Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

FY19 Oracle Zero (Not Coke Zero) is coming

A Group Vice President for Enterprise Cloud Architecture just got out of a meeting with HD who was proudly touting his plan for zero field Sales Consultants (Sales Engineers) in FY19. You heard that right. Everything is going to the hub in FY19.

New ECA training requires the field SCs to submit videos and use cases of their expertise in solving cloud problems at customer sites. This will be incorporated into the scripts handed out to the hubs in OD. Everything you know will be boiled down into slide decks and scripts. Turn over in OD is expected, this is handled by a well oiled process (with slides, scripts and point and click cloud demos) to on-board new hires and get them dialing for dollars in short order.

Field sales reps are a thing of the past too. The future of Oracle is an Automated Cloud Database to eliminate the cost of people in hosted solutions, and scripts to eliminate SCs and Sales reps in the field.

The only question is how quick is this plan rolling out? The GVP was to busy contacting recruiters and updating linked in to ask the question. No one knows if its one large whack in June of 2018 or a series of whacks leading up to zero in June of 2018. We do know its real. Sales reps and sales consultants with 6 figure base salaries are seen as a very high cost, and blamed for not moving the ball forward in the cloud market.

Its real, the GVP let the cat out of the bag. My friend got the new directly from the GVP and named names. I in turn made an announcement here (with out the names)

This week VPs and directors are meeting with business partners to discuss new sales strategies going forward. No field reps and no SCs have been invited. The dysfunction is palpable. The belief is... that the reason that customers are not buying, is the message is not being delivered by the sales team.

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Post ID: @OP+Q4mq7hg

24 replies (most recent on top)

@Q4mq7hg-5nenb

Internal competition is often created by the managers telling lies about developers to other developers. In my 10 years, it seemed to me that the managers target the smarter developers and lie to make sure they never work together. Lies are told about the best developers, these are people the management is afraid of. They are afraid their best developers will work together. Dangerous game all around.

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Post ID: @5oehc+Q4mq7hg

.....I worked in Oracle for 8 years. No respect for the people, internal competition between colleagues....it's the worst company to work for.

Very happy to leave them !

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Post ID: @5nenb+Q4mq7hg

Funny that cloud to Oracle means no field sales team or sales consultants. AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce, and Workday all have a field sales team and sales consultants or sales engineers. MH is delusional if he thinks this will work. Whoever said that this is what companies do when they are in a declining market is absolutely correct. They will do anything to lower the cost of sale even if that means it costs them sales.

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Post ID: @4tsf+Q4mq7hg

No succession plan, no strategy to succeed, only three dinesours getting rich in the short run from running the company into the ground. Oracle has no future

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Post ID: @2dxt+Q4mq7hg

Makes you wonder if LE has a target date in mind for his own passing away to coincide with the end of oracle. He’s clearly not looking for oracle to be a prosperous company down the road and to still be around 30,50, years from now, so only a question of when it ends. And right now the slope of decline is increasing. Oracle is a company without a future on a path towards demise. Sad as DJT would say

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Post ID: @2fec+Q4mq7hg

MH is a one trick pony. Just look at his history -- it is all about cutting costs in order to boost stock value (which, given how he is compensated, is all a self-serving move). That strategy can run for a long time in a huge organization and MH has made a fortune for himself this way. Of course, it has been disastrous for those left in his wake and for the future of the companies he has gutted, but that isn't his concern. If you look at his statements inside Oracle for the past few years and align it with this pattern, it isn't hard to see that MH loves the idea that he could drive down costs by moving as much work as possible into call centers. His statements over the past year about Oracle Direct/Digital being the heart of the salesforce really couldn't be any clearer.

HD is out for himself and his own empire -- just look at how he was able to maneuver himself into the top spot of all US field technical resources over the past few years. Outwardly, all he is doing is agreeing with MH's goals and aligning himself accordingly. He created the OCA and ECA roles as a means to try and support the story that Oracle is a Cloud company. Now he is ramping up the Hub technical teams to take more workload away from the field. Whatever MH wants, HD will be in line to s--- up to him.

