I know that they don’t need some bigger motive to perform layoffs and that cost-cutting is always on the leadership’s mind, but is there any motive other than that? I believe many of you reached the conclusion that the layoffs had little to do with performance of a certain individual. So was this plain old cost-cutting or do they have some bigger reorg in mind with which they plan to reshape the company??
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The purpose? Shore up EPS to be able to lie about how oracle cloud is great to keep up the share price. They’re desperate the 3 stooges - no telling what other destructive things they will do next.
"How could they think that? Their product got rebranded "Classic"
They could think that since the message from LE (as was posted) is gearing towards a huge initiative to the cloud. They all have cloud backgrounds -- thought they'd be re-purposed on the new initiative. At the least, have a few more years left to keep the OCI-C up and running.
Not saying it was right or wrong think, but it is sound reasoning. The biggest thing working against them was TK leaving and the huge TCs most of them came in with.
" Yes, but in the same vein OCI-C folks could have construed that to mean they were safe -- they weren't."
How could they think that? Their product got rebranded "Classic" nearly two years ago, all new features & services were being built on OCI which was marketed as "Generation 2" since at least 2017, and all new datacentre regions were OCI.
If anybody in OCI-C thought they had a long-term product they were delusional.
YjMBK5m-sfd Was spot on!
I would like to add that there is/was a lot of talented engineers at oracle but no one is safe. LE lies - remember his “cloud is fake” spue a few years ago? Our group has pivoted towards DB, per LE latest speech but we were decimated last week. No one knows where to focus their efforts (at directors lvl and below) for training, except for OCI dev. There’s no internal planning or direction not even a roadmap. Anyone trying to plan their future at Oracle is just guessing. This is a well known fact for every IC. Eventually it will happen to OCI too.
The first cut is ALWAYS the biggest; then maybe followed by more calibrated incisions.
In a stable company, this might be true, but I expect that Oracle's revenue will start to decline and in that case the future is completely unknown.
Oracle is a company that uses the stick (fear) as its main tool to motivate its employees. Rolling layoffs have been going on for at least the past six years .
Sometimes the layoffs have an additional purpose but They always serve to keep the plebeians working at Oracle scared for their jobs. It’s psychological.
With (alleged )"strategic shifts" like this, layoffs also make non- strategic products or divisions more attractive to buyers.
...wait and see...
Purpose is to get rid off American employees and bring in over more H1Bs.
"If you stop and look around, there is a lot to "De-emphasize"
Yes, but in the same vein OCI-C folks could have construed that to mean they were safe -- they weren't.
And de-emphasize does not mean immediately, could mean a few years from now. I'm talking the immediate future. What happens 2-3 years from now? Who knows.
At any rate, if you are in an unprofitable or lackluster division, you should be concerned regardless of company.
And, especially of those with 10+ years under your belt, have an exit strategy.
Always have an exit strategy.
I think there is a fundamental shift going on. Oracle is starting to downsize and change its direction. Its going to jettison groups that are not directly related to cloud, specific cloud apps or database. LE made comments about "De-emphasizing" aspects of Oracle not related to the core of what he thinks is important for Oracle's future and growth.
If you stop and look around, there is a lot to "De-emphasize" and that is exactly what will happen.
Here is what is important to LE from the last earnings call. If you don't resonate with this then you should be worried.
Thank you, Mark. Oracle’s future rests on two strategic businesses, cloud applications and cloud infrastructure. The growth in our cloud applications business has been driven by our Fusion suite and NetSuite. Both the Fusion suite of applications and NetSuite are growing very, very rapidly. Mark gave you the numbers.
As the names imply, both Fusion and NetSuite with integrated suites of MRI cases, including sales, service, human resources, financials, supply chain and manufacturing applications. No other cloud services provider has such a comprehensive suite of applications covering both the front office and the back office. Most customers want their cloud services provider to make their applications work together. Customers do not like to be responsible for the complex process of integrating lots of different applications, running on lots of different vendor’s clouds.
We think our integrated suite approach to the cloud applications business is a primary reason for the very rapid growth in our cloud applications market share. The introduction of our gen 2 highly secure infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database has been very well received. During Q3, we had nearly 1,000. Over 4,000 active trials.
Our infrastructure technology is highly differentiated from AWS. Each one of our cloud computers has a separate security processor and memory, insulate customers from intruding upon each other and it also makes our cloud control code inaccessible by customers.
No other cloud services provider offers this kind of protection across their entire public cloud. The Oracle Autonomous Database is the only database that can respond to a security threat by automatically. No down time is required. No other database has this capability. Oracle technology leadership and cloud infrastructure and database plus our market leadership and cloud applications makes us very optimistic about our future.
The reason for the present lay-offs is to give an impression to the shareholders that something is happening in Oracle's cloud business, although it does not add up to anything.
" they do a lot of mini-rif's throughout the year so there's no publicity."
You're injecting speculation on their motive. Given the sheer size of Oracle, I'd point out this churn in employees (what you call mini-rifs) is industry standard. In fact, I would argue it is a lot lower than the likes of Netflix, Amazon, even Tesla.
Or might to make the company younger, especially in development
I'm not SC or MH, nor do I have any confirmed information from official Oracle executives, but I have worked here for over 10 years and have seen many rif's occur, followed by reorgs (large and small) and based on my own history with this situation here's the deal:
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Every Q1 (June-Aug) there are reorg's, some big, some small, often secret but when executives come in -usually with announcements. Sometimes rif's but not always.
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Every Q4 (March-May) there is comp/sales planning that creates rifs, not a surprise, expecially if you're in the sales org. You know if you're close to your target for the year and if you aren't - you typically will be let go or moved to an impossible target for the next fiscal year. Then you get rif'd.
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Cost cutting is definitely the goal with these rif's - you lower the headcount and the cost of salary and benefits. Not usually done with performance in mind but a good chance to get rid of the people you think are low performers (when you haven't put them on a PIP yet)
So the answer is all of the above and I don't think the rif's are over for Q4 or for FY20. Oracle has the rif process tuned to perfection. They don't like to issue Warn notices or fight with the worker councils in EMEA, so they do a lot of mini-rif's throughout the year so there's no publicity.
Most of the re-org was due to TK. Basically cleaning up TK's organization OCI-C.
The rest were mostly performance based.
No more re-org or major shifts for current year. No where in history does a company start with a small cut, then plan with bigger cuts in the same years sans some major market anomaly/change.
The first cut is ALWAYS the biggest; then maybe followed by more calibrated incisions.