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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."
Now we know PeopleSoft, CashHard. Thanks for the info, Larry!
--
make install -not war
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.
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
What a troll. It has absolutely nothing to do with the economy, and is exactly what happens during all tech aquisitions, regardless of overall economic conditions. The jobs aren't going to India -- they're being eliminated completely.
The first to go are redundant positions, i.e., HR, finance / legal, etc. Then most of the rest (dev, PS, and sales / marketing) are typically kept for a time to absorb what they know, and then axed. The creme of the crop are kept or induced to stay, but, like the article says, most of the PeopleSoft folks I know would rather quit than work for Orifice / Horricle.
Well, that was the point, wasn't it? Reduce headcount, cut costs, profit.
I suppose Oracle also wanted to get closer to a monopoly by gaining market share. The point of the whole exercise was profit, and maybe personnal aggrandizement, given the participants.
Larry Ellison may be good at business, be he sure isn't very ethical. This is a very cold, uncaring move to dominate a market. But could I expect any less from him...not really. That's why I don't use Oracle for anything.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
I remember hearing a news broadcast about People Soft when it was a new company. Just as the bubble started. Well PeopleSoft at the time was recognized for how well they treat their employees. There was a saying "If you don't like working for PeopleSoft then go to work for Oracle and really hate your job". I don't know how well PeopleSoft has been treating their employees since that report. But if they kept consistent switching to Oracle would probably make life miserable for a lot of people.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Maybe there is a justification for eliminating some of these jobs, but Wall St's myopic viewpoint (job cuts => profit!!!) has always bugged me.
From another article it said the R&D teams at Peoplesoft were going to remain intact while the HR, sales, administrative and markiting teams were going to be hit the hardest. Can't really shed a tear for those people, especially since I despise Peoplesoft apps.
Step 1. Buy Competing Technology
Step 2. Destroy Said Technology
Step 3. Slowly Move Those Customers To Core Product
Step 4. Profit!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I'm sorry, but the wheelbarrow icon for this article seems a little inappropriate. What do they use when someone passes away, a spade?
My company has a major project that uses PeopleSoft software. I wonder how this will effect customer support, and patching/upgrading?
1. Corporations are not a democracy.
/waits for the revolution
2. Corporations do best for the shareholders.
3. The majority shareholders are mostly a small group of already wealthy people.
4. Aquire companies with "leveraged synergies".
5. Fire redundant pawns. Feed jobs overseas.
6. Lower competition.
7. Handfull of shareholders get even richer at the expense of thousands of families and the business es they patronize.
8. Most people and the local economy lose.
Welcome to the American Way.
"The jobs aren't going to India -- they're being eliminated completely." Oh the horror. Won't you join my steam boat operator and hand cloth weaver's union. Protect jobs at all cost!!!
I used to be irritated by this too, but it's probably not realistic to expect anything different.
"Wall Street" isn't some conglomerate of business people who sit around making decisions on whether or not company X deserves "reward" or some "punishment" for their latest business moves.
A company's stock simply moves up or down based on the "knee jerk reactions" of the majority of people holding shares when anything changes in the company.
Of course, this is obvious - but sometimes it's easy to lose sight of it when you hear all the debate/discussion by "Wall Street analyists" on the news. They're sort of like weathermen; making the best predictions they can based on what's happened in the past and what they observe. But ultimately, still not too much better than random guessing if they're projecting more than 1 or 2 days ahead.
If you could somehow *require* all stockholders to keep their stocks for at least a couple years before selling, then you'd see people thinking more "long-term". But things like "job cuts = profit!" are a result of shorter-term thinking. "This move means my stock is goin' up so it'll be ready to sell next month!"
"The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him, to ride their horses and take away their possessions, to see the faces of those dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters in his arms"
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I realy should read headlines more carefully . This time though ,it looks like i wasnt too far off.
