I was laid off last Jan 8th

I was laid off last Jan 8th along with hundreds of others that were > 40yrs old ! yes, the severance packet we received that we had to sign saying we wouldn't sue Oracle listed the ages of ALL employess laid off !

The true irony in all this was that months prior my management told me (>18yrs with Oracle).. "If you help mentor and train all the new hundres of Indian young "HUB" employees in our US and India locations, you'll probably get recognition from our VP !" .. I kid you not! So, like a dumb a--, that actually saw the writing on the wall, but felt, OK maybe others will be laid off but how could they riff me with stellar decade of reviews, and training the Indian "Hub" employees (just out of college and I sh*t you not.. were CLUELESS regarding Systems, Sizing, Application Architecture, Workload characterization, DB consolidation, or even basic stuff you should have learned in college!?

The moral of the story is that SafraK is clueless about Technology nor Innovation and just pinching pennies and spending all of Oracle's profits on stock buybacks of shares to artificially boost EPS, etc. and gutting higher paid or older employees and opening several hubs with H1B Visas's [that thank God Trump is stopping !]. You can't blame Safra, who is just taking the lead of 1/2 of Oracle Cloud/Sales Sr. mgmt (predominantly Indians under Thomas Kurian and HamaidoD, etc.. pushing for the Hubs).

The funny thing with Oracle in the industry is that it's biggest problem is with it's image, where literally 3/4 of customers I talk to say they won't answer Oracle's phone calls since they HATE their Sales and executives so badly , call them "the MOB in Suits" !! (being threatened audits of SW all the time and most customers end up saying sorry, we're removing ALL oracle HW & SW).

On the strategy side, Mark Hurd is a dinosaur, and even worse his right hand new men are other dead wood from HP, namely Dave Donatelli's crew who are clueless regarding what Cloud Architecture is really about, still talking about "Converged Infrastructure" !!? LMAO, and no real idea of why people are running to Amazon, Azure, Google, or yes, even IBM (because they have "mainstream" focus from 5-10yrs back courting college kids and developers and investing in Universities (where the next technology that dominates is taught to those that will purchase it in 5-10yrs !!! duh). Instead, Safra, and Mark decided to cut nearly all advertising/marketing except for 1 of few little frontpage WSJ adds (that NO ONE reads anymore !!! .. ).

They are saving $B's in new Trump Co tax cuts and won't invest in it's people for training, nor bonuses/raises, nor R&D, instead just dumping it in buybacks and treating employees like George Orwell's 1984, or Farenheit 451. Oracle's Not playing in the Consumer space at all, also hurts ORacle who is only targeting Enterprise Corporate customers who only account for less than ?20% of US GDP vs 70% for consumer spending. Larry has gone past his prime sadly, no longer very Innovative, and Mark Hurd is just a Sales exec that will lie to your face and cut, cut cut everything that made Oracle a great place to work (no longer car expenses for sales, no longer training except really c-appy online multiple choice training for dummies, no longer decent tuition reimbursement, no patent awards worth your time, NO employee incentives for coming up with ideas to save $ or for new products...etc. In a nutshell, Oracle Sr Mgmt & Execs think they know the world and don't want ANYONE to make recommendations, with all middle management scared c-apless to speak up to the Execs, and would rather fire anyone that asks questions (I've seen it a dozen times).

Oracle killed the best CPU on the planet (SPARC) and the best OS (Solaris), and just gave away JavaEE, along with killing OpenOffice, etc. etc. etc. etc. (Sun used to be the worlds #1 OpenSource co! yes, that's true).

It's just another page out of the IBM book (who now has a class-action lawsuit case against it for AGE DISCRIMINATION for firing >20,000 US employees >40 yrs old this past yr.. Not to mention that IBM now has many more employees in India for much less $$ that they have in the US, slave labor is pretty cheap when you work people to the bone and pay them a fraction of their US counterparts).

Wakeup all, companies need to treat employees better and maybe employees will ?? hmmm?? work harder and feel loyal to their companies after working long hours there for decades ?

Thank god the US is gutting H1B visa's, but still have a huge # lobbied by Safra and the rest of Silicon Valley over highly qualified US based/born nationals, heaven forbit if you're > 40 or even 50! .. you're doomed, or better walk on water or have customers personally send a letter to your VP's to keep you hired. All in all, Sadly, even though this is all true, this is politically incorrect talk that the media will never report.

