Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

• 4wkd QUOTE: "There is no reason to work here. You can wait for your payout, but it will look better to any employer you interview with if you take the initiative to leave on your own. When asked why you left, you can then honestly talk about the decline and decay of Oracle, rather than say "Uh, I was just sitting around one day, and got laid off"."

If you expect to be looking for another job as opposed to retiring after being laid off, think several times about the big "package" you are hoping for. Prospective employers are LESS THAN IMPRESSED by somebody who marked time for a layoff package as opposed to proactively bettering themselves and looking for a job while still employed in a place that did not use their skills or had no future.

QUOTE: “ You can't build software with a bunch of simple-minded, clueless managers who are completely obsessed with themselves and how they look.”

RESPONSE: BS. What do you think that OCI is trying mightily to do?

Get a clue, my friend.

They don't take a college grad give him six weeks of training and put him in surgery. The police don't let rookies replace the veterans right out of training. Its simple. Training and experience are required for every profession to be successful. It takes time. When the professional has the training and experience his or her wages go up, because he or she is worth more.

This goes double for software engineers. College barely begins the training process. I learned programming in school, but that was only the barest beginnings. I learned the real details of any programming language I have used ON THE JOB. I learned how to plan, design, implement, test and document software on the job. No one comes out of college with this expertise.

Oracle development strives to remove all the knowledgeable software developers, replace them with cheap college graduates or unexperienced workers from overseas. The narcissistic and simple-management see this as a bonus, since they no longer will have anyone on their teams who can argue with them. Unfortunately, the managers who think this way are thinking only for the moment and thinking only of hiding their own stupidity.

You can't build software with a bunch of simple-minded, clueless managers who are completely obsessed with themselves and how they look. Remove all the people underneath them and replace them with cheaper people who know nothing, and you have a complete and total disaster.

Oracle is dead. The primary reason is the incompetence of development management.

There is no reason to work here. You can wait for your payout, but it will look better to any employer you interview with if you take the initiative to leave on your own. When asked why you left, you can then honestly talk about the decline and decay of Oracle, rather than say "Uh, I was just sitting around one day, and got laid off".

And your posting on this blog will do that? Are you serious?
C'mon, admit it, You have a personal vendetta against MH.

There are two basic types of leaders. Those who innovate and those who cut costs. No one ever shrunk into greatness with cost cutting. Cutting costs has its place in the accounting and finance department. It is not effective leadership.

Leadership that focuses on the short term financial bottom line at the expense of long term growth brings the company to eventual ruin. Its is a repeatable pattern. I hope that one day it will be an understood immutable law of business.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can just be converted from one form to another. In simple words, the first law of thermodynamics states that whenever heat energy is added to a system from outside, some of that energy stays in the system and the rest gets consumed in the form of work.

Much like the laws of physics, you get out of a a system slightly less energy than you put in. If you starve the system you will eventually shut it down. Cutting costs with out focus on employee and product development will deplete the products produced, and eventually lead to a decline in revenue generated.

This is the perfect place to discuss what happened to Oracle. The perfect explanation to why people are getting laid off. The perfect explanation to what will happen to Oracle. Oracle's failure was set in motion by the "cost cutting" type of leadership.

MH was a student, a disciple, if you will, of the ruthless cost cutting philosophy. He applied it with a vengeance at Oracle in everything he did. The sole reason he focused on college grads was they were cheaper that an experienced worker. Whats cheaper than a US worker? Foreign labor. You can see much of the jobs went at Oracle went to regions were the wages are low.

Whats cheaper than Foreign labor? A college grad. What is cheaper than a college grad? college grad in a low wage foreign country. Perfect! Thus the "Class of" (genius) program MH was so proud of was born. It went global. Call centers sprung up with power points and recent college grads with click through demos began dialing for dollars.

I was on calls with those grads. The customer would ask the simplest of questions and there was no good response. They lacked the experience.

Two things make a profession, training and experience. A doctor has been trained in medicine and has experience in it. A police officer has been trained and has experience arresting burglars. If you need surgery you don't want a police officer. If someone is breaking into your home you son't want a doctor.

They don't take a college grad give him six weeks of training and put him in surgery. The police don't let rookies replace the veterans right out of training. Its simple. Training and experience are required for every profession to be successful. It takes time. When the professional has the training and experience his or her wages go up, because he or she is worth more.

MH began the whole sale replacement of veteran sales, veteran engineers and developers with foreign labor and college grads and the result is being seen.

