Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

The new hires at Oracle will leave in two years, maybe sooner, after f----face Hurd does not provide any raises. I loathe the mother-f---er and hope he is miserable and burns in hell. He is the biggest piece of sh-- walking the earth. I gave my notice two weeks ago and will be gladly dancing out the door to a new and better job. FUMH!

@Rx0YEx9-qtn

Old news...you're repeating yourselves.

Yeah, MH is a total piece of Sh*t buy don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s all on LE - principal shareholder and the guy who calls the shots! He’s the one who hired MH and approved these plans. LE is the real villain here!

The economic impact of over 52,000 families being out of work is far worse than any of his "corporate cuts" are saving LE and the investors.

What a wonderful place it would be if all that energy were put towards innovation of the technologies acquired!?! That is a stock I would have bought.

the saddest thing is that he is actually proud of his "legacy" of leadership at HP and now Oracle. His peer group seems to be approving also. History will look back on his type and it will not be kind or admiring. Good thing he has money. He has little else.

@RvftlcC-1tne Well said. Well said, indeed.

@RvftlcC-1wzn I have to agree. The only statement that can be made is that one man has had a terrible impact on 3 companies and over 52,000 American families. I'd would say MH is a different kind of Vietnam. A moral and economic war we are losing here in corporate America.

It's staggering to think that MH had a negative impact on over 52,000 American families. Its sad that this heartless behavior is now the norm, and that the economic destruction to these companies as a direct result of these actions are just brushed aside. Its not business as usual. Its bad business.

Someone should do research and calculate how much these families and these compnaies lost in the long run.

@RvftlcC-1xyr

Wow... just... wow.

I dislike what MH does just at much as anyone else on this site, but that is such a tone-deaf and heartless comparison to make. I know it was not your intention, but comparing layoffs to people dying in war is profoundly insensitive and disrespectful. Not cool.

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics

The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. The earliest casualty record contains a date of death of June 8, 1956, and the most recent casualty record contains a date of death of May 28, 2006. The Defense Casualty Analysis System Extract Files were created by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The records correspond to the Vietnam Conflict statistics on the DMDC web site, which is accessible online at https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/main.xhtml

Each of those casualties from the Vietnam war impacted a family here in the US. I wonder if we could tally the numbers of employees and families impacted by MH and do a number comparision. Was his impact felt by more families than the number of families directly impacted by the Vietnam war?

HP:

15,200 Workers and families when he became CEO

11,000 IT Workers (19,000 reduced to 8,000)

9,000 additional workers still to be let go after he left in 2010

Total: 35,200 workers and their families impacted at HP.

Oracle:

Hard to tell, its all hush hush but conservative estimates are 17,500 since the start of 2017.

NCR:

How many were let go?

Grand total 35,200 + 17,500 = 52,500 families. It looks like its pretty close to the Vietnam war casualties in numbers, but we still have more to come at Oracle. Its truly an amazing testament that in this day and age one man can have as big of an impact (numerically speaking) on american families as the Vietnam war.

https://markhurd.com/about-mark-hurd/

This is a bad match of skills and one you would think Larry Ellison would know to avoid. However I

think it is increasingly likely that Hurd got fired as a result of taking advice from Larry Ellison, first on > hiring the individual Hurd conflicted with, and second on how he handled the problem -- the

combination of which got him fired. As a result I believe this is largely Larry’s attempt to make up for

messing up Mark’s life. If I’m correct, Larry would be wise to simply send some flowers and an

apology card next time.

What?! Who is he talking about? The soft-core p--n starlet who filed the harasment complaint against him? And what exactly was LE's advice?

Old news

Yep, this is the end oracle as you all know it. Oracle is the new HP going down the drain.

Perhaps, with LE so old and losing interest, and Oracle's demonstrated inability to deliver innovative products any more, the plan is to package it to be sold.

@RvftlcC-esm The OP does not work for Oracle. If you do, he is telling you that you may not even get a severance package when your job is eliminated.

If you hate him so much, why do you work for him ?

And, did you just learn to use Google today ? All these are public news ; others just your opinions ("he is a zombie, run").

If you have skills , find another job, instead of blaming strategies. It's above your pay grade , and skill level.

https://www.datamation.com/columns/article.php/3902836/Why-Mark-Hurd-is-a-Bad-Match-for-Oracle.htm

We seem to be surrounded by drama in the tech sector based on some questionable decisions at the moment. The most recent is the hiring of Mark Hurd, the former HP CEO, by Oracle this week. While the entire event had me write up a story line for a potential sitcom or reality TV show, ( I know, I should likely keep my day job) it also showcases what may be a very bad practice of mismatching the skills of the employee with the job.

