Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

Amen. Get out.

Get out of your own accord BEFORE oracle tells you to GTFO by rifing you.

sychophant - parasite, sycophant, toady, leech, sponge mean a usually obsequious flatterer or self-seeker. parasite applies to one who clings to a person of wealth, power, or influence or is useless to society.

Don't be a sychophant, get out.

Everyone needs to find a way out.... unless you enjoy being part of the corruption.

Here's some other tips for the Oracle management:

• Never make any decisions about anything. Work it so that the decisions are always made by the people below you. Everything will always fail and you need to make sure you always have someone to blame.

• If you want to exclude someone, like a woman, from your status meetings, assign someone else the task of creating and running the meetings, to make sure you do not get the blame.

• To cover your a-- with the upper management and HR, provide the correct and responsible directions to your staff through email. Then "correct" the directions verbally, so no evidence is left of your "correction". If the sh-- hits the fan later, you have the email with the original directions and you can just say to upper management or HR, that you don't know why your employee did what they did, when you gave them the correct instructions in the email.

• You can use the above tactic to discriminate on who you include in your status meetings. Send an email to the person who is arranging the meetings to tell them to be sure to include everyone. Then tell them verbally that so-and-so doesn't want to attend the meetings. They won't check with each other. Tell the person who is excluded, that you don't have status meetings. The person arranging the meetings will think the person who doesn't want to be there, is an a--hole. The person excluded won't know anything. And if a problem comes up later, you have the email saying everyone should be included to show to HR and upper management.

In general, if you want to sabotage anyone, send an email with the right instructions, then change the directions verbally. HR and upper management don't bother with looking into anything, they will believe the email and blame whoever you set up.

Works beautifully.

Interesting and true twist on the amazon principles.

It's a sad, sick place, get the hell out!

Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never compromise.

Obscure the results you deliver. Always make sure that it is never quite clear exactly what the requirements are. Keep everything as fuzzy as possible, so that you can avoid any responsibility for any failures. NEVER list things clearly, always claim to be unsure, delegate tasks you are most worried about to the people you want to sabotage. Have excuses lined up for everything. Don't work too hard, remember, you are working at ORACLE, country club capital of silicon valley.

Nothing at Oracle will ever change, the corruption is embedded and has become a way of life there. Some people refer to this as "politics", but that's not what it is. Politics at other companies revolves around getting work done. Politics at Oracle revolves around personal vendettas and destruction of the company.

Get out if you can. There is life on the outside for those who are competent and honest.

The rest of you rats can drown.

Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odour smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Leaders at Oracle must listen attentively to others. This is so that you can evaluate each person to see how you can best use them. Empathetic people are dangerous. They might band together with others and overthrow you, or they might balk at lying or sabotaging someone for you. You can't have that kind of behavior in your group if you want to survive at Oracle. Sort out the people around you, so that you know which will lie with you and which will not. Make a list of who needs to be sabotaged and controlled most, and work your way down the list.

Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

You have worked your way up to director or senior director or VP. The people beneath you are beneath you and are unimportant, except for how you can use them. You no longer have to do the menial tasks you used to do, you can just delegate those tasks now. The more delegation you do, the safer you are, as you will always have someone to blame for any failures that might happen. Protect yourself above all else by delegating all tasks and making sure you can never be blamed for anything that goes wrong.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Respectfully disagreeing is a death sentence at Oracle. ALWAYS agree with your boss, NEVER say anything, no matter how trivial, in disagreement. Keeping information from your boss will also sabotage him and increase your chances of overthrowing him. You may then move up the ladder. Don't let him know you are keeping information from him, always have excuses lined up for why you didn't inform him of something. When you are given a task, always delegate the task immediately to those below you, so that you cannot be blamed in any way. Do this even if you know the task will fail once you delegate it. Better to blame someone else than take responsibility for anything.

When you sabotage someone, always try to have someone underneath you do the dirty work, in this way, if something goes wrong, you can blame them and they can be laid off and removed from the company so that they can never share the information with anyone you are working with. Have people avoid interacting with them on linked-in or in other ways, by making up lies about the person who left. You have to protect yourself.

Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Speed is important at Oracle. In order to make sure your thugs have work that will go on indefinitely, you need to make sure that work is done at the SLOWEST pace possible. To keep your thugs employed, steal an application from someone else who could have done it quickly, to make sure that its implementation lasts for years and years. Make up excuses along the way for why it's taking you so long. The management above you is stupid and will believe anything you make up. Even if you are caught lying, they won't do anything about it, since you will be the only ones who can work on it, once you get rid of any competition.

Do not risk creating anything of value, it will just be taken from you and destroyed. You will not get credit for it. Instead, you will be attacked.

Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense. Don't pay your CEO's tens of millions of dollars if they haven't truly earned it.

At Oracle, you must stretch to increase the head-count of clueless yes-men. The more you have and the slower they work, the more secure your job is. Do not reward those people who do work quickly, they know what they are doing and know that you DON'T know what you are doing.

Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards ; many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

High standards are a threat to leaders at Oracle, since the leaders can never hope to meet them. When high standards are applied, they must be used efficiently. Apply high standards to the smarter people while you demean them. At the same time, apply extremely low standards to your thugs and followers, so that the smarter people can see the value of doing nothing and sabotaging other people in the company. In this way, you promote the devious and incompetent over the intelligent people you are afraid of.

Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Never think big. Never go out of your way to create anything or work on anything that could be an important feature or application. Others are watching, and if you do excellent work, someone else will take it, possibly with the help of your own manager. They will make up lies about you behind your back to discredit you, even say that you are lying about the work you did. NEVER do anything beyond what you are immediately asked to do.

Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

Learning is not a possibility at Oracle. Leaders at Oracle make the same mistakes over and over again. They do not value learning in any way and are always looking for the ultimate way of covering up what they do. Leaders at Oracle despise the idea of learning, as saying that you need to learn something is only a sign of weakness to them. Admitting you need to learn something, is the same as admitting you are not perfect, and this is not allowed.

Hire and Develop the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognise people with exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organisation. Leaders develop leaders and are serious about their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

Leaders at Oracle hire competent people only when they absolutely have to. They resent the idea that there is such a thing as intelligence. Intelligent people are a necessary evil to leaders at Oracle. Bring them in, use them and then dispose of them as quickly as possible, as you surround yourself with yes-men who will sooth the ego. Never reward anyone who has talent. Instead, control them with put-downs and insults, as well as making up lies about them to spread to others, while you use them to do work that you can give your thugs credit for.

Coaching is also an unnecessary evil. Do not coach anyone, instead, make vague hints to your employees about what they should do, and if they don't get the hint, then sabotage and attack them. You have to keep control over your employees, otherwise they might get together and overthrow you. In particular, make sure that all of your competent employees hate each other, so they will never work together when they realize you are an idiot.

Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say 'that’s not my job.'

Oracle management is all about the short-term. What can I do to keep my country club job and screw over as many people that could be my competition. Destroying projects along the way is a small price to pay for keeping my job. Who cares if the company goes down the tubes in the end, as long as I keep my job for now. It will take the company years to die and I need to extend my job as long as possible because there is no way I could possibly find another one.

Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by 'not invented here'. Because we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Leaders at Oracle divide their teams into the "thugs" and "drones". The thugs are those with no moral sense of right and wrong. Thugs will do anything they are told to do, to anyone, and will be rewarded with bonuses and credit for work they never did. The "drones" are the people who do the actual work and will be used and disposed of. Don't be a drone, get out of Oracle, don't let the management use you.

Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgement and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

The leaders at Oracle live in an imaginary world in their heads where they THINK they are always right. They are unable to learn from mistakes that are made, and instead of accepting responsibility for mistakes, and adjusting their behavior to improve themselves, they make up excuses for themselves and blame someone else, so they can go on pretending to be perfect in their own minds. They do not seek opinions from others, because that is a sign of weakness. You must, at all times, pretend that you are always right, and never question yourselves. Beat those people who disagree with you, into the ground and make sure no one listens to them again.

Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Oracle is obsessed with customers. They are obsessed with cheating them at every possible point. They obscure the legal mumbo -jumbo and arm-twist and muscle their way through all customer encounters with heavy-duty lawyers. They have to, they have to force customers to work with them.