"this blog" rofl

It is important to tie Oracles failure to the actions of MH so everyone knows who caused the downfall.

And your posting on this blog will do that? Are you serious?

C'mon, admit it, You have a personal vendetta against MH.

Yes the MH "type" is the executive playing a brutal heartless numbers game at the expense of long term viability.  Chain Saw Al... was the first of many to stoop so low.  Layoffs, reduced employee morale, reduced productivity and no investment in R&D for long term growth is not a recipe for success.

It never ends well for anyone. The company suffers, the customers suffer, the employees suffer and then it collapses with the company being bought out.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2025898_2025900_2026107,00.html
For an executive, the game is all about deftly managing a workforce composed of actual human beings while meeting the demands of the bottom line. The greatest of bosses can even become your friend as they bring smiles to shareholders' faces. On the other end of the spectrum are leaders like Al Dunlap, also known as the Chainsaw. Now retired, Dunlap spent his career hopping from one corporate boardroom to the next, applying a myopic obsession with his companies' financials at the expense of absolutely everything else. During his stint atop Scott Paper, a tenure that began in 1994, Dunlap engineered a corporate restructuring that put 35% of the workforce (or 11,000 people) out of a job. The move simultaneously brought a rise in share value of 225%, and resulted in Kimberly-Clark buying out Scott Paper the year after Dunlap took the helm.

Capitalizing on his own fame, Dunlap wrote a best-selling manifesto titled Mean Business. But making a career out of business brutality would prove his undoing. An ensuing stint at Sunbeam imploded when Dunlap was confronted in a 1998 investors' meeting over his strategy of moving up sales dates for consumer goods like outdoor cooking grills well ahead of delivery in order to advance quarterly sales statistics. After the investors' meeting, at which 200 Wall Street honchos were in attendance, Dunlap accosted one of his skeptics, placing his hand over an employee's mouth and, according to a report by the magazine then known as Businessweek, yelled into his ear, "You son of a b–ch. If you want to come after me, I'll come after you twice as hard." Dunlap's financial craftiness was widely viewed to have crossed the lines of accounting norms, and he was let go later that year. Sunbeam could never shake the taint caused by Dunlap and filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

An earlier version was "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap. Evolved to the MH Method. Would indeed be a good management case study book.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/obituaries/al-dunlap-dead.html

Yet you obsess about him.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. MH was the quintessential example of what not to do. The story is not over until Oracle breaks apart and becomes a shadow of its former self.

It is important to tie Oracles failure to the actions of MH so everyone knows who caused the downfall. The ops post and the dailymotion article should go into a business text book and taught at universities around the globe. MH and hus tactics should be synonymous with disastrous long term failure.

He doesn't live rent free in our skulls any more than any other example of what not to do.

Yet you obsess about him. Go to the HP pages here. He caused far more damage there and they don't obsess over him or over Carly Fiorina or Meg Whitman, who presided over huge layoffs at HP (especially CF). They threw the HP Way out, and turned HP, which never had mass layoffs before, into a hire and fire company. And they don't obsess over them.

And do you really think anyone who makes decisions when appointing CEOs cares a whit about what is posted here?

He's dead and never coming back, yet he lives rent free inside your skulls.

His "type" lives on. Its important to see the damage this type of executive does. Important that it becomes a text book example of who not to hire to run a healthy company. He doesn't live rent free in our skulls any more than any other example of what not to do.

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.

He's dead and never coming back, yet he lives rent free inside your skulls.

https://www.datamation.com/columns/article.php/3902836/Why-Mark-Hurd-is-a-Bad-Match-for-Oracle.htm

This guy called it back in 2010.... Exactly what happened. MH was perfectly predictable.

