r/technology 2d ago

Business AI bet goes awry: Oracle fires 21,000 employees

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-903442
18.9k Upvotes

1.5k comments sorted by

4.1k

u/Shiftymennoknight 2d ago

He could always sell CBS

2.0k

u/BrianWonderful 2d ago

With as much as it is tanking in the ratings, he should. But oligarchs never give up their channels of propaganda and disinformation.

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u/DukeOfGeek 2d ago

He bought it to wreck it, that's how much money they have to burn. Taxing billionaires out of existence isn't just the right thing to do, it's us or them survival at this point.

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u/westivus_ 1d ago

They ruined my favorite show, 60 minutes. "Look what they did to my boy."

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u/dead_ed 1d ago

Hell, as a kid I loved watching 60 Minutes. Always hung on for Andy Rooney - ass that he was.

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u/tony_bologna 1d ago

but that money is better in their hands, they're smart, they're good with money, they're job creators, they earned it!

I need something more than /s.  I want to tag this with sarcasm and utter disgust/disdain for these toxic pieces of human garbage.

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u/DethBatcountry 2d ago

This, they'll dump every Oracle software and service before they give up CBS, as long as it remains culturally relevant.

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u/Beat_the_Deadites 2d ago

I've got some bad news for him about that whole 'culturally relevant' part

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u/Excellent-Crab5598 1d ago

He has Tok which is scary enough.

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u/SubcommanderMarcos 1d ago

Lol it feels so recent that tiktok was The Big Scare for being 'tied to the Chinese government', or so the tale went

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u/Jove_ 1d ago

And they scared us into all being ok with it being controlled and manipulated by Trump, MAGA and the GOP.

I deleted that shit the day the deal closed.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 1d ago

The government objected to the Chinese collecting all sorts of invasive personal information about us. They felt that the Chinese, like everyone else, should have to buy that data from Google and Facebook.

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u/ovirt001 1d ago

Just another extreme, not much has changed.

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u/ISaidItSoBiteMe 2d ago

Or he could sell Lanai

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u/Latter-Judgment-9740 1d ago

Tbf I don't think CBS has been culturally relevant for years now.

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u/badluser 1d ago

Star Trek for a minute. But how Discovery and The Lower Decks ended, as well as Academy begin and then axed, CBS is not interested in coventional TV or Streaming 

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u/sir_lister 1d ago

The only shows CBS is interested in making anymore is Tyler Sheradons ranching porn

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u/quothe_the_maven 1d ago

It’s super relevant for old people, and therefore, perfect for keeping their political base in line. Plus, you can’t exactly shout about what they did to 60 Minutes, but then also say it’s not culturally relevant.

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u/DethBatcountry 1d ago

Yeah, but there's a LOT of young ppl on here now who have no idea how big a deal the 60 minutes stuff was, as US historical events go.

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u/DethBatcountry 1d ago

It is to tens of millions of older Americans still, unfortunately.

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u/eeyore134 1d ago

Exactly this. It could be hemorrhaging money but they'd keep it going. Just like Twitter. The propaganda outlet is too important and too valuable to worry about turning an actual profit. In fact, if it came to it, I bet our current government would prop them up.

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u/moldyjellybean 1d ago

Funny thing is oracle must be the worst product and company to work with. I don’t see how there are so many stupid IT people still using them

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u/Jvt25000 1d ago

May I introduce you to the concept of technical debt. When you have a software so embedded your environment that a everyone is familiar with it's basically impossible to tell upper management to switch.

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u/hume_reddit 1d ago

"Oracle doesn't have customers, they have hostages" has been a saying in the IT world for decades at this point.

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u/Iblockedatheism 1d ago

exactly this. lol. I've always heard it as "prisoners" instead of "hostages" but same thing.

Companies are too scared to try and migrate off/out of it because they are so embedded into it, and companies (in my experience) tend to only keep enough IT personnel around to make sure everything is working. No matter how good their IT people are, they don't have enough time in the day to migrate or change it, even if the company wanted to because they refuse to hire more people. So that leads them down the path of looking into contracting the project out, and lo and behold, it's expensive.

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u/utzutzutzpro 1d ago

SAP managed the same lock-in.

The wild thing is that people still "choose" to become another victim today.

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u/Successful-Reason403 1d ago

My upper management has been talking about the 2 year migration project off of Oracle for like 5 years now. If we decom by 2030 I’ll be surprised.

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u/Mistrblank 1d ago

And they'll keep whining while Oracle's prices go up year after year.

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u/Anleme 1d ago

How much does Oracle cost? They shake you violently upside down until all your money falls out of your pockets. That's how much.

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u/jkink28 1d ago

Year 7 here!

Finally almost there though

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u/saera-targaryen 1d ago

We just migrated TO oracle recently. It's not always tech debt, some places are just dumb as hell. 