It's a sad place. Get out when you can.

LOL! Have you ever known the 3 stooges to care about customers? It’s a really funny idea if you know anything about these theee characters.

Oracle could take a page out of Amazon's book since they want to copy them. Here are Amazon's guiding principals.

1. Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Ownership

1. Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”

2. Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here”. Because we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

1. Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgement and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

1. Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

1. Hire and Develop the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognise people with exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organisation. Leaders develop leaders and are serious about their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

1. Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards – many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

1. Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

1. Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

1. Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense. Don't pay your CEO's tens of millions of dollars if they haven't truly earned it.

1. Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odour smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

1. Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are sceptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

1. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

1. Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never compromise.

and..... destroying someone else is a way of destroying yourself.

Yes, kill or be killed. That's the way it works.

If you don't want to destroy someone else to keep your job, then you need to get out.

Kill or be killed.

That’s exactly right.

Oracle has a dog eat dog culture because that’s what LE wants

People at work are NOT your friends. This is NOT your fault.

Some of the friendliest people are being friendly because they want you to do something for them.... like their work. They will screw you over in the end. Don't trust anyone but yourself. Get out as soon as you can.

@U2WEp94-3vjz is right on the money.

It does not reflect on that person. It reflects on Oracle's divide and conquer toxic culture where the managers look after themselves and not their peeps.

Not all people are a--holes. Most of them probably are. But I can say that I have work friends who are true friends to this day from previous jobs. But your emphatic statement to the contrary spells illustrates that, at least you, are not a true friend to anyone you work with. Sad for you. Being a “user” is stated as the norm by you. Clearly it is your mindset. And that’s a shame. I pity you and your kind.

U2WEp94-3vjz is absolutely correct. Once you leave you are pretty much dead to those you my think are your ‘friends”

People at work are not your friends. It’s the sad truth and lesson which takes time to learn. As long as you can serve some kind of value to them they are your “work” friends. Once you leave the texts, phone calls, lunches all disappear. The only time they reappear is if they need a job or referral. Work culture, not only at Oracle, fosters these fake relationships ships. People are in it for what they can get and take. Once you serve your value you can easily be replaced.

@U2WEp94-2zjl More like, get out if you have any self respect. Not losers. Just folks pulled into complacency and fear of the unknown. Just do it. Get out. You’re not losers. Snap out of it! Stop PROPPING up the LE / Oracle myth.

@U2WEp94-2cse

I know what you mean. I started in the mid 80's. Worse yet, it is going to be years before they can get everything jammed into some form of Cloud architecture. And by then it will have been replaced by something else.

@U2WEp94-2xrh

You absolutely lived it. Sounds like you were great at your job, but unless you are a player, that would be unacceptable. I don't know if it was because of your gender, but I do know if you don't get your button, you are the enemy.

@U2WEp94-2tia You are right on.

The IT world has changed dramatically. Everything is in the Cloud, on a provisioned server. Even companies that do on premise are using virtual machines. It is nothing like the industry when I got into IT in the late 90s. I don’t care for this hollowed out one size fits all IT world.

this is an epic thread, probably the best one we had so far

To @U2WEp94-2pyj

Agreed. If you are in your late 50s, early 60s and you are within a handful of years before retiring, you might need to just s--- it up and get through it.

If you are in early 50s, I really don't think you are going to make it. The layoffs are leaning towards older people and you might do better to look outside Oracle for a job. In the very least, you can update your skills.

I was in my late 50s and left Oracle a couple of years ago. I needed to make the conversion from on-premise development to web development, so I spent my extra time working on websites of my own. This was incredibly useful, as I was eventually assigned to work on an ADF web application that I was told was "unusable". At the time, I didn't get what was happening. I thought I was being given the chance to show what I could do and I was prepared for it.

But, thinking back on it now, I think that my assignment to an "unusable" application was intended to be my death sentence. The assumption was that I would have no idea what to do. And I was female, so I was doubly assumed to be stupid.

So, I wrote an entirely new application, really complicated, heavy-duty javascript as I moved most of the processing to the client, to unburden the server side. It was really great. Worked fantastic, but has now been destroyed.