Eugh! That would be poetic since Siebel bought with extreme prejudice a company that I worked for.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
IT people are not being laid off. Back-office people are being laid off. When you merge two companies, you wind up with two payroll departments, two HR departments, two legal departments, two accounting departments, etc.
Fifty years ago, you mostly kept everyone because everything was done manually. Today, if you have a (computerized) payroll system that can handle 40,000 employees, it can probably handle 55,000. If it can't, you generally add more hardware/IT resources, not more people. The same thing is largely true about most back-office jobs.
So, what do you do with thousands of redundant people? It's not realistic to think that you can retrain them all, or that they all want to be retrained ("hey, mister SPHR-certified HR specialist with 20 years' experience, here's a book on Java!")
The people who usually survive mergers are (a) people in the acquiring company, (b) people in the acquired company who are responsible for making/developing the product, and (c) good salespeople in the acquired company. That is certainly the pattern here.
I'm not saying that Oracle/Ellison is some lilly-white invisible-glad-hand or that the Oracle-Peoplesoft merger is a good thing...just saying that is the way it works in business and this wasn't really any surprise. This notion that "Wall Street loves job cuts" or "corporate America is so short-sighted" etc. doesn't survive that "well, what would you suggest instead?" test.
Advice: on VPS providers
The main thing that needs to be worried about is culture clash. Many a merger has been undone because of that. The other thing for customers to worry about is "lock-in". Has anyone seen a merger that's improved service to customers?
Hmmm. It may be just me, but that seems like a rather stupid attitude to me - do you really want to give up your job, your projects and everything just because your CEO suddenly has a different name? It's not like there's another dot-com bubble exactly; these days, if you have a decent (and well-paying) job in the IT industry, you should probably try to keep it.
Of course, it just may be that those who say these things already know or at least suspect that they're the ones who'll be fired, anyway, so maybe they're just trying to save their faces and make a better impression on future employers. "I quit" sounds much better than "I was fired", and "I quit for ethical reasons" sounds even better, because it implies that you so good that you can afford to choose jobs based on these things alone.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I think I'm getting better service from Cingular over AT&T Wireless. Seems my Ameritrade account is slightly better than the old Datek. So I guess, yes, I have seen a few mergers improve service.
Last year, they stated that once purchased, they would dump the product and all but the top development people.
The rest would be let go...
While it sux to be them, and i know how they feel, at least they knew it was coming.. and should have planned ahead.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Any suggestion of Oracle attempting to create a monopoly through this move is nonsense -- their market share in enterprise applications is still a pimiple on SAP's ass, even when you combine the three companies now under the Oracle banner."
Oh well. Now there's a selling point. "Use our products because we're the pimple, instead of the ass."
These people all work for companies that make it easier for other companies to lay off their back office people and cast off their proprietary software (and developers).
I suppose I should feel some level of sympathy for them, but then that would be like feeling bad for the priest who got caught with his pants around his ankles with an altar boy on his knees.
I'll pass, but you keep on fighting that good fight, fellas.
"If you could somehow *require* all stockholders to keep their stocks for at least a couple years before selling, then you'd see people thinking more "long-term". But things like "job cuts = profit!" are a result of shorter-term thinking. "This move means my stock is goin' up so it'll be ready to sell next month!""
I think you're forgetting that a lot of stock is actually held in mutual funds. The one's doing the buying and selling aren't the actual people who own the stock, but intermediates. You want to complain? Complain about them. Just remember a lot of people have their retirement (IRAs, 401Ks, pension plans) invested in them.* Not just the "get rich quick" artist.
*There's also those "living off of" such plans. Just as some "live off of" eBay.
1. if you are good at anything you will not have any trouble finding something else to do.
2. if you are good at what you are doing at work - you will not be fired
3. If you are not good at anything then why do you expect some one to support you?
No, but the workers presumably had some value before the layoffs. By my understanding of the article (I haven't been following this very much) their work had been redistributed by the miracles of the market economy while they remained in a job. Then, when there was no longer any reason for their continued employment, we find ourselves in the present. It's all just a general trend and you can't fight it. Your job's probably on the way offshore too as we speak. Did you read this article?
synergies!