Let’s separate from the drama and talk about why Mark Hurd is a bad match for Oracle this week.

What Mark Hurd Was

At HP, Mark Hurd was positioned as an executive with operational excellence that exceeded most others. After the fact, we learned that he actually was something quite different. The skill that Hurd demonstrated is more similar to an executive who is expert at packaging companies for sale.

At both NCR (where Hurd was before HP) and HP, he cut expenses to extremes while working to increase his own income. This gets the financials in line and few acquiring companies look at morale as a unique problem and anticipate it in any case. Once the sale is done, the Hurd-like executive moves on to the next project and the lack of employee loyalty becomes someone else’s problem to solve. It is one of the most lucrative types of jobs in the industry but it takes a relatively heartless person to do it because of the adverse impact on employees.

NCR had been sold previously, and the result for the old AT&T was so bad that the acquisition was reversed. This means it would be difficult to sell again. And while it seemed likely that Dell at one point would buy them, that never happened.

HP wasn’t looking to be packaged for sale but Hurd packaged them anyway. He made the firm vastly more valuable to a buyer but stripped out much of HP’s R&D and employee loyalty to get it there. In effect to gain short-term advantages, which is consistent with a sale strategy, Hurd traded off long-term success. This showcased Hurd, after the fact, to be the wrong guy for a CEO job at a company that wasn’t planning to be sold.

As a turnaround CEO, Hurd could be unmatched, but he would not be the kind of executive you would get if you wanted to build a company rather than sell one.

Oracle’s Problem

Oracle has a huge problem with Sun Microsystems. The company was failing when Oracle bought it, having tried to switch from a proprietary hardware strategy to an Open Source software strategy and finding the move to be too great to accomplish.

The purchase process wasn’t well orchestrated and it was blocked by the European Union, which made problems worse. Sun bled qualified people at massive rates. By the time Oracle had completed the acquisition they had little more than a shell of brands and products in a company that many would argue was simply not viable.

In short, the skill set they desperately need is that of a builder. They need someone who can draw in creative and driven new people and help them reconstruct a new company with elements of Oracle and Sun, a company that can effectively compete against IBM, HP, Dell, Microsoft, and Acadia.

They need someone like an Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ken Oshman, Larry Ellison, Joe Tucci or Thomas Watson Jr., executives who had the skills to develop their respective companies, build loyal employees, and drive their companies strategically to dominate their chosen segments for a time.

I reference Ken Oshman because his ROLM telecommunications company at its peak was the quintessential example of what can be done if you think strategically. Or if you consider what can happen if you lose track of that and focus on short-term financial goals, which is eventually much of what killed that firm after he departed and it was purchased by IBM and Siemens.

Wrapping Up

Hurd’s skill set, which trades off the strategic for the tactical, would have been great at Sun while it was being packaged for sale to Oracle. But it will likely be unsuccessful in the recovery stage it now finds itself in. Key employees will not want to stay with Oracle if they believe that Hurd will mostly cut their benefits, entitlements, and shift their jobs to lower cost locations without them. Attracting qualified employees will even be more difficult and the ones they do get are will likely be in “any port in a storm” mode and unlikely to be particularly loyal.

This is a bad match of skills and one you would think Larry Ellison would know to avoid. However I think it is increasingly likely that Hurd got fired as a result of taking advice from Larry Ellison, first on hiring the individual Hurd conflicted with, and second on how he handled the problem -- the combination of which got him fired. As a result I believe this is largely Larry’s attempt to make up for messing up Mark’s life. If I’m correct, Larry would be wise to simply send some flowers and an apology card next time.

Oracle has since changed the training program, in large part because Hurd hosts a graduation party for every graduating class at his house. He meets and talks with each graduate and asks for suggestions to improve the program. They all said they wanted more training and more practice.

2017 - Jun. 1st

The first round of layoffs that exactly mimic the 2010 Layoffs at HP take place. 1.1 Billion dollars is allocated to employee severance packages just as it was for HP, and history repeats itself. MH is busy doing what MH does best cutting employee costs by replacing expensive labor with cheaper labor. Oracle layoffs occur in sales and presales. In some cases 40% reduction of specific teams and departments. This Oracle 10Q is key as it is the first open indication that we have a direct link to the MH strategy at HP with its similiar 10Q. The severance package size and scope is nearly identical.

http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/6aae1efb-e6ff-44cb-9563-94b1d5ebd7e1.pdf

Restructuring expenses during the first quarter of fiscal 2018 and 2017 primarily related to employee severance in connection with our Fiscal 2017 Oracle Restructuring Plan (2017 Restructuring Plan).