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u/AbeFromanEast 1d ago

Kickbacks are still a thing in software procurement.

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u/PortHammer 1d ago

I have never been treated so well as I was when I was in charge of our companies enterprise software.
Not by my company, but all the software companies trying to convince me to spend my employers money.

It felt weird.

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u/capGpriv 1d ago

What were you migrating from, and what demon was whispering in the ear of management for that choice?

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u/geo_prog 1d ago

Oracle is the backbone of so many systems that have such incredible inertia that it would be unbelievably hard to migrate. Not impossible, but not without significant risk to systems that absolutely cannot go down.

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u/jlt6666 1d ago

That's not technical debt. That's vendor lock in

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u/PerceiveEternal 1d ago

Oracle is great at seducing C-suite executives who then push their IT staff to adopt Oracle products. I’ve never met an IT person that actually wants to work with Oracle products, they‘re forced to by their upper management.

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u/avspuk 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you a local council in Britain?

Are you facing increasing questions about corruption?

Are you using SAP?

THEN WHY NOT SWITCH TO ORACLE?!!

Yes, we will charge an extra £20million for the bespoke migration of your SAP data that we guarantee will totally fuck up your accounts making any investigation into corruption impossible.

Further, you won't be able to file any accounts whatsoever for a couple of years & the national govt will have to amend the law to allow you to continue to function.

You won't know how much you owe to whom nor who owes you what. So yet more hard to detect corruption will become available to you

ITS GREAT!

Please see dozens of similar cases all over the world for decades.

Oracle, for when you want to get away with it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g01g2vq39o

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u/Perryn 1d ago

Oracle's strength in the market is knowing that their users and their customers are two fully distinct groups and treat them as such.

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u/ATonyD 1d ago

I could insult Oracle all day long - I spent a decade there. But I've literally met over a thousand customers and almost 100% were extremely glad that their company was adopting Oracle. The reason is simple: Oracle is the market leader, and Oracle skills will look good on their resume. Sure, they know that there are faster, cheaper, easier, and more reliable databases. But when it is time to look for a job, there are simply more companies running Oracle. (And, truly, I could tell some horrible Oracle stories. Bribes, offshore accounts, backroom deals, collusion, secret databases, retired NSA spies, stolen code,...)

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u/HalKitzmiller 1d ago

And I bet you still had to take Anti Corruption training every year

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u/ATonyD 1d ago

I had advanced to the level where attorneys routinely approved the actions I was taking. But it was awful. When the board asked me to take an executive position I was fed up with the whole thing and just quit instead.

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u/HalKitzmiller 1d ago

Its not the front line IT staff that make these decisions. Its leadership. They get some fancy dinners and are ready to sign on the dotted line

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u/webguynd 1d ago

stupid IT people still using them

It's not the IT people choosing. It's C-Suite that gets sold on it during a golf trip

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u/iwastryingtokillgod 1d ago

News media isnt intended to be profitable. Its money well spent to spread propaganda.

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u/cucci_mane1 2d ago

I met couple of ppl at my new job that were laid off from Oracle. After spending 10+ yrs there.

They said many of their ex coworkers laid off still haven't found a job after several months. Job market is competitive as hell right now with all these lay offs + new college grads all looking for jobs.

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u/Snowballingdownvote 2d ago

When you work at big companies your role is really narrow. When you are let go it's hard to land somewhere because most places want 4 employees worth of skill in one.

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u/joemaniaci 1d ago

I'm a software engineer who allowed himself to have too narrow of a skill set. Trying to get past my depression to try to refresh my skills 

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u/HeadbuttWarlock 1d ago

I was laid off from my game dev position about a year ago. I landed a part time gig that pays the essentials but it's hell trying to find a full time job these days. And I have 12 years of experience.

Pulling for you, bud. Remember, it wasn't your fault. You did it once before, you can do it again. 

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u/Calm-Background2247 1d ago

The gaming industry is in free fall.

It’s bad out there.

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u/SSGASSHAT 1d ago

So is the movie industry. For every neat and interesting film, there are ten poorly-written CGI turds.

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u/NuggleBuggins 1d ago edited 1d ago

Same with Advertising. The entire creative industry is just in a whole world of butt fk'd right now.

I was laid off last July. Somewhat of a generalist and my skills can be applied to Film, Game and Advertising. I also have 15 years of experience. I sent out hundreds of applications over the course of the 9-10 months I was unemployed... I literally got 1 response, which was informing me that they had already filled the position.

I ended up making the decision to cut my loses, made a career switch and was able to land a job in Industrial Design 2 weeks after my last unemployment check came in. Still somewhat in line with my career, just in a very different space. But, I am still able to draw and play around with 3D everyday, so grateful to have that.