Shifting work out of the country and to less experienced (e.g. college graduates or even non-degreed) workers is how a company tries to just survive when it is facing declining revenues. Just look at IBM as the same tactics are in play. The reality is that Oracle's efforts to acquire and integrate took too long and while they were at it the underlying technology shifted from large, monolithic and centralized to focused, distributed and Cloud-ready. As a result, Oracle is in a world of hurt and needs to buy time in order to be try to be competitive again. It is why those remaining customers without EULAs or PULAs have been heavily incented to do so the past two years. It is also why deals have been financially engineered to add Cloud in the hopes that some customers will end up adopting it and transition into a new form of ongoing, regular cash flow for Oracle. It is all about trying to find a way to avoid the market seeing that Oracle's huge profit margins are seriously threatened and that its stock valuation is on very thin ice.

Personally, I think that zero field sales consultants/ECAs is unrealistic, but that a massive shift/reduction is certainly possible. Given that Oracle's culture has never really valued sales consultants and has viewed them solely as an expense instead of in light of the value they can provide, the push for reducing headcount isn't surprising. Couple that with the reality that most of what Oracle has to sell is either now viewed as legacy or doesn't compete against the top Cloud providers means that there is bound to be a reduction in the field over time.

While there are never guarantees, given how MH doesn't have anyone else's interests in mind (other than LE, maybe) and HD is simply a Yes Man, plot your own course and don't hope that Oracle will value your efforts and loyalty. If you want to try and stay at Oracle, you'll want to keep a close eye on how much revenue growth, specifically anything Oracle calls "Cloud", you are associated with. Being aligned with the largest and most strategic customers is a good thing too, but isn't a guarantee. Being with the Hub or OD should provide a lower chance of being let go. Or being in businesses that are growing (e.g. Netsuite) would be a better spot than many others. Otherwise, use your time to train yourself for your next career move as other companies are happy to grab experienced employees at a pay and benefit level that is better than Oracle.

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Post ID: @1ygc+Q4mq7hg

Declining support revenues, cloud washing and cost reductions thru RIFs is what’s propping up the oracle share price, but that only last so long, a down wards slide with no end towards zero everything

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Post ID: @1tyi+Q4mq7hg

Oracle has 10 key clients that make or break them.

The mid market is no good for oracle. Net Suite is poised to own the SMB, major accounts aka mid mkt.

The Key accounts (top 10) are whole different beasts. If these don’t have field assistance they’ll dwindle to nothing. Oracle isn’t amazon or dell or Salesforce. Oracle’s operations and culture put it at a disadvantage to these competitors. The shift to the OD model won’t save Oracle. No matter how many times Hurd says it, it doesn’t make it real or true. The OD kiddos leave on a 65% annual churn. The moment they get tired of the party lifestyle and decide not to be telemarketers it’s too late and they’ve pigeonholed themselves into a dead end career ala oracle robo callers. Next job for them? the cal center down the street. Not a good outlook for the youngsters. No need for a 4 year degree to do this. Epic mistake for college grads to join oracle .

But the lies and the $50k starting basedupe a lot of them into foregoing their college degree path in exchange for the oracle dollar and a gold spray painted lie.

Unconscionable what Hurd is doing. Ellison is more responsible bc he’s endorsing it. SC must be spineless.

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Post ID: @1eyy+Q4mq7hg

The competition in the CX space has field sales and field solution consultants. The competition isn’t organized like oracle. AWS us hiring reps away from oracle at a rapid pace. Same with Salesforce.

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Post ID: @1ltf+Q4mq7hg

Death spiral, falling at an accelerating rate as more and more customers stop doing business with oracle

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Post ID: @1evo+Q4mq7hg

@Q4mq7hg-1efy, perfectly stated.

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Post ID: @1lny+Q4mq7hg

Oracle is downsizing the the point where it will have zero employees, zero revenues, zero profit and zero dollar share price. Writing is on the call, couldn’t be clearer than this.