The total estimated restructuring costs associated with the 2017 Restructuring Plan are up to $1.1 billion and will be recorded to the restructuring expense line item within our condensed consolidated statements of operations as they are incurred. The total estimated remaining restructuring costs associated with the 2017 Restructuring Plan were approximately $475 million as of August 31, 2017 and the majority of the remaining costs are expected to be incurred through the end of fiscal 2018.

2017 - Aug. 17th

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/17/oracles-sales-staff-revamp-is-bearing-fruit-wsj.html

Oracle Corp. is starting to see the benefits of revamping its sales force, addressing longstanding questions from Wall Street about the software company's commitment to cloud computing.

Just a few years ago, Oracle was ill-equipped to do so. Its highly compensated sales staff targeted chief information officers at corporate giants, looking for big-budget deals that came with fat commissions. The company not only bypassed smaller businesses -- who were among the early adopters of the cloud's web-based, on-demand computing services -- but also the division leaders at big companies who were starting to buy cloud services piecemeal.

While Oracle knew chief information officers, Mr. Hurd said in an interview, "We didn't know the head of HR. We didn't know the chief marketing officer."

So he created a program in 2013 to indoctrinate hires fresh out of college in Oracle's sales methods, rather than solely hiring veteran sales executives from other companies. Called "Class Of" -- playing off the term for a group of graduating students -- the program aims to develop a low-cost sales force that prospects for new markets. Oracle taps its own seasoned salespeople to become mentors to the newbies.

In four years, more than 4,500 representatives have gone through the five-week Class Of program. Mr. Hurd figures that in a decade or so all of Oracle's sales leaders will be graduates of Class Of

The program didn't initially sit well with some Oracle veterans, who worried mentoring duties would pull them away from managing their own accounts.

2017 - Sep. 1st

http://fortune.com/2017/09/05/oracle-layoffs-hardware-solaris/

Oracle has laid off what appears to be a significant number of employees working on its hardware and Solaris operating system efforts, according to anonymous posts on TheLayoff.com, the gist of which were confirmed to Fortune by former Oracle employees.

In a blog post called The Sudden Death and Eternal Life of Solaris, former Sun executive Bryan Cantrill wrote that, based on his conversations with current Solaris team members, these cuts are “so deep as to be fatal: The core Solaris engineering organization lost on the order of 90% of its people, including essentially all management.”

The majority Oracle HW Sales (ES) is being taken over by fujitsu this March, for functions outside of OD. Just about everyone HW field sales is getting severance packages. The end of ALL field sales by FY19 is confirmed at the highest levels of Oracle executives to outside Oracle partners. Business partners are being asked to take over key functions of onsite customer setup and installation. A large part of the onsite sales process is moving as well. This post will list public references of what is happening and why so that there is no confusion. This post will also include direct quotes from the executive level at Oracle to Oracle Platinum level business partners. This post is to help employees who are uncertain about the changes coming with the opening of several new Oracle Digital campuses this year. This post may run long as it is comprehensive, and the parts that do not fit in the original post will be in the first two comments. (Scroll down to read the first comments)

The Oracle Digital campuses are global in nature, as the campuses go live and become fully operational the entire field sales oraganization will be let go. MH stated this plan directly to the business partners in 2016 for salles and implementaion support outside Oracle and more or less publicly when asked. He is replacing verteran sales and it staff with cheaper labor with college grads and off shore. To explain why this is happening, lets start with a brief history lesson, 8 years or so ago.

MH at Hewlett-Packard

2010 - Jun. 1st

https://www.mercurynews.com/2010/06/01/hewlett-packard-to-cut-9000-jobs-take-1-billion-in-charges/

At HP MH had a reputation for aggressive cost-cutting. He laid off 15,200 workers — 10% of the workforce — shortly after becoming CEO. Other cost-cutting includes reducing the IT department from 19,000 to 8,000, reducing the number of software applications that HP uses from 6,000 to 1,500, and consolidating HP's 85 data centers to 6. During the 2009 recession, MH imposed a temporary 5% pay cut on all employees and removed many benefits.

HP said it will spend $1 billion on the new effort over the next four years, but expects it will ultimately save $500 million to $700 million a year.

• 9,000 jobs cut over the next few years as HP automates and consolidates computer centers.

• About 6,000 jobs added during the same time in sales and other functions.