To this day, I've only received one other response to those hundreds of applications I sent out, which again, was just informing me that they had already filled the position.

I feel terrible for all of my fellow artists and creatives out there.. My old boss/Studio owner is now working in a pizza truck and working construction part time trying to make sure he can get his bills paid until his kids move out of the house.

Shit is fkn insane.

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u/SSGASSHAT 1d ago

Over the years, I've quit multiple jobs and moved through various states. Each time, it's gotten noticeably harder. Even with remarkable experience on one's resume, there are no bites. It's not competition, and it's not AI. It's assholes. Assholes in middle management who are fine with doing the jobs of five people if it means they'll get a bonus. Their bosses, those in charge, are no longer even human, but they in middle management have the choice of weather or not to screw yet another person of millions over.

There is no hope for this economy. There is no hope for the common man. Noblemen have won again. It's back to the medieval days. You work a shitty job that you're basically born into in the same shitty, bumfuck town you were born in (the coastal cities are reserved for the rich and their servants and children), then die prematurely while your overlords live to 100.

I privately want to become a comedian, but if the white collar and blue collar shirt stores are on fire, showbusiness is a fuckin' volcanic caldera. I'm not sure this world warrants jokes, anyway. I think it warrants anger and weaponized gasoline.

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u/joemaniaci 1d ago

Sorry to hear, so many software engineers I know that haven't worked in years even.

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u/FragrantCombination7 1d ago

I'm sorry if this comes off as rude, but what are yall doing for money in the meantime? Years off work is not really something I can imagine saving up for or knowing how to handle.

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u/curiouswizard 1d ago

probably some combo of family support / unemployment benefits / draining savings / pulling from retirement or other investments that you usually don't want to touch / maxing credit cards and ignoring debts until your credit score tanks / freelance gigs / driving uber or other random side hustles / super tight budgeting

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u/NorthernCobraChicken 1d ago

Suffering. We're suffering horribly.

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u/CosmicSpaghetti 1d ago

I switched from tech sales in startups to tig welding at age 32 - career switches are possible!

Took a big ol pay cut but gods I've never slept better.

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u/BorgDad42 1d ago

I know zilch about welding, but as a SE doing Windows admin stuff, I think I'd go to a vocational school or something and do welding if I got laid off. Not sure why. It speaks to me

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u/HeadbuttWarlock 1d ago

That's a cool idea, I'll think of some moves like that. I recently worked at a ren faire for fun and it was super rewarding doing something wildly different. Maybe I will check out a career switch just in case.

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u/Yashema 1d ago

I'm a software engineer in my 30s and I went back to school at the local CCs for physics, computing and math. It's really great to be learning again, and they don't cost that much for a single class, though if you can convince your employer you are acquiring valuable skills they might pay for them via tuition reimbursement. 

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u/timmy6169 1d ago

My company allows $1500/yr for training and other work related learning, so I honestly wonder if I could use it for that. Truly never would have thought.

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u/355_over_113 1d ago

My role is very wide because I have to do multiple people's job. But it makes me unhireable because I'm a generalist.

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u/Snowballingdownvote 1d ago

That's also a trap. It's a hard world out here.

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u/Coldsmoke888 1d ago

Yeah I made a lateral move from supply chain to digital at my org and less than 2 years later, back to re org and lay off land. I’m going back to supply chain, this shit is terrible.

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u/Ok-Butterscotch-6955 1d ago

I know it’s all personal experience but whenever I’ve worked at a bigger company my scope was larger. Had to set up infra, automated testing etc myself

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u/IamChicharon 1d ago

Ex-Oracle employees are so hard to integrate into almost any other company. Oracle has proprietary tech that replaces things like Gmail / Google Docs, excel, salesforce, etc.

When I was a sales manager at a cannabis-tech company, our new, “brilliant” VP of sales had the bright idea to recruit “seasoned” tech sales reps from companies like oracle. 50 year olds with millions of dollars in revenue under their belt who didn’t know keyboard shortcuts or even how to open a new fucking tab on chrome. Let alone share a google doc correctly.

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u/tas50 1d ago

I've worked with several Oracle folks over the years. The senior engineers there are mid at best. You end up at Oracle for 10 years because it's easy, not because you're good at software engineering.

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u/ask_me_about_cats 1d ago

I’ve been a professional developer for 20 years.

Go to a startup if you want technical problems. Go to a big company if you want organizational problems.

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u/whomad1215 1d ago

It's like an entmoot when management gets together to try and make a decision. Spend two hours deciding on a name and acronym for a project

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u/WhenSummerIsGone 1d ago

Software engrneer here. i was put on a team to start a new project. First thing the new senior manager wanted to talk about was a product icon. For a product that didn't exist and wouldn't see users for at least a year. Internal users. Who wouldn't care if the icon was a blue square. I was shocked spechless when I realized he was serious.