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Post ID: @1efy+Q4mq7hg

Feasibility of this so called Oracle Zero plan = 0%

What adopt.

It’s clear Exec Mgmt GVP, EVP, C SUITE is 100000% out of touch. IF THEY ACTUALLY USED ORACLE OPERATIONSL SYSTENS and talked to actual working folk at oracle this “plan” would never see the light of Day.

In other news, the marketing team made an announcement that we are sponsoring a big tennis tournament… No surprise where this came from, the tennis player turned ceo hack, MH. boats for LE, tennis for MH. What’s safra’s pet hobby or sport that oracle funds? It’s not women’s advocacy.

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Post ID: @nbi+Q4mq7hg

This oracle executive strategy and plan is hilarious. Cracker Jack leadership and desperation.

Oracle inside telemarketing team (BDCs & ODs) are a joke. Clients definitely don’t call into oracle to place orders. And even if they could, good luck taking them. The order ring systems don’t quite work that way, possibly never given the a---backwards workflow order process. The cloud provisioning is a joke on a good day. Expansions and add on are a fuster-cluck.

Im still laughing at this GVP stated plan to eliminate field sales and SC’s.

ROTFL 😂

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Post ID: @fqo+Q4mq7hg

None of this is surprising with a CTO like LE and head of sales like MH. And then there is TK. Oh, boy ....

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Post ID: @vct+Q4mq7hg

thanks for the informative post.

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Post ID: @mrm+Q4mq7hg

Yes, the problem is in engineering management. I was there. I'm not a sales person saying this.

I know internally, the cloud is crap. Just marketing make-up, nothing more. The engineering managers are so busy f---ing each other over, they can't see straight. They are also completely incompetent in terms of knowledge or technical ability. The really stupid ones are the worst manipulators and they know they have to hang on to what they've got, cause if they have to find a job somewhere else, they will be exposed for the idiots that they are.

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Post ID: @vtt+Q4mq7hg

So far, HD has been doing very good job.

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Post ID: @lnr+Q4mq7hg

Just to be clear FY19 means June 1st 2018. The plan HD is happy about is zero field sales engineers and ECAs reporting to him. The certification process that a select few ECAs will be going through is really a turn over process to document and script what they know.

What we are seeing is a direct push form the executive level. HD is the yes man they need. MH does not value anything more than someone who does what they are told to do at all levels of the organization. That is why he can pay people less, he does the thinking, they do the calling and take the orders from the customer.

The shift to the cloud gave MH the ability to handle all the objections that clear thinking right minded individuals, who understood the customers needs, could muster. No one can stand up to him and say why anyone could not point and click to install an Oracle database or any other Oracle product. This simple view of technology goes hand in glove with LE's long held belief that you can automate away the DBA and all other technical resources required to install and maintain an Oracle database.

Its the perfect storm to destroy Oracle from the inside. The fact that the executives are so out of touch with modern technology has eroded any defense or argument for sanity. The executives really believe they know better than the customer, or any of their over paid sales team.

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Post ID: @pon+Q4mq7hg

Great post!! Keep the news coming....

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Post ID: @jwo+Q4mq7hg

What a bunch of morons - the problem is oracle crappy cloud products, not the people

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Post ID: @san+Q4mq7hg

zero field Sales Consultants (Sales Engineers) in FY19

Could be by the end of FY19 rather than the beginning of it.

This week VPs and directors are meeting with business partners to discuss new sales strategies going forward

Are they intending to use "business partners" as the on-site sales force? What do you think this means?

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Post ID: @dyg+Q4mq7hg

Anyone know how the cloud competition works sales? Do competitors send SEs/SCs out to customer sites? Or do they all work the way Oracle is trying to go?

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Post ID: @apq+Q4mq7hg

Wow.... they have all gone nuts. I bet they all repeat "the sales force is the problem" over and over again to each other. Talk about living in bubble.... blind leading the blind. They have no idea what they're doing.

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Post ID: @xyw+Q4mq7hg

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