Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

Next round is in September... Hardware, and across Field Sales

Had speaks with someone in the know on the HW layoffs. Next round is in September, the list has been compiled and lips are sealed. HW SCs are the main ones impacted with the next round of layoffs. Many field reps will be let go as well. That's the end of his confirmed information, what is below is what he has heard across the board outside of HW.

Managers were not consulted for an interesting reason. SC managers across the board are no longer in the loop. SC managers do not do reviews, they have no say in the layoff, they don't have any say in how the organization is run, they aren't even asked what they think of the team they manage in most cases. Mid level field sales and support managers are driftwood in Oracle. Hardware and pillar SC managers have a very short life expectancy at Oracle. They serve no purpose any longer.

Except one... notification of the layoffs. After they notify the Hardware SCs, the managers giving notice will be given notice by the SVP. Field sales is getting a very flat organization. Hardware is first, followed by the pillars. The pillars will be hit hardest in November but a few (bottom 20%) will go with hardware in September.

SVPs have a ranking and its cross referenced against SCTA and other tools. They look to see who signed in to mandatory meetings, badge swipes and VPN sign in count, and location, as well as expenses and OT requests. If you bill any OT and you log into the VPN from home 80% of the time or not at all, you are gone. They want to see activity at customer sites, not the office. Too many swipes at the office and you are not at the customer site. Don't be home, and don't be at the office. And be sure to connect to the VPN and access your email. Instead of talking to you or your manager they have their own tricks to determine who is working and where. People are starting to work from Starbucks and hang out at the customer site, long after a meeting is over.

The SVPs are not evil, they are carrying out the orders they have to shrink the field sales organization by 40% by Q3. Thats the biggest news. A great number of the mid level managers in field sales will be gone by the end of Q2. The new mangers with direct contact will be SVPs, as they will have 40% less reporting into them. It will be a very, very flat org chart. Sadly some of the biggest layoffs start rolling out in Q2 right through Thanksgiving. If you last till December you get a small breather.

ECAs will shrink naturally by quota attrition. If they miss the quota they will have to find a new role. I did a quick look at Hamidu's organization of over 500 employees. Trying to figure out if this means at least 200 people are going to be let go in sales consulting by December or if that means 200 by the end of Q3. "40% of field sales by Q3" could mean February... 40% is a big number but a total of 200+ over 6 months wont really trip any warn levels. Again that number or percentage is not confirmed... total rumor.

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Post ID: @OP+ODdmf0o

6 replies (most recent on top)

Interesting thoughts and rumors. My take is...

The hardware field organization is in trouble and it seems they have been cut off from most paths to any semblance of success. They aren't compensated to sell Exadata Cloud Machine and, therefore, they aren't part of what Oracle considers vital to the company's future. Further, it sounds like development of other portions of the HW portfolio are being trimmed back or even cancelled. It seems like it is only a matter of time before the HW field team shrinks to a bare bones organization.

I can confirm that first level managers aren't consulted about layoffs and are unsure of their own destiny. This summer, some were given notice, some were shuffled from running larger teams to smaller ones and others landed back in individual contributor roles. It is also true that some had the task to layoff portions of their staff only to later be informed that they were being impacted as well.

The field sales model has been broken for a very long time. During annual account planning sessions where all sales reps and sales consultants/ECAs assigned to a given customer are present, there can easily be 20+ people in the room. These are all the "pillars". The priorities of each salesperson varies. In some cases, multiple people are compensated on the sale of a single product and there are arguments over who should be the "lead" in pursuing an opportunity. In other situations, Oracle has solutions that compete with one another and the sales reps are telling the customer different things in order to get a win for themselves. The overall model is incredibly bloated and inconsistent. It really needs to shrink significantly and could use a good dose of consistency/focus. Whether Oracle is able to make the overall organization more efficient or just slashes randomly is yet to be seen.