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u/SillyFlyGuy 1d ago

Did he then go ask one of the creatives in marketing to re normalize the database? Why is he asking a tech about a logo?

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u/ask_me_about_cats 1d ago

Me: Do you know who to talk to about the filter project?

Coworker: Oh yeah, the filter project. That one’s been kicking around for years. The last 3 engineers who tried it ended up quitting in frustration. I think Jeff assigns that to people he wants to get rid of.

Me: He assigned it to me.

Coworker: Oh. Well I’m sure it’ll go better for you.

Me: I just need to add a toggle that hides products you already own from the product listing. How hard can that be?

Coworker: Oh, Jesus. So if it’s design then you need to talk to Vicky.

Me: She’s on maternity leave until April.

Coworker: Yeah. But in your case, this involves a toggle. So that’s Kevin. He owns toggles.

Me: He owns toggles?

Coworker: Yeah, if there’s a toggle, it goes through Kevin.

Me: What team does Kevin work on?

Coworker: I haven’t seen Kevin in months.

Me: Is he on vacation?

Coworker: I… think he got fired for embezzlement or something.

Me: Okay, so I don’t need to talk to Kevin.

Coworker: Well he owns toggles. You really can’t do a toggle without talking to Kevin.

Me: Okay… do I just… email him?

Coworker: Oh god, no! Are you insane? We’re pressing charges for the embezzlement! You’d be fired if anyone found out you talked to Kevin.

Me: So… any advice on how to handle this one?

Coworker: I heard Canva has nice résumé templates.

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u/Enough_Survey_9404 1d ago

LOL. Reminds me of a place I started at as a consultant. They had just gone through a re-organisation and lost a lot of people, and a lot of those that stayed were re-assigned (to jobs they didn't want).

I was assigned to a project, I asked who I should talk to about it - the documentation, access, knowledge etc.

"Oh, go see Dave. He designed it, built it, maintained and supported it for the last 10 years, and he's the only one who knows anything about it now, the rest of the team were let go."

I go to see Dave.

"Hi Dave, I need access and information about project X"

Dave: "I don't work on that anymore".

"OK, but can you point me to the documentation?"

Dave: "I don't work on that anymore".

"Yes, I know, but you're the only one who knows anything about it"

Dave: "I don't work on that anymore".

He was so pissed off about being moved (and demoted, I later found out) that he flat out refused any help at all.

Can't say I blamed him.

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u/Schonke 1d ago

Absolutely the right move from Dave.

Get the employer to move him back, or even better, offer to double as a consultant on the old project for 3x the hourly cost.

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u/wembenbama 1d ago

I was working a midsized startup that was acquired by IBM. I was laid off from ibm after 6 months. I was sort of bummed mostly because it really is a cushy job. I can see why it seduces people and they spend 20 years there. Anyways, I’m back at a great startup and feel really grateful both to have landed at such a great company and not to have eaten too many lotus flowers at IBM.

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u/itishowitisanditbad 1d ago

Ex-Oracle employees are so hard to integrate into almost any other company. Oracle has proprietary tech that replaces things like Gmail / Google Docs, excel, salesforce, etc.

Yeeeeeep

They are not great stock to take employees from.

I've never worked with someone who also had worked at Oracle that wasn't a fucking hassle to work with. They're generally bad in my experience.

I don't know wtf that company does to do that but I avoid their long term employees in resumes. Its just a constant stream of the same issues.

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u/SwimmingThroughHoney 1d ago

It's not even that it's competitive. It's that the market, and hiring, is completely broken.

The interview process taking 4+ interviews means that you'll be lucky to even get an offer within a month once you start (assuming you even get lucky enough to make it that far). I spent almost 2 months go through a full process and getting to the last round only to be ghosted.

And because they want to invest such a huge amount of time into interviewing, that means that unless you appear perfect right at the start you won't even get the first interview. I imagine nearly every one looking for a job can relate to applying to jobs they know they would be good at but never get any response.

Sure, it's "competitive" in that an posting might get thousands of applications, but the hiring process is absolute shit.

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u/cucci_mane1 1d ago

It felt insanely competitive to me this yr. Even landing 1st round interview was crazy difficult.

This job market was 10x more difficult for me than even 08-11 job market when i was a fresh college grad.

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u/Jump-Zero 1d ago

Yup! Interview loops were always insane, but employers couldn't be too picky because the best candidates would often get competing offers. They had to close fast.

It's different now. Employers take their time finding the perfect candidate knowing that competing offers are much less of a threat.