Couple of things I read recently:
* Pink slips were sent via FedEx, apparantly. Nice & cold.
* Local restaurants are already suffering - PeopleSoft put a *lot* of money into the local economy.
...life HARD.
Ditto here. The University of Alberta switched to Peoplesoft for it's course management and discovered a number of things. 1) It's unstable and unreliable, 2) it has a *horrible* interface, both on the phone and on the web, 3) it doesn't actually do everything they want... I've heard anecdotes that the new system is actually less useful, functionally speaking, than the old one, and 4) it's extremely expensive as the project inevitably overran and cost millions more to deploy than Peoplesoft originally claimed.
"the passing of a great company" indeed... *shakes head*
It wasn't unexpected -- Larry made an Oopsie and announced his plans for merging the two companies waaay before it was a done-deal. I expect the top talent bailed out almost immediately.
So, the regular-Joe Peoplesoft employees knew it was coming, and at least could make other plans. Contrast that with the implosion at Enron, where the average worker had no idea that the company was on the precipice.
Whether the local economy can support 5000 new job seekers is another question. I wouldn't doubt that some of the senior management will start new firms, employing some of those recently laid off. Others will have to uproot their lives, and move to where there's work.
Chip H.
1. if you are good at anything you will not have any trouble finding something else to do.
2. if you are good at what you are doing at work - you will not be fired
3. If you are not good at anything then why do you expect some one to support you?
I admire your ability to have that point of view. It was my own a few years back. The idea that pops into my head when I hear someone say such things now is 'young' or 'sheltered'.
Now, please do not get offended. I know these are not attributes that people want to be known for, but in this case, it also means you are lucky.
I hope that you can live your life without ever having to change the viewpoint you have.
This would mean that you never suffered a politically motivated coup at your job, or a stab in the back from a coworker that you never expected, or a layoff of a crew of great employees because management is concerned with how analysts will respond to week growth in the quarter.
These types of things happen, and none of them have anything to do with you as an individual. They are circumstances, things which are by definition not under your control.
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother
He just followed rules:
Rule 052 "Never ask when you can take"
Rule 058 "There is no substitute for success"
Rule 146 "Competition and fair play are mutually exclusive"
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
In case anyone was wondering, that's apparently a Genghis Khan quote.
Which means of course that I have to link to this.
This Like That - fun with words!
I can only hope that these newly unemployed start their own competition to Oracle.
Firing a lot of people this way can be risky for a company. It's good for short-time profit margins, but it also means a lot of highly skilled workers ready to join the competition. You rarely get something for nothing.
At the University of Florida, "PeopleSoft" has become the catch-all excuse for grad students and staff not getting paid, for payments coming from the wrong account, underpayment, etc. This transition has been going on for nearly a year now, and there is no end in sight. There is some problem with either documentation/training, there are too many institution having trouble with this software.
word.
It's a fact that job protection results in bigger unemployment, take a look at EU numbers.
So stop whining you communist pussies.
First, the initial hostile takeover announcement was made in June 2003, not 2002.
Second, PeopleSoft did not freeze hiring; in fact, they were madly trying to hire developers right up to the date the merger was announced in December 2004. At which point no one would show up for interviews any longer.
Third, Oracle announced long ago that they would likely lay off 6,000 people, so the current round is less than initially announced. Not that they won't lay off a few more as time goes by.
Fourth, I'm sick and tired of hearing how such and such policy or practice is "sad." It isn't sad, it just is. That really says more about the writer than the situation. It means youre just complaining about a situation and actually have nothing to say.
Me, I left PeopleSoft for a better job elsewhere rather than work for Oracle.
...would be some goddamn ethics in business. This merger was forced upon 99% of the people at PeopleSoft and as per usual, only the .05% are going to come out ahead.