From a technical perspective, the hot job right now is to be part of a "Hub" -- a Cloud-focused, demo building, "image if..." selling effort. While the focus isn't a bad thing, the real drive behind this seems to be that the Hubs are staffed by lower wage level individuals and, therefore, is part of MH's effort to cut costs. There has been a lot of activity around building out these environments, staffing them up and now rolling them out as a "value add" for OD and the field to use. This seems to be the model for the future -- a churn and burn approach to get low cost, high energy labor in exchange for resume-building experience.

The ECA role is a mixed bag. The advantage is that it is the best field technical role right now because it is closely aligned with Cloud and has, mostly, been shielded from layoffs. It is also a good title to have as a stepping stone to a career outside of Oracle. However, there are a number of disadvantages. The role (along with the CSM position) was born out of HD's promise to sales management that he could take all of their financially engineered Cloud credit deals and turn that into real Cloud adoption by customers. That hasn't happened. HD now is believes that the problem was that the ECAs weren't disciplined or skilled enough and is pushing the use of a process/methodology to get the ECAs to help drive more Cloud sales and adoption. Now ECAs are being evaluated on perceived capability, tracked on deployment/conformance to the proscribed methodology, measured on time spent on customer/architecture activity, evaluated on expenses/overtime and linked to how many Cloud opportunities they are aligned with. While I haven't heard that VPN logins or Oracle office entry/exit are part of the equation as well, I wouldn't be surprised.

ECAs don't have a formal quota, but they are assigned to support certain accounts. In the past, this was a significant part of the overall evaluation of a technical role -- how many deals had your fingerprints on it. In short, it was part of justifying a SC's/ECA's salary to show the significant amount of revenue that was tied to that person. Over time, ratios of revenue/quota were solidified that drove the number of sales reps in the field and, correspondingly, the number of SCs/ECAs to reps. The issue now is that a significant portion of sales reps didn't hit their numbers in the past year. The number of reps will decrease, but the technical roles will too. It isn't a "quota", but whether an ECA is tied to a sufficient number of deals will almost certain have some factor to play in determining who part of a layoff and who isn't.

In the meantime, the real issues remain unaddressed -- Oracle's Cloud products are immature and many customers dislike and/or don't trust Oracle. As a result, it is highly likely that Oracle will continue to struggle until it addresses those problems and will have to cut back on its workforce as a way to survive.

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Post ID: @2usm+ODdmf0o

There are factual errors in this post. There is no "quota" for Enterprise Cloud Architects (ECAs) or Sales Consultants (SCs). You are expected to help with successfully closed deals, but there has never been a "quota". The "log in from Starbucks via the VPN" thing is probably bogus as I doubt that the company even tracks this. "The pillar SC managers are driftwood ..." What pillar SC managers? The pillar guys got layed off already in june.

I really doubt that there will be many more layoffs in the ECA and SC organization, because you can't lay off people who have already quit. MH and SC are trying to keep margins high by drastically cutting compensation of the sales reps, SCs, ECAs, and the ECA managers. Yes, the managers have had their pay cut just as bad as the ECAs. As a result, there has been attrition far worse that anything Oracle has experienced in its sales ranks in the past. People are leaving in droves. Check your LinkedIn; if any of your connections were in Oracle sales, chances are they recently changed jobs. If the goal is to reduce the sales, ECA, and SC ranks by 40%, then they will get there without layoffs. There is absolutely no way that revenue can go anywhere but down under these circumstances.

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Post ID: @2mqk+ODdmf0o

SC= Solution Consultants (read: sales engineers & sales demo & tech folks)

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Post ID: @vnm+ODdmf0o

SC is an abbreviation for what !?

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Post ID: @bml+ODdmf0o

Sadly but all is true and confirmed.

They need to reduce many useless M4/M5 and overlays (A&C, business ops, deal management, finance, sales admin etc,) that will survive on behalf of field sales.

In EMEA there are several M6 in Hardware sales that their huge organizations contribute each less then $5M this Q.

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Post ID: @jnw+ODdmf0o

What is "SC" and what is "ECA"?

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Post ID: @teh+ODdmf0o

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