg (layoff) at Oracle in ten years this June.

The execs are waiting for the deals to close in Q4, and then the biggest reorg in ten years will happen this June. This post is based on rumors gained from people speaking to the executives inside and outside oracle. This perspective has been generated based on the lack of progress on cloud sales. Oracle is no longer an Apps company, Database Company or middle-ware company. Oracle is now a next gen cloud company and everyone in sales who is not cloud savvy will no longer have a job.

Rumor has it that only one sales rep will exist per customer. Gone are the days for an App Rep, Core tech Rep, Hardware Rep and Fusion Middle ware rep. Just one sales rep! The execs are listening to the customer on this one.

The same slashing of jobs will happen in Sales Engineering. All the pillar Sales Engineers will be replaced by one Enterprise Cloud Architect (ECA). The ECA will handle the whole stack of everything. The pillar sales engineers will be let go as they know virtually nothing about cloud. The current SE's in the all the pillar's will go away. A few will be allowed to finish up any lingering POCs before they are cut. The may last until Q2... November at the latest.

All on premises sales (95% of Oracle's revenue) will be handled by the college kids and new recruits at Oracle Digital / Direct which earn less than half of field sales reps and engineers.

Since everything is cloud based now, a customer proof of concept can be performed by a less expensive sales engineer operating out of India. A college kid hired at Oracle Digital can handle the power points and click through demos. Customer's can now self serve and create all the services they need by a few clicks of the buttons in the cloud. Who needs to know all the details? Everything is now automated and orchestrated.

Oracle no longer needs seasoned sales reps and sales engineers with deep knowledge of oracle products. All that is needed is one sales rep onsite with an ECA who knows everything for the cloud. A webex from Oracle Digital with slides and click through demos should be enough for on premises sales.

The ECAs that were retrained internally will be cut as well if they don't have at least one cloud deal closed. They have to complete all the training, and pass the review board where they must know all the cloud offerings, middle-ware offerings and core tech offerings. Current thinking is that the ECAs have failed to close enough cloud deals and should be replaced by cloud solution architects from Amazon and Google, because they understand cloud far better than Oracle ECAs.

Over two thirds of the sales force will be reduced this summer. The Sales force will go from 4 key reps to one, the pillars will go away and be replaced by one ECA. If you think one ECA can't know everything you feelings are shared by higher management. Management is sorely disappointed by the lack of cloud deals closed by the ECAs. A great number of current ECAs were eliminated by the first "coaching session" to prep them for the review board that takes place this May. They found that few ECA's did really know all the Oracle products in great depth. The review board process will be much like the show "survivor." Miss a question on anything and you are voted off the Oracle island.

The ECAs will be gutted as well. Again think is less than 30 percent will remain. According to rumors of managements perception of the current group of ECAs, they lack a deep understanding of all oracle products, they don't seem to really know cloud, and they have FAILED to make the cloud quotas assigned to them. They should be replaced by sales engineers from Google and Amazon who do know cloud. It would be easier to train Google and AWS solution architects on Oracle technologies than for the Oracle ECAs to learn cloud.

Goodbye to over 60% of the Oracle sales force! You are to blame for the lack of progress on cloud. Cloud is easy and you can't sell it. The new bare metal guys hired from AWS, Google and Azure to develop the new Infrastructure as a service did a great job. Current thinking is the same thing will happen if Oracle hires sales reps and engineers from these cloud companies. They have been and continue to hire from these companies. Just about every job listing at oracle has the key word cloud in it.

https://oracle.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobsearch.ftl?lang=en

If you are in Oracle field sales, best of luck to you! Get your resumes and linked in profiles updated, start interviewing. You have 4 weeks left to find something.

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Post ID: @OP+N2UeFdk

94 replies (most recent on top)

Meanwhile in 2022.... Here we go again!

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Post ID: @uEfiz+N2UeFdk

if you still work there good for you. any id--t can find when an article is written time stamp or not. some people sound bitter. ICYWW this article is still helpful and useful for anyone in the marketplace. so thx.

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Post ID: @pdjlu+N2UeFdk

3 year old article! I suggest you should time stamp your articles!!!!

Also this rumor was very very false!

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Post ID: @gAsre+N2UeFdk

Current Class BDC 6 months in Apps, Austin. Does anyone know what will be done about the BDC's? Or is it only higher lever people being let go?

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Post ID: @g0gyq+N2UeFdk

drag up a 3 year old thread?
Someone's got an axe to grind.

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Post ID: @fJnmv+N2UeFdk

Oracle s—s and everyone knows that. Get out if you can!

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Post ID: @fJflp+N2UeFdk

What's happened to the UX-pendables? Are they mertged into one team now or unique teams? Are they looking up a a Desing veep on the Board or Archtecture Board? Do tell, we're all dying to know when to kit LinkedIN.