Why MH is a Bad Match for Oracle
By Rob Enderle, Posted September 9, 2010
As a turnaround CEO, MH could be unmatched, but he would not be the best choice if you wanted to build a company rather than sell one.
We seem to be surrounded by drama in the tech sector based on some questionable decisions at the moment. The most recent is the hiring of MH, the former HP CEO, by Oracle this week. While the entire event had me write up a story line for a potential sitcom or reality TV show, ( I know, I should likely keep my day job) it also showcases what may be a very bad practice of mismatching the skills of the employee with the job.
Let’s separate from the drama and talk about why MH is a bad match for Oracle this week.
What MH Was
At HP, Mark Hurd was positioned as an executive with operational excellence that exceeded most others. After the fact, we learned that he actually was something quite different. The skill that Hurd demonstrated is more similar to an executive who is expert at packaging companies for sale.
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.
As a turnaround CEO, Hurd could be unmatched, but he would not be the kind of executive you would get if you wanted to build a company rather than sell one.
Oracle’s Problem
Oracle has a huge problem with Sun Microsystems. The company was failing when Oracle bought it, having tried to switch from a proprietary hardware strategy to an Open Source software strategy and finding the move to be too great to accomplish.
The purchase process wasn’t well orchestrated and it was blocked by the European Union, which made problems worse. Sun bled qualified people at massive rates. By the time Oracle had completed the acquisition they had little more than a shell of brands and products in a company that many would argue was simply not viable.
In short, the skill set they desperately need is that of a builder. They need someone who can draw in creative and driven new people and help them reconstruct a new company with elements of Oracle and Sun, a company that can effectively compete against IBM, HP, Dell, Microsoft, and Acadia.
They need someone like an Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ken Oshman, Larry Ellison, Joe Tucci or Thomas Watson Jr., executives who had the skills to develop their respective companies, build loyal employees, and drive their companies strategically to dominate their chosen segments for a time.
I reference Ken Oshman because his ROLM telecommunications company at its peak was the quintessential example of what can be done if you think strategically. Or if you consider what can happen if you lose track of that and focus on short-term financial goals, which is eventually much of what k–led that firm after he departed and it was purchased by IBM and Siemens.

Wrapping Up
Hurd’s skill set, which trades off the strategic for the tactical, would have been great at Sun while it was being packaged for sale to Oracle. But it will likely be unsuccessful in the recovery stage it now finds itself in. Key employees will not want to stay with Oracle if they believe that Hurd will mostly cut their benefits, entitlements, and shift their jobs to lower cost locations without them. Attracting qualified employees will even be more difficult and the ones they do get are will likely be in “any port in a storm” mode and unlikely to be particularly loyal.
This is a bad match of skills and one you would think Larry Ellison would know to avoid. However I think it is increasingly likely that Hurd got fired as a result of taking advice from Larry Ellison, first on hiring the individual Hurd conflicted with, and second on how he handled the problem – the combination of which got him fired. As a result I believe this is largely Larry’s attempt to make up for messing up Mark’s life. If I’m correct, Larry would be wise to simply send some flowers and an apology card next time.

"And, in that time, they had to bifurcate the company, just to survive. "

I think that was more of a gimmick to get the stock price up.

Spliiting HP did nothing to bring back the dying injet printer market. HPQ is going to layoff 9000 people and is facing a hostile takeover by Xerox , which will mean even more layoffs.

And HPE isn't doing all that great either.

Sobering thought people ... 10 years later and HP still has not fully recovered from MH's legacy. And, in that time, they had to bifurcate the company, just to survive. Oracle should not expect to see better days for a very long time.

Hurd caused a horrific Brain Drain at Oracle over 10 years. Truly shocking. His cost cutting policies cause the best sales people to leave. He stuff in way too many reps, raised quotas dramatically, and starved people out. Add to that wound the the ludicrous TBH policy where managers cannot even reassign active accounts when attrition does occur, which it does, daily. And, he support people like Olsen and Gerraffo. Both of whom were / are way over their heads. And in case of Olsen, she destroyed what was a great culture on Apps side of biz with her tantrums and bullying . Hurd let all this fester and grow. She was awful. Hurd really hurt shareholder value. I was there 20 years. I have no respect for how he managed Oracle. He was really damaging and I just dont understand how LE and BOD did not see it. I feel bad for his kids that they lost their father.

I hope everyone of you are fired if you work for Oracle. Get a life.

The 3 stooges - LE, MH, SC - are just that, 3 people who are completely unsuited yo running a company, especially a tech company, in 2020. The results, as OP points out, speak for themselves: the wheels are off the bus. Whether you like the idea or not, it’s time to pick up and go to a better neighborhood- this o e has gone to hell. Good luck!

Decent analysis but let's not forget that TK also played his role in this debacle. Verbally abusing people and micromanaging completely unimportant project aspects while missing the big picture is his contribution.

It is also LE's legacy. He was the one so defensive over his own reputational stumbles that he rushed to defend then hire his tennis buddy after buddy had that scandal at HP.
He knew what he was getting, a bottom line oriented cost cutter and sales guy. It is on LE. He made a bad mistake and probably cannot see it even now.
Is he still showing up 3 days a week?