The latest 10-K for FY2019 did not include any advanced notice of money set aside for restructuring primarily due to employee severance packages. This was by design, we have no idea how large will be. Rumor is Oracle will shrink from 140k to less than 100k employees globally.
The points below should make it clear that huge multiphase Global layoffs will be in progress this year. The organization headed by MH is to be culled to bare bones, milking support and staying ahead of costs through employee consolidation and reduction in force. The Organization headed by RG is the one that will be invested in. This goes with a very simple philosophy it is easier to turn a small speed boat than a large aircraft carrier.
https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-explains-oracle-ongoing-restructuring-2019-6
Larry Ellison explains Oracle's restructuring and layoffs: Some of our business units are 'melting away' and 'we just don't care' Oracle has been conducting rolling layoffs worldwide since March, impacting all sorts of units, including its all-important cloud divisions.
On Wednesday, Oracle founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison gave some insight into what's going on, saying that some of Oracle's businesses "are melting away and we just don't care. We are focused on our star products and our star products are now driving our top line higher."
He said shrinking businesses included some old-school, on premises software products. That seems obvious as Oracle is now pushing its customers to buy the cloud versions of many of its products.
But Ellison also threw Oracle's Data Cloud business into the "shrinking, we-don't-care" bucket blaming the unit's problems on "all the privacy issues," he said.
Data Cloud was formed through a series of acquisitions of online advertising data companies like BlueKai, Datalogix, and Moat. Oracle spent about $3 billion on six key acquisitions for the unit, Ad Exchanger reports.
A spokesperson tells Business Insider, "Every year Oracle hires tens of thousands of employees and we are currently hiring globally and in every line of business, including OCI Gen2. Enabling our customers' success has always been a top priority for Oracle. We are laser-focused on delivering the best cloud products that drive efficiencies, fuel innovation and impact the bottom line for our customers around the world."
This means you are either in the growth organization or you are on your way out.
Evidence more layoffs are coming
**1. Executive departures and demotions in the past 9 months. They were aware of the massive reorg coming this week. They were not on board with the direction the company is taking.
TK: President of product development (13 years)
PA: Vice President Product Management - Oracle Database (22 years)
HD: Senior Vice President, North America Technology Solution Engineering and Cloud Customer Success (19 years)
MS from Sun is an individual contributor now, he was SVP of Microelectronics (Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, Oracle).
AZ ... and the list goes on... a few more departed in the past two weeks.
TK wanted Oracle to make more of its software available to run on public clouds from chief rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as a way to diversify from its own struggling infrastructure, a view opposed by Ellison.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-12/oracle-s-kurian-is-said-to-take-leave-amid-discord-with-ellison
The key here is a recognition of a failing cloud strategy by executives and an open acknowledgement of a lack of both growth and investment in Oracle traditional business. The executives are leaving after decades of service in droves because they can not see any sort of future for Oracle.
**2. March 21 2019: Oracle shuts down its Advertising and Marketing group.
Early in the day, our world-class in-house brand creative team was dissolved.
After more than a decade of building and growing a multidisciplinary brand and creative team with operations in Silicon Valley, SF, LA, NY, TX, Portland, and India, a MANDATORY Organization Announcement conference call delivered the dire news.
The shock was sudden, and disorienting. The initial numbness gave way to questions that couldn't be answered, for doing so is not part of standard corporate protocols for processes like this. Instead team members comforted each other. We helped each other to ready for the end of our last day at Oracle, to alert our colleagues, friends, and business partners, our agencies, and vendors—to minimize any disruption for them, while ours was full blown.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creative-we-stand-francisco-g-delgadillo/
Shutting down marketing and advertising is a strong signal Oracle is no longer pursuing a growth strategy for its mainstream products.
**3. Oracle shutters R&D center in China.
Director of Oracle human resources for the Asia-Pacific region makes the following announcement:
Per orders from the U.S. headquarters, Oracle is planning to make some major changes to optimize its business structure, which will inevitably result in huge multi-phase staff reductions globally."
U.S. computer technology giant Oracle is shuttering its entire Research and Development Center in China (CDC). More than 900 employees have been laid off, and the second round of job cuts is expected to happen in July.
According to several Chinese media reports, the layoff notice was made in an all-hands meeting on Tuesday. In the meeting, the company’s head of human resources for the Asia-Pacific region announced that per orders from the U.S. headquarters, Oracle was planning to make some major changes to optimize its business structure, which would inevitably result in huge multi-phase staff reductions globally. Following the brief statement were private layoff conversations inside the Beijing branch of the center, where about 500 employees were informed of their loss of jobs.
https://supchina.com/2019/05/09/oracle-to-lay-off-1600-staff-in-china/
**4. MH, the Oracle CEO is a numbers guy. He uses cost cutting as his strategy.
2010 Article: Why Mark Hurd is a Bad Match for Oracle
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.
source https://www.datamation.com/columns/article.php/3902836/Why-Mark-Hurd-is-a-Bad-Match-for-Oracle.htm
If you want to be successful predicting the future take a good look at the past. MH has a strategy. It's the same strategy he has employed his whole career, he makes cuts to cost centers to keep profits up. MH laid off 25,000 people at HP, he has laid off over 23,000 people at Oracle since 2016, and that’s when things were good and revenue was growing.
MH was hand picked by Larry Ellison for this express purpose. He is now in charge of melting away everything under his organization. Good luck everyone. If there ever was a clear way of communicating it is time to find another job it has been communicated in thought word and deed by Oracle’s highest ranking officials.