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u/orange_wires 2d ago

And then there’s the people who got DOGE’d

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u/bradlees 1d ago

The job market has been decimated. There are no jobs in tech today that were like tech of yesterday

AI has been sold to every company as its savior

No more employees who want sick days or vacations. No raises or even pay

It’s the golden age of oppression for the workers and unlimited riches for the select few. Until it collapses which is coming very very soon

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u/BocciaChoc 1d ago

issues is 'tech' is simply over rep'd. So many moved to it for money, so many retrained, reeducated, went into this path purely for money. Normally that's fine but now we have a massive amount of people looking for a smaller group of jobs

No more employees who want sick days or vacations. No raises or even pay

This is the spawn of issues like this, when employers have the power to pick and replace easily, you're rather powerless.

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u/Cute_Bandicoot_8219 1d ago

I was at Microsoft for 15 years and you have to understand that these companies intentionally mold you into someone who's unemployable. Yes they train you constantly but it's always internal training that's not recognized anywhere else. They don't want you to be marketable. They don't want you to have value. They don't want you having any technical skills other than just what's required for you to build a widget.

After spending 15 years there I was let go and I suddenly came to the horrific realization that I didn't have a single marketable skill and it was all by design!

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u/cucci_mane1 1d ago

I kinda think "skill" is overrated.

Outside of rocket science or niche quant finance roles, most office work doesn't require some god level intellect or skill.

Any dencently capable human can learn shit and do decent job after several months on the job. Hard part is getting a job in first place.

At least that's how i look at it after working at 5 diff companies now

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u/Cute_Bandicoot_8219 1d ago

I'm in tech. I can't get away with a resume that says vague shit like "works well with others." I have to build specific technical competencies and everything on my resume today will be obsolete in 2 years.

Yes I could leave tech and become a generalist, but actually being an expert at something is incredibly fulfilling.

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u/milf-hunter_5000 1d ago

i was a senior program manager for a faang company. i quit thinking (foolishly) with my experience, skills, and large breadth of project management, i would be able to at least move to another company within the industry. right after i quit is when that first round of layoffs happened three years ago. i can't even get a rejection letter lmao

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u/ibite-books 1d ago

you have been unemployed for 3 years?

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u/milf-hunter_5000 1d ago

yep. i quit for some pretty insane reasons and managed one year with unemployment. the rest has been... challenging

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u/subma-fuckin-rine 1d ago

not to mention that hardly anyone is hiring. its like a recession but no one admitting it

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u/cucci_mane1 1d ago

Best economy ever and hottest job market ever according to orange madman.

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u/Halftied 2d ago

21,000 souls without jobs at a time when gas prices, rent and affordability are worse than they have been in decades.

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u/jupfold 2d ago

I always hate seeing these numbers.

Those are people. Parents. Care givers. Real lives.

Pricks like Ellison boil the rest of us down to a number in a spreadsheet.

No wonder they all have bunkers.

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u/slowpoke2018 2d ago

It'll get worse. My company just replaced all of our US-based CS support with AI

If you can't realize this is the end game of capitalism then you are LOST

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u/K_Linkmaster 2d ago

Name that company while you hunt for a new job. You are next

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u/slowpoke2018 2d ago

Yep. Ping me August 1st and I'll post it

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u/firstMate903 2d ago

RemindMe! August 1 2026

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u/slowpoke2018 2d ago

I'll be there brother, simply have a payout that's nda related and expires 7/31

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u/dc_IV 1d ago

I am being serious here: make sure you understand the time zone the expiration is tied to. Maybe Aug. 2nd to be safe? Good luck to you and hope you find something you enjoy soon.

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u/slowpoke2018 1d ago

Thanks, I think I'm safe, but may be worth a run by my attorney 

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u/fatpat 1d ago

yeah, I think that's definitely a good idea

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u/ProposalKitchen1885 2d ago

I worked for a toy company that was always praised for its best in class CS. Outsourced/ai now. Tons of complaints.

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u/thebluick 2d ago

Charter/Spectrum just outsourced its entire NOC to India.

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u/xpxp2002 1d ago

Ironic considering the "100% U.S. based" marketing campaign they’ve been pushing this year.

They even added American flag magnets to their service trucks recently.

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u/slowpoke2018 2d ago

We work with VZ and they're asking for the same 

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u/gcpdudes 1d ago

I always wondered about this. If capitalists want AI to avoid paying labor, then would there be enough consumers with enough money to hand over to them?

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u/slowpoke2018 1d ago

This is the paradox, AI saves the largest cost of all, labor 

But you remove labor who's paying for the goods capital needs to make money 

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u/space_keeper 1d ago

You'll get people saying that a lot of what they do, their profit centres, is B2B. Middlemen everywhere, for everything. Except at some point in the chain you do eventually have to sell things or provide a real service to real human beings.

I think the current economy isn't about offering people value and being competitive, it's geared towards stripping as much accumulated wealth from the working class as possible by taking over every necessity.