• Cost of the transition is $1 billion

2010 HP 10Q

http://otp.investis.com/clients/us/hp_inc/SEC/sec-show.aspx?FilingId=7303762&Cik=0000047217&Type=PDF&hasPdf=1

In May 2009, HP's management approved and initiated a restructuring plan to structurally change and improve the effectiveness of the Imaging and Printing Group ("IPG"), the Personal Systems Group ("PSG"), and Enterprise Storage and Servers ("ESS"). The total expected cost of the plan is $303 million in severance-related costs associated with the planned elimination of approximately 5,000 positions. As of April 30, 2010, approximately 3,500 positions have been eliminated. HP expects the majority of the restructuring costs to be paid out by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. ... consisting mainly of severance costs to eliminate approximately 25,000 positions

MH cut cost at HP and replaced 9,000 senior positions with 6,000 new jobs (lower salieried workers) in sales and other positions. MH did not stay on with HP to reap the benifits of his changes, on Sep 6, 2010, MH joined Oracle as President and was appointed to the board of directors.

MH at Oracle

His first move at Oracle was to begin the process he started at HP by doubling the targeted growth rate at Oracle. Sales bonuses were based on 100% growth from the previous year. The net effect was unattainable targets for the sales team, and a hefty reduction in bonus pay.

2013 - Jul. 8th

http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-loses-experienced-salespeople-2013-7

For the past two years, experienced salespeople have been leaving Oracle in droves, unhappy with tough sales quotas. "Hundreds of people are leaving each quarter," a current salesperson told us, speaking on condition of anonymity. Among this person's team of less than a dozen people, one-third of them have just resigned or are looking for new jobs. A former salesperson, who had spent more than a dozen years at Oracle, also told us that many of his coworkers at Oracle are still looking to leave. "Oracle has a horrible reputation in the tech sales circles at this point, so yes I see a migration from those who are competent, experienced, and see the writing on the wall," this person said.

Hurd told analysts that the company was fixing it by increasing its salesforce. The company has added 4,000 new salespeople over about the last two years. But Oracle has not commented on how many people it hired for "back-fill," or replacing those experienced employees who quit.

One tactic that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison did talk about was hiring lots of college grads.

"We’ve hired about 500 salespeople and sales consultants directly out of college this year, and virtually all of them will go to our cloud businesses and about 10% will go to our Linux business," he told analysts during a quarterly conference call in June.

2015 - Sep. 30th

http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-employees-this-is-why-were-mad-2015-9

As we previously reported, we've heard from many Oracle employees who are upset over a new thing that is forcing them to use four vacation days during the holiday season. But here's the catch: If an employee doesn't already have four days of earned vacation in the kitty, they'll wind up "owing" the company vacation hours. That's what's got some employees so upset.

"The US closure is beneficial for employees and the business. The company is able to reduce expenses by decreasing the accrued vacation and employees enjoy a collective break," Oracle's email said.

2016 - Jun. 1st

http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/300081276/oracle-lays-off-veteran-channel-execs-cuts-support-staff-in-push-to-sell-more-cloud-licenses-direct.htm

Oracle last month laid off several channel and sales executives as well as its entire channel pre-sales technical support team -- a move that bolsters the company's plans to push more cloud licensing sales direct, according to multiple sources close to the vendor.

"Oracle has laid off its entire channel pre-sales technical support team. These are the specialists who go into the customer with the partners and determine how the solutions should be engineered and fit together," a source close to the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based software giant told CRN this week. "This is going to make it difficult for the channel to get deals closed," the source said.

2016 - Oct. 2nd

http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-class-of-program-college-recruiting-mark-hurd-2016-9

The idea was inspired by a dinner he had with his daughter and her friends who had just graduated from college. They were working as salespeople at a startup and were rooming together in San Francisco.

"All they could talk about was that they partied and they sold. They would go to work, sell stuff, party, sleep some, sell stuff and party. This was life. They were so energized," he remembers.

He told Ellison about the dinner and the two of them wanted to bring back that startup feel to Oracle. He and Ellison decided, "Let’s go back to the future, the way it used to be," Hurd recalls.

Glassdoor says that Oracle BDCs make $68,000 on average, including cash bonuses and commission-sharing. But some of them have reported salaries to Glassdoor over well over $100,000.

High churn rate, no worries. That's not to say that all of the Class Of grads are happy or stay at the company. As the program heads into its fourth year, the churn rate is pretty high. Between 40% and 50% of graduates don't stick it out to become salespeople.

Hurd is fine with that. "If this churned over four years to where we lost 40% of the people, we might lose half of that to other things inside Oracle. That is just fine," he says.

"If at the other end, I get 50% or 40%, it doesn’t matter. My entry-level costs to bring them is materially lower than what it would be to bring in a mercenary hire," he says, meaning poaching a top salesperson from another company.

"If I get people who are great and are productive, this is a home run for me," he says.