While you are correct about actions Oracle has taken since the merger, the fact remains that a lot of people are going to suffer for it. The PS workers, customers, and other related stakeholders are all taken for Mr. Ellison's ride.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
PeopleSacked, PeopleShaft, PeopleLost...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When the story of the planned merger initially broke, I figured that there would be mass layoffs and /. labed my post as flamebait. I would be willing to bet that Good Ole Larry actually plans several more layoffs over the next year. I know of several instances where he's bought up companies for their customers or IP and then gutted all that was good out of them. Looks like former PeopleSoft employees are next on the chopping block. This whole situation is going to weigh heavily on the already strained economy of the San Francisco Bay Area.
In every situation, whether it's GM moving plants to Mexico, or Oracle's land grab, there is going to be major fallout with related stakeholders. Most will never be reported on because it's harder to see the corelation in a 10 second sound bite.
Local economies are definately one of those stakeholders as well as suppliers to PeopleSoft. When Oracle bought PeopleSoft they had no intention of making their company twice as big. Instead, cuts are being made. It may be legal to do this and ruin a lot of lives, but is it ethical?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
As someone who has to contend regularly with it, Peoplesoft is a horrible product. It makes all the worst mistakes of a freshman database project. No Ad hoc queries, data and design joined in horrible union, and perpetually behind delivery of working interfaces so that trainings are months removed from practice. The best thing Oracle could do is scrap the entire workforce and recode the monster from scratch (based on one of them newfangled relational databases) to meet the requirements of the various contracts this P(o)S is failing miserably to meet every day.
And this is exactly why I will not work for corporations anymore. The deceipt and treachery was unbelievable.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
My father-in-law, who was very worried about losing his job, will be able to stay. He's part of Oracle's new CRM division, which was part of the PeopleSoft deal.
Oracle's new CRM software came from PeopleSoft; before that, it was Vantive; before that it was Systar; before that it was Scotch-Bonnet; and before that it was Mobius. My father-in-law has stayed at the same desk for fifteen years, and worked for six different companies, including Oracle. He's a real 90s kind of guy.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
... fire hot.
Does this surprise anyone at all? Was this move really to bolster Oracle's position in the market or to drive a competitor out of it?
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
Yup. Baybank to bankboston. Excellent merger, IMHO. Bankboston to FleetBoston however, was a massacre, partially because of the requirement to sell branches to Sovereign, causing all sorts of fuck-ups when customers found out their Fleet accounts now belonged to Sovereign, and they couldn't get paid because their HR wonks fucked up the direct deposit.
Their policy of closing accounts when the balance reached $0.00 at midnight, causing me to miss getting paid, caused me to stop being a FleetBoston customer after 3 days.
Remember, in any merger, the service being improved, is that that people are paying $millions for, not the service you and I, Joe American, Joe French are paying for...
Peoplesofts Vantive is the most worthless software I've ever used. I hope Oracle kills it off.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
1. Corporations are not a democracy.
/waits for the revolution
Nor should they be, necessarily. Corporations are driven by function (economic growth). So long as society views that as a core goal, it makes sense.
2. Corporations do best for the shareholders.
So they SAY. In reality, this is a very complicated issue and no two companies approach this the same way. "shareholder value" is only 20 years old as a mantra. Prior to that it was about "balance of stakeholder interests", which included employees and customers.
What hasn't changed is that management still wields illegitimate power unless there's a strong board of directors to counter-balance it.
3. The majority shareholders are mostly a small group of already wealthy people.
No. Majority shareholders usually are institutional investors, i.e. employees of large firms that manage money for others, often thousands of others, in which your mutual funds or pension funds are invested.
It's a tragic self re-inforcing loop: we want defined benefits pensions, pension funds demand performance, companies requrie short term gains, short term gains cause long term problems, cheating and other shenanigans become very tempting.
4. Aquire companies with "leveraged synergies".
Many mergers are silly. Others aren't. I'm not sure Oracle did a bad thing buying Peoplesoft.
5. Fire redundant pawns. Feed jobs overseas.
Since when did "Workers of the world unite!" mean "only in the USA"?