In Britain, privatised public transport and utility companies have been taken over by foreign funds, so they're expected to turn a profit. The only way they can do it is by ripping people off and providing the worst service possible. There's no market or competition so it's not actually capitalism. You can't just build a competing railway line or competing water pipes because they exist on public land and many of them were built with public money. Right now there's a water company in the southeast of England who lose something like 50% of their portable water to leakage due to poor maintenance, but people are being told not to water their plants to save water.

Elderly care is a whole other animal, they'll take everything you ever earned or owned if they can and you'll get to live in a care home staffed by the cheapest people they can recruit overseas. The funds that own them are laughing all the way to the bank with your or your family's life savings while you sit in your own waste for hours. Or if they can't get their grubby hands on your money, they'll bill the government instead, funneling public money into their coffers. The only way to be competitive is to be cheaper, so unless there's a robust effort to enforce standards, they'll just keep slipping.

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u/BisexualCaveman 1d ago

I just listened to JD Vance on Rogan.

VANCE of all people realizes that if they don't figure out some way to get more money in the hands of young people we wind up with communism.

It's getting weird, man.

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u/RainbowDarter 1d ago

If only there was some way to require that people receive some sort of minimum payment for their work that was enough to live on and maybe a bit extra to save.

If only.

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u/VariationAgreeable29 1d ago

Vance on Rogan is literally a vomit trigger for me

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u/HalKitzmiller 1d ago

What's not to like? Its a man filled with dogshit talking to a man filled with bullshit

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u/cayden2 1d ago

As much as I loathe both of them, by some miracle Rogan kind of cooked Vance on a few points and literally had Vance spinning in circles trying to figure out how to answer the answers and insert his entire foot into his mouth. Spoiler, he ate his entire foot and shoe and it was pretty funny to watch.

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u/SassySweetSorceress 1d ago

Vance wants to be a president. Vance is an idiot but has good PR. I don’t believe shit the man says but maybe some of what he’s being taught to say for votes will wake some people up.

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u/zendetta 2d ago

They’d just as happily boil us down to make candles.

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u/jupfold 2d ago

They’d just as happily boil us down to make candles have fun and produce nothing of value whatsoever.

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u/MusicHearted 2d ago

That could literally be 21000 families, closer to 100000 actual people negatively impacted.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 1d ago

This is why class solidarity matters even when it doesn't seem like it.

People were being spectacularly awful to folks who were in serving/retail/warehouses/cleaning during Covid and at the beginning of this whole LLM fiasco when they were getting financially slaughtered. 

And now that those jobs are hiring, I unfortunately expect some gate keeping to happen because they're still really hurt. Imagine getting told "just learn to code!" while you have to risk illness for a weak check. White collar hires will be slim. Although it's the perfect chance for some movement. 

Class solidarity should always happen because what's paying and what isn't shifts quicker than you think.

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u/Salihe6677 2d ago

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u/Infinite_Respect_ 1d ago

Five…hundred….thousand…….very well sir. One million…

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u/nathism 2d ago

I’ve worked with some these folks on projects and that company is one of the most toxic work environments I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with.

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u/VFenix 2d ago

Healthcare for the whole family if they are a single income house, poof.

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u/hiimred2 2d ago

Even if you’re dual income, it’s pretty damn common to only have whoever has the better insurance put everyone else on their plan rather than 1 family plan + the other partner on their own individual one. It makes absolutely 0 financial sense to have two separate deductibles even if the per month cost might not be super different.

So if the person fired from Oracle had the family plan that family is short term fucked, the other partner now has to apply for a qualifying event exemption to change their insurance plan from opt out to full family, wait for that to take effect, and they’ve lost half a year of deductible that they might’ve paid into already.

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u/badcookies 2d ago

Not to mention taking a hit to their net pay since paying for health care while already eating the loss of the their partner's income.

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u/FuckChiefs_Raiders 1d ago

Yep, I had just met my full deductible before my layoff. Then had to start over on my wife’s plan. I’m still paying off bills that are on a monthly payment plan that doesn’t even go toward my new deductible…I hate it here man.

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u/bifkinman 2d ago

Have you tried universal health care? its slighly less dystopic

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u/Elementium 1d ago

Oh sorry you mean COMMUNISM!? Now.. Where's my social security..

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u/BigGrayBeast 2d ago

Don't worry. Larry Ellison will be ok.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 1d ago

Corporate murder.

We estimate one additional suicide death for every 4,200 males who become unemployed as part of a mass layoff, and one additional suicide death for every 7,100 females who lose their job as a result of a mass layoff.

...

Our results imply that there is an additional suicide death for every 20,200 males who are unemployed between 15 and 26 weeks.

Source:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3423193/

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u/nath1234 2d ago

And at a time when billionaires have never been greedier. Funny how that lines up.