The result of that was for the people involved to sabotage the sh-- out of me, and take the application. But, I was sort-of prepared, as I knew the manager and his girlfriend that I would be working with were pure slime from the beginning.

Before I started, I decided that I was close enough to retirement, that I could just quit. And that's what I had to do.

Moral: Don't do anything out of the ordinary, unless you are prepared to quit. Don't take a chance unless you are prepared for serious consequences. There are a lot of really clueless people who will literally kill to keep their jobs, as they are deathly afraid of being laid-off.

There is no such thing as a “friend” inside oracle in the current environment. Look for this to get worse not better in the next several months. People are throwing one another under the bus daily. The management environment is one toxicity, constantly having to rank their direct reports, and be ranked by their managers. Popularity and performance are key. It’s not about doing a good job. As one 10yr + oracle sales manager veteran said to me, and I quote, “It’s about your reputation inside oracle that matters with leadership, as much as anything. Managing this is very important to survive.”

In other words, go do what we tell you. Sell Whatever we tell you to sell, the way we tell you to sell it, period. Temper your feedback (read: don’t use your brain until we tell you it’s ok to use it.)

Worst place to work. Terrible place for young people to start their careers. Oracle is like an alternate universe. Internally focused. Faux friendliness & toxic. TOXIC. A company who’s “financial success” is built on a house of cards from poorly managed acquisitions. The acquired entrepreneurial companies and their innovations and good people have enabled oracle to give oracle a mask and to make a completely false perception in the marketplace. It’s a just a house of cards. And that oracle cloud bluster is all hype and nonsense especially for the recent and past aquisitions. Oracle will kill them faster than you can say “sit”. The oracle cloud offering is DOA. DEAD 💀 ON ARRIVAL.

@U2WEp94-2tia

You are pretty much spot on, but you missed one more.

1. You are in your mid to late 50's or early 60's and have a year or three left before you can retire. Makes no sense in making a career change especially when your age makes you radioactive to most employers. So you ride it out as much as yu dislike it and hope you can beat the block.

This is going to change in the next few months. Those people working 18 hours who mention it to a "friend" will likely get turned into the management or HR or monitored and documented.... so that they are the ones that get laid off next.

Even if the other people who are reporting are also working 18 hours. No one will be safe. Continuous rolling layoffs means that everyone will be setting up someone in their group to be the next person laid off.... they will be making paper trails for their "friends".

I am glad I no longer have to deal with any sabotage like that. Get out while you have your sanity in tact.

If I was working only 18 hours a week, my self-esteem would be unbelievably low, it would be intensely depressing and unbelievably boring.

I LIKE to work. I ENJOY contributing, thinking of new things to work on, creating new software, etc. etc.

Glad I am no longer at Oracle. The 18-hour work week is what's wrong at Oracle. It attracts people who hate to work and consequently.... no work gets done. Oracle could lay off half its work force and nothing would happen except that the 18-hour workers would then have to work full time. They could save tons of money over the next few years. But it won't happen. Too much greed and laziness in the employees to get an honest opinion about how many people are actually needed.

While this is going on the good people are leaving in disgust.

"I don’t get it. What is holding people back from leaving??!!??"

1. Where else can you work 18 hour weeks for what Oracle will pay?

2. Oracle is a technology laggard in pretty much everything except database. It isn't easy to go somewhere else because past experience doesn't count for much and the technical screening interviews are on topics that Oracle employees often haven't had a chance to work on.

3. The move to Cloud isn't just a paradigm shift, but a fundamental transformation of the IT industry as computer/network/storage infrastructure is being outsourced and consolidated. That means there will be fewer places to apply these skills or that it will be necessary to shift careers (either to a new/different role in IT, to a new breed of company or to a totally different career path altogether). As a result, finding another job isn't "simple". Competition to get into one of the major Cloud companies is fierce and making a turn in a career path isn't trivial.

Get out losers!

Culture breathes the life into the unethical practices. I am so glad to be gone. I witnessed unethical selling and reported it several times without those having any consequences. LE and MH created the machine and keep it well oiled. The only way to survive is sell your soul and play the game.

Goes back to LE who could care less about culture, it’s all about him and his narcissism