Anyone who worked in consulting knows how things work here as it relates to layoffs - when times are good and our consulting pipeline is healthy we tend to hire. There is a bit of a lag here as you cannot hire fast enough and typically it takes a while to find candidates and onboard them. At some point in time, the demand changes and we have extra folks on the bench.
Management reacts with a lag again, and we start to let people go. By the time we are done with layoffs usually demand will pick up again so we are in the hiring cycle. So, it never stops, it's a hire-fire environment and there is nothing special about this here. All consulting companies go thru the same cycle.
Unlike Sales and Support you are either bringing in revenue or you are not. That is a number that offsets your employment expense. What happens if everyone is on the bench? Its really just a matter of time. What is the lag between bench and fired? My experience is 90 to 120 days.
A few rare occasions I've seen people last 180 days. But that was due to the expectation that someone was about to close a deal that needed your expertise. So the difference here at Oracle is on premises sales is drying up at an alarming rate. Why does Oracle need consultants for this? They don't. It part of the shift of the company focus.
The shift to the cloud will clean out the whole of Oracle. That means Sales first, Support Second, Development and Consulting third. But make no mistake, this is a big change and the change hits the fan this year. That the difference. If you walk the halls and see 90% of your team on the bench, I should not have to tell you this is a bad thing. Its pandemic. If you think it spells doom, you are right.
Either you are working on a lift and shift cloud deal or you need to start looking. The clock is ticking for every consultant... expect a meeting with your manager 90 to 120 days after your last paying gig. The difference with consulting is the layoffs are on a case by case basis. While you sit on the bench you have to realize you are hatching your layoff egg.
The only difference this time is that a large percentage of OCS is hatching the egg at the same time. So it may look like one big layoff, but its not. It a bunch of tightly packed layoffs happening around the same time.
You want to survive? You need to be in bare metal cloud consulting. Learn Terraform and know it cold. https://www.terraform.io/ And then apply to the BMCS consulting team. Or float your resume on Dice, Indeed and Career builder.