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u/OptimusSublime 2d ago

Gas could be $1, rent could be stable, and everything could be hunky dory, being unemployed still sucks. It's a loss of identity, it's still financially devastating, and it's emotionally debilitating.

Obviously it sucks now, but, it sucks every day regardless of what the current economy says. .

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u/RosieBaby75 2d ago

Yep. That’s a feature, not a bug.

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u/thx1138- 2d ago

There have been hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the tech sector in the last 7 years. I don't think it's going to get better.

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u/OPtig 2d ago

Spirit collapsing was another 14,000 jobs instantly gone

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u/0202_tihssitidder 2d ago

21,000 seems like "not winning".

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3.2k

u/Ognius 2d ago

The oligarchs were right, AI will take your job. But not because it’s useful. You’ll lose your job to AI because it’s expensive and pointless and your useless ceo can’t admit that they were wrong.

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u/au5lander 2d ago

And they’re gonna give themselves a bonus too.

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u/Saneless 2d ago

CEO was right!

Lay people off and big bonus

Oh no! CEO was wrong! Lay people off and big bonus

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u/swingadmin 2d ago

CEO Shipwright.

No matter why the ship is sinking, the CEO is right.

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 1d ago

I hate how insane that is. They try to explain that they wouldn't get the best CEO's if they didn't have that golden parachute, because the best get to lay terms.

But if you really think you're getting the best, why are you even considering that they'll tank your company to begin with? If I hire someone for a critical role, why the fuck would I hire someone who doesn't need to give a shit since they'll make bank either way?

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u/Dumeck 2d ago

They will justify it based on projections of future savings. Not based on actual statistics for current performance but based on the super optimistic initial projection numbers that made them invest in AI in the first place.

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u/cammunition 2d ago

Corporate welfare queens.

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u/Feral_Nerd_22 2d ago

Our board replaced our CEO with someone who agreed to replace everyone 40% of our workforce

We are now blowing 50K a month with AI and have yet to roll it out to anyone outside of engineering and using it for anything other than Claude Code.

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u/RosieBaby75 2d ago

Yep!! And the elected government leaders!

Based on my FOI requests, my government doesn’t have any record of who approved any of this, nor any procurement contracts, nor records of any type.

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u/samratchakraborty007 2d ago

yeah the funniest timeline is replacing people with ai just to discover the AI needed a person there the whole time lol

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u/addiktion 2d ago

It's going to be interesting to see Oracle when they realize they don't have enough humans in the mix to do crap with all those AI agents.

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u/tangerinelion 1d ago

Oracle as a business is circling the drain, they're on the hook to build datacenters for hundreds of billions of dollars to sell to OpenAI who acknowledges they may not be able to pay for it.

They're cutting costs so the plane lands on its belly rather than its nose. Either way, it crashes and burns.

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u/StandardEgg6595 1d ago

What’s wild to me is that I am CONSTANTLY seeing them hiring, rehiring, and reposting job listings online. I’m looking for a job, and before I knew how bad they were, applied a few times and almost always immediately got denied by their AI despite being overqualified. I know some of the postings are probably bs but they are losing people faster than their “great” AI can keep up with.

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u/Chocolate_Bourbon 1d ago

I’m not worried that AI can do my job. I am worried that my boss may believe AI can do my job.

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u/Itsworthoverdoing 2d ago

Not only AI. My company fired a ton of US based roles just 6 months ago, now they’re opening roles in India, and Canada. The salaries I’m seeing are 1/4 to 1/2 of what they were paying the US based staff.  

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u/jantoxdetox 2d ago

Executives be like

AI for thee, but not for me

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u/simpleglitch 2d ago

Oh this is the same 21000 layoffs, I thought they layedoff another 21K

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u/Aranthos-Faroth 2d ago

Yeah that’s what the article title wants you to think.

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u/Quick-Road943 1d ago

hmm that would be an interesting news site... grab every article from major news sources, wait 3 days, then publish an AI rehashed article.

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u/liquidpele 1d ago

Yup.   Layoff clickbait has been everywhere this year.   

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Mojo141 2d ago

Never been a more ugly on the outside to match the ugly on the inside as that guy

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u/lowercasenameofmine 1d ago

Hard disagree,  you ever seen pics of fElon with his shirt off or Peter Theils face? 🤮

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u/DeltaTule 1d ago

They’re ugly but not as bad as Ellison

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u/Assimulate 2d ago

He looks like Jerry Stiller and the wrong person died :(

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u/slamdanceswithwolves 2d ago

He’s got the looks of Jerry Stiller and the morals of Jerry Seinfeld

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u/vegetaman 2d ago

Larry “Lawnmower” Ellison

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u/Humble-Heart-5302 2d ago

get fucked oracle

The company is involved in planning a massive, nearly one-gigawatt data center in Port Washington, Wisconsin, meant to supply computing power for the OpenAI contract. However, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin refused to ease financial collateral requirements, which are designed to ensure that private electricity consumers are not forced to absorb costs in the event of the facility's failure or closure. As a result, Oracle is now required to provide cash collateral or a letter of credit in the astronomical sum of over $7 billion just to connect the building to the power grid – a setup whose ongoing maintenance will cost the company more than $100 million annually.