Of this is more storytelling...

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Post ID: @7aepl+N2UeFdk

That is why a post that does not precise the org and the country is probably fake. I am gratefull for this forum though as it gave me a 1 month head start to find my next job before being layed off.

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Post ID: @6Vzce+N2UeFdk

no massive layoff ever happened in Oracle, at least if you intend "massive" as at least 10% workforce wiped out in at latest the same week.

I have never seen in 20 years a 10,000+ layoff in a single event at Oracle. the "biggest" layoff I have seen is the wiping of the ex-Sun HW engineering, and even if it was large, was less than 3k people, i.e. less than 3% of the total. not massive at all.

and of course there will never be any massive, huge, big, or whatever you want to call it, layoff in the future. it is simply too far from Oracle's attitude and way to do things.

yes, there will be layoffs, many layoffs, the current workforce is largely oversized for what Oracle intend to do in the future, bt these layoffs will be dilued in time and space.

don't expect any big one, don't believe anyone saying there will be a big one. this will simply not happen. all this noise is just...well...noise, created for a purpose by Oracle itself or just for fun by some stupid idiots like the post herebelow.

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Post ID: @6Ufee+N2UeFdk

yes I can confirm this

happened to me

LAYOFF

big layoff coming

look outside

time to go

Just spoke to a friend of mine, he happens to be a senior manager at Oracle , based in NY and her too is a victim of this layoff. This is not a fake news guys. Looks like the whole thing is a bit different. IBM does the same regularly. Looks like this the new reality.

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Post ID: @6Tpwc+N2UeFdk

big layoff coming

look outside

time to go

Just spoke to a friend of mine, he happens to be a senior manager at Oracle , based in NY and her too is a victim of this layoff. This is not a fake news guys. Looks like the whole thing is a bit different. IBM does the same regularly. Looks like this the new reality.

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Post ID: @6grcg+N2UeFdk

" They hire the kids straight from college, so 22 or 23, the kids last at most 6 months or so because they were lied to about what the job is about and they all hate it. So by the time they reach 23/4 they’re out of there."

This reminds me of what firms like Accenture do: hire young grads, burn them out and replace them with other young grads. And if you don't leave, they eventually fire you.

Enterprise Car Rental does the same thing. They hire fresh grads, and within a year most are gone. The few who are not fired get promoted from "associate" to assistant manager.

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Post ID: @4Bsvf+N2UeFdk

I loathe MH. Of course, everyone does. I hope he enjoys all of his doom that he created on earth when he spends eternity peering up out of the flames of hell wondering where he went wrong...

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Post ID: @4Bkuq+N2UeFdk

Age limit? They hire the kids straight from college, so 22 or 23, the kids last at most 6 months or so because they were lied to about what the job is about and they all hate it. So by the time they reach 23/4 they’re out of there.

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Post ID: @3Ztww+N2UeFdk

At the Austin millennial complex, wonder what the upper age limit will be before someone is up and out? 30, 35 tops??

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Post ID: @3Zzle+N2UeFdk

Oracle is doing in Austin what Sun did in Burlington 20 years ago. They had a Best of the Best college recruitment process. They built the Burlington site as a ‘campus’ with a gym, coffee bars, places to collaborate, etc. The difference was back then outsourcing was in the beginning stages, Sun was growing and needing people and not replacing older more expensive workers to make a buck.

The industry has moved on since then, to say the least. Re-purposing employees is not popular. At all. Once upon a time it mattered because of the training and institutional knowledge long term emps had. Not anymore. May as well let the robots take over.

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Post ID: @3Zrbc+N2UeFdk

"Layoffs is to cut cost. Replace someone paid $200K/year with someone paid $30K/year. Multiply by tens of thousands of employees and you can show a profit even when you're not growing. Same HP story, same end."

YES! This is what it's all about, folks. And in mere days, the Austin daycare center complete with adjacent crash pad complex is about to start on-boarding millennial dialers-for-cloud-dollars! See this:

http://www.512tech.com/technology/oracle-big-bet-austin/BYeYssjTMEY3MLMBKJTvlK/

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Post ID: @3Ynek+N2UeFdk

Oracle's "cloud" is crap and that's why no one is buying it -- except for existing on-prem customers who are being dragged into the cloud via cloud washing (i.e., cloud credits). Potential customers who have not dealt with Oracle before do their homework and with very little effort can see that there are better options.

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Post ID: @3Ymmn+N2UeFdk

@N2UeFdk-3esw

You are mistaken. The reason Oracle cloud doesn't sell is product quality.

  1. Oracle's products were not designed for cloud, they're hosted. They are obsolete technologies, brittle, and very complex compared to competitors. Because they're all acquisitions from different vendors, making them work together is a nightmare.