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Oracle killed the best CPU on the planet (SPARC)

Oh, jeez, give it up will ya?

Do you also have a sign that says "VW killed the best car on the planet (BEETLE)?"

Was laid off Jul 31, age 49 with 22+ years of service, co-workers all older than me avg age 58. Some laid off in Jan the rest of us in Jul. No one has found a job in same industry. A few have jumped over to other lines of work taking junior positions for benefits. It's tough, do not believe the US unemployment #s the are higher than reported.

In development the management seems to be inciting people to leave in the U.S. I know a manager who has a group of older developers in HQ. Instead of putting them together as one group working on a project, they have each one of them work with a group of developers in India. Keeps them from helping one another and they have to work only with people in India, which is a pain to do.

I expect that dev managers are getting bonuses based on how many older employees they can get to leave. Like the OP who helped in his own demise.... the dev managers are really setting up their demise. When dev is moved mostly to India, the dev management will also be moved there. If you are part of the management and are working to move jobs to India, you are setting yourself up.

I know someone at HP who has a manager who gets bonuses for getting people in France to quit. Could be the same at Oracle and oriented towards getting older workers to quit.

Put the older people with groups in India, give them the wrong information so that they make mistakes.... a manager has a lot of power in who they choose to communicate with. You can be set up easily. And don't think it's just technical ability that is used to lay-off people, which can be sabotaged with bad information. It's also personal conduct. If you are getting upset by the people around you doing the wrong things, they can record you, and provide that information to HR. Say that you are difficult to work with, when they are inciting the problem all along. If the people around you seem to be "too" stupid to believe, it is possible they are playing at being stupid to get you upset.

You can't trust the management, or other developers that might have an incentive to get rid of the more experienced people.

But, in the end, like the OP, these people will eventually be targeted also. They should consider who they are working for and after they are used to get rid of people, they may well be discarded also.

Remember too that Amazon is a SPARC customer. They made some substantial purchases over the last few years. I'm not saying that SPARC is relevant anymore and they were likely just expanding some capacity but it is still out there.

"And why are people running to Amazon?"

My understanding is that SuperCluster had its best quarter ever.

For you anti-Trump people who are reading this and following the h1-b blabber, do you really think that limiting h1-bs will hurt US labor ? No, it will only cause inflation in places like Bangalore and Hyderabad as corporations move their operations overseas. The real problem here is short term thinking and outright globalist greed. Also, the problem is not Republicans or Democrats , it is the lack of confidence the American public has in themselves. If you would all recognize that we have empowered both of these parties to do bad things, you would change who you vote into office. As troubling as you might think it is , voting Libertarian is not so bad.

good post OP

Looks like the customers have got it right:

"the MOB in Suits"

That's Oracle inside and out. Even dev management operates like the mafia, demanding loyalty before competence. Scum city. If you have any self-respect, get out of the company.

A ling rambling post ... If you think Solaris or H1B is the problem, I am glad you are not at Oracle. I doubt you would have helped Oracle rebuve.

"Oracle killed the best CPU on the planet (SPARC) and the best OS (Solaris)"

And why are people running to Amazon? It's not because they offer garbage like Slowlaris or SPARC. All you salty old ex-Sun dinosaurs, Starbucks is hiring!

If a company wants to go overseas, I say go as fast as you can. Goodbye and good luck.

I do agree that gutting the H1B visa can benefit USA jobs but only for a short term solution. This does not prevent any company to move their entire project to a foreign country with cheap labor workforce. All companies are now looking for GOOD ENOUGH quality (NOT the GREATEST as it once use to be) at the cheapest rate.

As technology gets better and better, human jobs will become less and less. Just think about farming today vs. farming in the 60's. You no longer need employees on the farm to pick the fruit. All you need is one machine that does the work faster and better.

I don't believe SC herself would dispute that she doesn't do strategy; she's there to run the business. SPARC was not the best CPU, just look at how Sun couldn't keep it competitive in its last years (ever try to do any serious work on a T-1000?). If anything, Oracle should be given credit for reviving SPARC again and letting it retire with some class (M7 and M8 had very decent single-thread performance), even to the point of LE asking for the cloud-tailored SPARC S7 CPU which did make it to market but unfortunately didn't live long. I do agree that the executives you mentioned: MH, DD, and LE are clueless about what the cloud market is these days.

Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

I was laid off last Jan 8th

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