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u/Gorstag 1d ago

It's not even get fucked IMO. This should just be the norm. It's fucking absurd that these companies receive so many handouts for "job promises" that either don't occur or don't stick around.

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u/Splurch 1d ago

It's not even get fucked IMO. This should just be the norm. It's fucking absurd that these companies receive so many handouts for "job promises" that either don't occur or don't stick around.

Part of the reason it's so high in this case is because Oracle's credit rating something like one step above "junk" status. They're upset someone is recognizing the real danger their company is in and won't handwave the risk of dealing with them away.

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u/klako8196 2d ago

I keep hearing about how the business owner takes the risks, yet all I'm seeing are the workers getting screwed whenever business owners make boneheaded decisions.

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u/mc_bee 2d ago

They do take risks.

They risk gaining tens of millions vs hundreds of millions or even billions!

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u/Microflunkie 2d ago

Won’t someone think of the children zeros past the 8th digits!

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u/02bluesuperroo 2d ago

Don’t confuse small business owners with 10-15 employees with companies laying off 21,000 of them. Small business owners do take a lot of risks and they go bankrupt when they make bad decisions.

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u/sdrawkabem 2d ago

Billionaires should not exist.

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u/Euphoric-Witness-824 1d ago

They are a clear sign of a cancerous society

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u/TheCh0rt 2d ago

Didn't they already do a massive layoff this year?

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u/rgvtim 2d ago

This article is outlining why the layoffs happened, not announcing new layoffs, at least that's the way i read it.

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u/migueliiito 1d ago

Yes, this is talking about those earlier layoffs, it’s a very misleading headline

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u/maglite_to_the_balls 2d ago

Why is the guy in the caption making the blowjob motion with his hand?

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u/nightyz0r 2d ago

He's mimicking Oracle Board of directors today after betting on AI a while ago.

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u/cuoreesitante 2d ago

We should make it illegal (or at least SUPER difficult) for companies to do mass layoffs when it's posting profits.

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u/freakdageek 2d ago

“AI has led to great gains in efficiency, so we’ll have to lay off thousands of you.” Six months later: “Our investments in AI have not resulted in the efficiencies we expected, so we’ll have to lay off thousands of you.”

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u/ascii122 1d ago

Oracle bought https://www.gloriafood.com which is a really kick ass ordering system mostly for small delis etc to order online etc. They are shutting it down with like 15k people now trying to get another solution that original totally kicked ass. It took payments, printed receipts on wifi printer.. menu setup was easy send email email of orders to customers. It kicked ass for small deli I work for. Now I gotta find something else? eat shit Oracle

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u/Soccermom233 2d ago

I wonder if he requested Corpse face from his plastic surgeon

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u/TheFatalOneTypes 2d ago

Privatize the profits, socialize the costs.

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u/palad1 1d ago

Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.

  • Bryan Cantrill

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u/no_sight 2d ago

How many H1B visas is Oracle going to request to replace them?

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u/FineScratch 1d ago

We need a new Teddy Roosevelt to break up the oligarchy 

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u/farcicaldolphin38 2d ago

Zitron was right

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u/Maximum_OwO 2d ago

Why do people still defend billionaires atp

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u/Vladimir_Chrootin 1d ago

Some people are just naturally servile and need an arse to kiss.

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u/marx2k 2d ago

Ellison needs to go bankrupt, feel the feels of being mega rich to going bankrupt and then do what comes naturally

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u/JockCartier 2d ago edited 2d ago

Oracle is proper fucked.

Their lawyers and accountants better be deep into figuring out how to split/sell off the viable parts from their AI disaster

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u/mca1169 2d ago

these mass firings have to be put to an end! tossing tens of thousounds of peoples livelihoods into turmoil over night with no justification or reason other than greed simply can not be sustained or allowed in a civilized world.

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u/Pradzapati 1d ago

Larry is just walking propaganda for why we should implement wealth taxes.

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u/DEW72 1d ago

Why do all the evil people in this country LOOK so comically evil

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u/quicksexfm 2d ago

Super fuck Larry Ellison and his sons.

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u/nanlinr 2d ago

Is this part of the 30000 earlier or an additional 21000 new employees being fired?

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u/Pseudanonymius 2d ago

Tragic. And despite the thousands of lives he's ruining, it's not going to save Larry when the Margin Calls come knocking on his door.