  2. Oracle doesn't have the data center network to cover their global customer base so latency and data sovereignty kill deals.

Take a look at the LinkedIn profiles of enterprise sales reps at AWS, Google, and Infor. 2 out of 3 is a seasoned X Oracle.

Layoffs is to cut cost. Replace someone paid $200K/year with someone paid $30K/year. Multiply by tens of thousands of employees and you can show a profit even when you're not growing. Same HP story, same end.

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Post ID: @3Yyen+N2UeFdk

What happened with this?

It didn't happen! Now go and look over your shoulder for the new one!

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Post ID: @1Xbdv+N2UeFdk

Half of our SC team was RIFed today. I wish them all the best. I'm sure they'll do great.

I had zero confidence in our leadership this past FY. Now its confirmed- they are making all the wrong decisions and will walk away with millions if Oracle fails or succeeds. Gotta love corporations.

Larry made the wrong move by bringing in MH. From day 1 he's had a negative impact on the morale of the sales org.

Time to make a move.

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Post ID: @ybgy+N2UeFdk

So it begins.

The calls started as 8 am today.

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Post ID: @xukl+N2UeFdk

MH is a HW guy, a dinesour, knows nothing about SW and service. Totally the wrong CEO for oracle

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Post ID: @wqlt+N2UeFdk

What's our current CEO good at? How did he do at HP?

They are about to fold, the company is being chopped up, sold, merged and remerged? Anyone heard about DXC? Right, you haven't - that's your HP Enterprise right now...

I have very little confidence that he can take us where we need to be to survive the Could onslaught that is unraveling right now.

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Post ID: @wrqt+N2UeFdk

Cloud = SERVICE;

Oracle (3 stooges) has NO clue what service is:

Oracle is F:ED

PERIOD.

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Post ID: @eekz+N2UeFdk

MH as much as announced this to the salesforce LAST JUNE in Las Vegas with his speech about the future of tech and the littany of tech titans who have shrunk the past 6 years. He listed out all the biggies and the layoff numbers. He talked about the hard work ahead and then, in as much rah rah style as he is capable of (he is not a rah rah guy he is "a numbers guy" self professed) he indicated pretty clearly but not in exact words that oracle will be changing to be "a cloud company" for real. 2017 was the big reveal that oracle had come around to cloud. This June (F2018 kick off) is cancelled..its being done virtually. Read into this what you will. MH has his lieutenants in every pillar keeping watch. The AT&T deal is instructive of things to come... the KAD on AT&T announced that we were blacklisted at AT&T but that now we are not, b/c in the new agreement we will no longer be selling into them the same old Oracle way with hundreds (literally) of reps calling on them. They wont stand for it. They want synchronicity and coordination from this point forward. When asked what is the plan...the answer was its being "figured out". This lines up with the original posts' remarks about one rep (or a select few) for the Key Accounts vs "competing Oracle reps" which frankly, makes no sense these days. Integrated solutions and service are the name of the game today. Its not what you are selling its the service behind it and what you do about it when stuff goes wrong that matters to clients. Stuff always goes wrong. Oracle has to shift to be service oriented. Evolve or die. That said, Oracle needs to clean out old processes and not mistake "automation" for the fix. Right now that is what mgmt is doing. They are in a fight for their life over at Oracle. Its not the ides of March. Its the ides of June for Oracle. Change is coming. You can bet on it.

Meanwhile, back at the the ranch, the BDR teams continue to toil and cold call and drive clients crazy with their cheezy scripts...

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Post ID: @eutz+N2UeFdk

Oracle is by far the worst, most unethical company I've worked for in my 30 years in sales. Thank gawd I'm outta there and I would NEVER recommend it to anyone. They will screw sales reps out of commission without a second thought. So while the specifics or these rumors might not be totally accurate, my ex-Oracle colleagues say BIG changes are coming in June (start of Oracle's Q1). The reasons are many:

  1. On-premise software sales are flat.

  2. Cloud sales, while growing, are still a minuscule percentage of Oracle's total revenue. Especially PaaS and IaaS.

  3. Hardware sales are in a steep decline including SPARC, Engineered Systems, and Storage.

  4. Customers hate dealing with so many pillar reps and have been very vocal to Oracle management. Maybe Oracle management is finally listening...

  5. Cloud competitors such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, are stealing away Oracle DB & Middleware customers.

  6. SaaS competitors such as Salesforce, Workday, and others are stealing away Oracle Application customers.

In my experience, Oracle has some very capable salespeople. However management's entire mentality is transactional and they don't think beyond the current quarters' revenue. Why anyone would continue to work there is completely beyond me. Hopefully, if Oracle is lucky enough to recruit away AE's and SE's from Amazon, MS, and Google it will open some opportunities up for ex-Oracle reps to backfill these positions. Selling Cloud is not 'rocket surgery' it just takes a different approach. End of rant...

