If you make good money, watch out. You're probably on the list. Me, I'm underpaid. So maybe they keep me around a while longer. Silver linings.
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Sorry to burst your bubble but I got laid off in September and my pay was lower than the grade minimum. No one else in the team got laid off.
@bb a history of attaining certifications shows a future employer that you worked on continuing education. You are willing to learn new skills. The actual certifications may not be that relevant but the fact that you chose to do the work to get them matters a lot. You would be surprised at how many people haven't done anything since they graduated college or even high school. Learning is a lifelong process and successful people know this.
If you were stuck at low pay or no/low increases you were identified as someone who was not likely to leave. They didn't have to spend any more to retain you. Chances are you were making a decent salary and liked your job. This doesn't make you exempt from layoffs.
Got as many certifications I could that I thought (and my manager agreed) were useful for me and our team. All this meant nothing (and manager reluctantly agreed) when it was time to review performance. That's when I stopped caring about getting any more certifications.
@bb,
I have one Oracle cert; I'm glad I didn't waste too much time on them. Instead, I got Oracle to pay for real certs from real vendors.
@ax I've been applying for jobs for six months now, not ONE of them mentioning Oracle. You can get all the Oracle certifications you want, it won't do you one bit of good anywhere else. I have no idea how transportable those are to other technologies or how specific these certifications are to only Oracle products. I'm kind of glad I didn't go for one of these certifications - especially when laid off, would that have saved my job? Probably not. It looks too much like your salary is what determines your fate, they want money, so they're going to cut the higher paid people, no matter what certifications they had.
The entire time I've been at Oracle, they've deliberately not funded any training or conferences, and kept telling me to use internal materials to learn Oracle technologies. They also systematically browbeat staff with unnecessarily complicated policies and approval processes until the fear grips them and they taken down any "personal professional brand" stuff from the Internet. Then after years of having a captive workforce that work for less than they're worth, they make a spreadsheet and lay people off regardless of performance and knowledge level. Now those people struggle to find jobs, as they're basically starting from zero on upskilling into non-Oracle industry relevant skills.
Bottom line - There is NO DEMAND in the IT job market right now for Oracle experience. All the years you spent trying to "impress" Oracle management means zilch.
If you think that your "20 years" of Oracle experience will net you some big pay day elsewhere, "Fuggetaboutit"!
@a4 Sure good luck finding a new job with oracle technology these days.
It's true. After 24 years of low pay, frequent zero increase review cycles, etc., I finally got to decent compensation. Then I was RIF'd.
When I get rif’ed in 2018, they cut my manager and my entire group. No pay nor grade level was spared.
Now, my wife is former Sun and hasn’t had many/any raises so I’m hoping they’ve changed tactics to what you’re saying
I can totally relate. 22 years with Oracle and 17 of those came with no focal or raise of any kind. We merged with another team and come to find out those new members all make 50-75k more than me and my old team members, but we do the exact same job now. The acquisitions done over the years created a huge disparity in pay that Oracle never bothered to address. Hopefully being at the bottom of the pay scale will provide some job security.
No way. Its all with your relationship with your manager and second line.
Don’t be afraid of growing. Sometimes finding new job is an excellent way to grow.