Oracle Dumps PeopleSoft Employees

curtain writes "The first move in Oracle's dismantling of PeopleSoft has begun. The cuts will affect about 9% of the 55,000 staff of the combined companies. From the article: "We're mourning the passing of a great company," Peoplesoft worker David Ogden as saying. Other employees said they would rather be sacked than work for Oracle."

Comments

Starting back in 2002... this was inevitable

[martinbogo]

When Oracle first made a bid for PeopleSoft in 2002, PeopleSoft froze all hiring, and completely halted their Linux initiatives.

Ever since then, both companies have had "financial challenges," and the combination of both companies was bound to create a lot of redundancies. It's just a pity that the combined company believes that there are over 5,000 redundant jobs in the merged corporation.

Of course, that also speaks -volumes- to both companies hiring policies. Oracle is famous for creating projects, pumping them with quick new hires, and then dumping the projects (and sometimes a hundred jobs).

It's not surprising, but what it says about corporate culture and hiring practices is sad.

Re:Starting back in 2002... this was inevitable

[Flamefly]

The fact is, that the two companies merged. With any successful merger the outcome is that overall costs are cut, otherwise what is the point?

When two similar companies merge you obviously get overlap, and this is where the initial savings can be made, there is zero point to keeping two teams of support staff (be it in IT, HR, Marketing etc) when there is only enough work to justify the single team.

How really else can you expect it to work? Would you honestly invest in a company as a shareholder if that company had 5000+ people employeed who essentially had no job to do, just twiddling their thumbs?

Any merger that *doesn't* cut jobs, surely at least, partially a failure. You may not embrace capitalism wholeheartedly, but look around you, it's not too bad.

Re:Starting back in 2002... this was inevitable

[jafac]

he fact is, that the two companies merged. With any successful merger the outcome is that overall costs are cut, otherwise what is the point?


Eliminate competition.

A point that most "lazzez faire capitalists" seem to miss.

A *SUCCESSFUL* merger is a purchase of a "good" company, with skilled employees. Such employees can adapt to the new corporate structure, via the guidance of competent management, to remain productive, and not redundant.
Unfortunately, such companies are difficult to find, and they are not convenient merger targets, because, more likely than not, they're already doing well on their own thankyouverymuch. Layoffs after such mergers, are usually kept to a minimum.

A *TAKEOVER* merger, is a purchase of another company, and dismantling of it's resources, purely to deprive the market of competition. It costs the buyer a lot of money up front, because they're usually buying an essentially worthless peice of junk, in order to euthanize it. Or, in cases where they're buying a company that's not totally worthless, it soon will be. The only benefit to the purchaser is the destruction of a competitor.