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- Hacker News
- I'm confused... Did you expect anything different from Oracle?by freediddy
- How many h1bs are they filing for?by horns4lyfe
- Banks threatened Larry with a margin call for his $80B loans with stock collateral?by ags16
- Too bad they weren't unionized--I assume that would have helped.
The workers who built the company and created its worth (obviously not evenly distributed) now get a "thank you very much goodbye" e-mail. I think they deserve ownership and to take part in these decisions.
by nielsbot - It might have helped draw out the layoff process, potentially. Still not convinced unions would optimize overall outcomes for employees _while_ employed.
Maybe a better conversation to have as we keep moving through this AI Engineering era and a bunch of new companies are created. If you are considering founding a company, would you start it as a union shop? If not, why?
by sailfast - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/23/oracle-ai-job-cuts-layoffs-2...
Versus https://www.techtimes.co.uk/oracle-new-layoffs-restructuring...
It's unclear how many were actually cut because the 21000 / 13% numbers were reported nearly 3 months ago?
by maerF0x0 - I wonder how this holds up in the age of AIby 3pm
- If you run sub-par agents on large codebase that's kinda what they do. Every task ends with duplication, added flags bifurcating the code and everything else described in that comment hahaby morkalork
- I remember that comment and thinking that the author is complaining about a kind of success.
Oracle RDBMS is a critical component of huge and important application platforms from banking to infrastructure.
Millions of tests are good! I would be concerned if it wasn’t a “test heavy” development process.
A slow and measured pace with every consequence thought out is also good. Otherwise the product rots away in all but the most common combination of configurations.
Etc…
The only valid complaint is that the test farm is under-scaled. Increasing its capacity would direly increase development velocity.
by jiggawatts - Interesting that the immediate reply to that comment is about how ASML code is equally shittyby rhipitr
- I think agents have the capability to multiply this problem times 10. It doesn't have to be that way though. I think a skilled person will create great software regardless of the tools they use.by pbohun
- Oracle is now doing quarterly DB releases. This is not just patches but including big features. Any SQL enthusiast would most likely find Assertions [1] or Deep Data Security [2] interesting.
So looks like they overcome their limitations.
[1] https://oracle-base.com/articles/26/assertions-26 [2] https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/security/deep-data-securi...
- I love the smell of [layoff emails] in the morning.
Makes me wonder why they're shedding so much and if Zitron was a little right after all.
by rf15 - Yeah what’s the end game here? Can they keep running with such deep cuts to staff and morale…by bix6
- As someone also freshly laid off (not Oracle though), let me solemnly acknowledge my new cohorts. Best of luck to everyone, it's tough out there. Stay sharp and focused, hoping for the best.
Oracle is in a spiral it seems. Is Stargate still plugging along?
by rinconrex - While I feel sorry for the people involved, Oracle as a company richly deserves this, for reasons far too familiar to everyone here. This is a come-uppance that has been waiting to happen for decades.by lambdaone
- I'm not sure this is the come-uppance you've been waiting for. Oracle still has a larger market cap than at any point in history except the last ~2 years.by jonas21
- My employer has somehow managed to avoid the constant layoffs since 2022 trend, shockingly, and I think this is a big reason we have relatively low churn despite not having many promotions, refreshers, etc (on top of some relatively uncommon benefits for a large tech company). I was recently interviewing a few engineers from FAANG+ companies who are desperate to get out of the squid games and quarterly layoff fears. I wish more companies would realize what a selling point this is, and I wish my CEO would publicly brag about how is he is competent enough to not need to churn through 10+% of his workforce a year AND have great stock price growth over the last 6 years.by a34729t
- You could publicly brag about your company by naming it here :)by sjs7007
- > desperate to get out of the squid games and quarterly layoff fears
"If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease. I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."
— Satoru Iwata (former Nintendo CEO)
by nielsbot - > We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us.
Why do companies bother with this horse excrement? Does a sentence like this make anyone feel better?
Most times, I wish they'd just send the honest truth. "Hey, we screwed up. We over-hired and ran out of funds so we had to let you go to make payroll" or "Our M&A strategists overpaid for an over-leveraged company and now we have to figure out how to pay down the debt. Your position was cut as a result."
Obviously corporations owe nothing to nobody (apparently) but I'd love it if the patronizing language stopped.
by sailfast - They have the same psychology the leaders of communist states had. It's a constant litany of self-congratulation and tone-deafness that has no connection to reality.by vjvjvjvjghv
- And open themselves up for liability and getting sued by admitting mistakes? In your dreams.by dyauspitr
- > We over-hired
They didn't. Look at their headcount from 2010 until today.
by oblio - There have been a couple of cases of honesty in tech layoffs in the last couple where the employer specifically said that the layoffs were for performance which added insult to injury to the people laid off in that round and damaged their future hiring prospects, e.g. https://www.fastcompany.com/91262263/meta-rebranded-performa.... I'd rather not have the honesty in that case; that's a terrible thing to do to people.by ThrowawayR2
- Oracle's credit rating has been downgraded to a notch above "junk" status [1].
That means they can't borrow cheaply anymore. The only way to raise cash now is to cut payroll, and that's what they are doing. And what are they doing with the cash? Buying Nvidia hardware to rent out to OpenAI [2].
All Oracle is doing is unpacking Nvidia servers and plugging them in. This is a commodity business, Oracle has no IP in this. To fund it they are making deep cuts to their software development business which does have proprietary IP.
That may have made sense when it was originally announced because AI hype was at its peak at the time. Indeed, Oracle's stock shot up when Stargate was announced, and Larry Ellison briefly became the world's richest person. However, since then the AI hype has evaporated, and hyperscalers are no longer being rewarded with a higher stock price. Oracle stock has dropped more than 50%, and companies NOT investing 100s of billions in AI hardware are now being rewarded, such as Apple.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/magazine/takeaways-larry-...
by petilon - is it true that the companies investing 100s of billions into AI, have taken up a lot of debt in hope of AI making them trillions in revenue?by Byvrsakjo10
- They can raise cash by selling off the stock they have spent a decade buying back.
- >However, since then the AI hype has evaporated
What? Nvidia stock, for instance has been moving largely sideways for the past 4 months. Maybe it's not as jubilant as before, but it hasn't exactly "evaporated".
by gruez - ORCL down more than 50% in the past 12mo.by rconti