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Post ID: @cios+N2UeFdk

20k views, i guess rumors spread fast. let's see what happens...

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Post ID: @6wem+N2UeFdk

Of course there will be more cuts and they will be huge, they just won't qualify for what MH considers a "mass layoff" but that's just a weasel definitively issue. For crying out loud, oracles is laying of people every day of the week, every week. Much more pain to come, oracle cannot support this level of cost, they just don't have the integrity to come out and say it. LE's Vigara infused ego could not handle that, so they lie and then the cut people

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Post ID: @6gbq+N2UeFdk

The more they claim that the claims are not valid, the more people is visiting this page. Do you see any correlation here? Here it is for you:

a) People know execs lie, all the time

b) People know that execs are hiding things

c) People know that when a) and/or b) happens, there is some pain point that's causing a) and/or b) to occur

d) In this particular case, since execs are denying cuts, people assume that a) and/or b) are happening, therefore denying cuts implies that cuts will happen

e) Cuts will happen - mark my words here

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Post ID: @5yba+N2UeFdk

Notice:

To avoid any future confusion please be aware that when LE's d--k s---ers call out fake news that's their way of confirming the truth of the statements they are referring to. Yes, it can be condusing, but there you have it

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Post ID: @5lqe+N2UeFdk

Some layoffs reported on another thread - Denver, Ohio, Kentucky... @N7iIAnh

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Post ID: @5vwb+N2UeFdk

[Massive layoffs] couldn't happen to a nicer company. Larry can blow me.

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Post ID: @5idg+N2UeFdk

" A webex from Oracle Digital with slides and click through demos should be enough for on premises sales." You're kidding me - on-prem are the tougher and more complex products, and there just ain't enough demos for showcasing permutations of multiple on-prem products!! The only thing that will save OD is whether Oracle partners still find it profitable to sell services for these aged products, and not make their own transition to other people's clouds.

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Post ID: @5spb+N2UeFdk

Oracle is reminiscent of IBM of, say, about 1985. Arrogant. Monopolistic. Just becoming aware of their own mortality and trying to steer an enormous ship away from the iceberg. They may succeed, they may not. But decades of chickens are coming home to roost. Oracle has been customer hostile for a long time, refusing to work with customers to reduce costs by allowing them to drop unused licenses from support, behaving as if they are a simple monopoly, knowing the customer has little or no other choice. Who's going to bet a career on putting the enterprise data on anything other than IBM, er, Oracle. MS SQL isn't enterprise grade for lots of data. MySQL? Ha. DB2 on mainframe? Get real.

Oracle has long shied away from having single point of contact for customers. 'Let the internal teams compete' was the rule of law. The best answer anyone could come up with as to why was 'That's the way Mr. Ellison wants it.' It made (some) sense when the company was a pure sotware play, but once they started to integrate the stack, the silo approach broke down. Database sales people with 20 years of cooperation and partnering with IBM, HP, et al said to the customers 'Don't buy our HW. Other_Vendor is cheaper.' and got away with it. Hardware reps who said 'Hey, I don't care if you put Microsoft SQL on our hardware got, well, you can imagine.

No one at Oracle views the customer holistically, only through the lens of 'what of my stuff can I sell', never 'What's best for the shareholder bottom line'. But, that view is reflected by the company. It's policies are great for the shareholder, lousy for the employee. At a recent meeting attended, someone noticed that over 40% of the attendees had purchased their own laptops. (It's easy to tell, Oracle only buys  laptops for the top tier of execs and a few other small groups). That room alone was a few hundred thousand dollars in costs pushed to the employees. The field sales engineering organization has not received a compensation increase in over 8 years. (It's actually gone down in fact as they 'tune' comp plans). The field sales organization(s)? Infighting used car sales. It's Glen Gary / Gen Ross on a daily basis. Coffee is for closers and what have you done for me this month.

But most of all, the doom is spelled by the incredibly poor service and support. If you need support on a Sev 2 issue, you must ask to have your ticket escalated, or it will sit until the next ice age. Severity one? Escalate it. Don't get back to support in short order, closed. Git a sticky problem? Watch support pass it around the globe by asking the same question and waiting for the answer, then letting it get picked up by the next shift. Got an engineered system? Make some popcorn, sit on phone with several support organizations and watch them play pin the tail on the donkey.

Cloud is a serious change from license and hardware sales. IaaS, Paas, SaaS all have one thing in common. It's about service. If your service is know throughout the industry to s---, why would I buy a service from you? Current customers are not going to buy your product, no matter how good it is if you've treated them poorly and not given them support.

I'd say sell the stock, but it's never been safe to bet against Larry.

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Post ID: @4vgg+N2UeFdk

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