6. Lower competition.
Yeah, they do do this, and there needs to be a good watchdog to prevent it from going too far (unlike the current 'kiss the wrist of Microsoft' DOJ)
7. Handfull of shareholders get even richer at the expense of thousands of families and the business es they patronize.
There is no excuse to lay people off while paying obscene executive bonuses. But this is not so simple. Profits don't usually flow to shareholders, except thru dividends. Mostly they're re-invested. And a failing company does no one any good if they don't change.
8. Most people and the local economy lose.
At times, yes. If this is due to management incompetence and hubris, it's a tragic crime. However, it also is a side-effect of a market system -- when you introduce "creative destruction" to keeps things evolving, it tends to enthrone economics as the centre of life, instead of social ties and traditions. Assuming society wants ecnomic growth (and there's plenty of evidence that stasis or contraction is a bad thing), there's a trade-off between tradition and innovation. Again, a vigilant watchdog with teeth is needed to slow change down from time to time.
Oh, I don't know. Revolutions tend to be bloody affairs that make things much worse for a really long time. The U.S. revolution in a way was an exception this, to some degree; the French revolution was an example of the horrors and opression that can result.
-Stu
when PeopleSoft did the same thing after buying JDEdwards? Don't make them seem like a poor victim when they are only drinking the same medicine they dished out and were still in the process of dishing out.
Peoplesoft 9 is going to be relased.
Peoplesoft's product line will be supported through 2010.
-Stu
If you could somehow *require* all stockholders to keep their stocks for at least a couple years before selling, then you'd see people thinking more "long-term". But things like "job cuts = profit!" are a result of shorter-term thinking. "This move means my stock is goin' up so it'll be ready to sell next month!"
I completely agree. The long-term perspective has been lost, and it makes the market more volatile. Stock ownership was supposed to be an investment and involvement with a company - not a one-night stand. The AC mentioned mutual funds, but they should be held to the same restrictions: no short-term deals. Invest in solid companies for the long term.
Oracle makes the most twatty database software I've ever seen. Of that I can be certain.
My wife and I went to Mistral last night -- a restaurant literally around the corner from the Oracle campus in Redwood Shores. As we waited for our table near the bar, a man walks up and asks, "Do you two work for Oracle?" We told him no, we didn't. He went on to explain that he was a reporter who had been asked to stop by and see if he could get any reaction from any Oracle employees he could find. He had asked someone on the restaurant staff how many of the customers were usually from Oracle on a Friday, and was told "Oh, about 80%." He said he had asked a dozen people thus far and no one had admitted to being an Oracle employee.
I don't know about that 80% figure, it seems high to me, but I would guess that not a lot of people felt like their usual night out on the town after that news was announced.
I'm so glad the merger happened, it is obviously such a good thing for the people who have worked so hard to make the company what it is today. Er, not...
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
A third possibility, and perhaps the most common, is that company A wants to purchase a large portion of company B, but thinks some of it is useless. So they buy company B, keep the parts they like, and get rid of the rest. There can be any number of reasons for this: One of the more common is that company B's strategists had been making speculative entries into businesses outside their core business, and company A's strategists think these were a bad idea and so cancel them.
Is it that hard to believe that Oracle might have really wanted 80% of Peoplesoft's business, but thought 20% of it was dead weight? With different management cultures and outlook, it's very unlikely that company A will buy company B and agree that 100% of its activities are exactly in keeping with what they want to do.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"We're mourning the passing of a great company,"
Yep. Ellison bought Peoplesoft to get rid of competition. Peoplesoft users will be left high and dry as Peoplesoft products and employees are jettisoned.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
9% is a DUMP? This must be that "Fuzzy Math"! Can you say Agenda? I am sure you can. Looks like somebody has some "issues" with Oracle.
I agree that Ellison is as autocratic as a Chinese emperor (including modern "Party Chairmen"). But your tsunami example is bad. "China", the government and the country, doesn;t have enough money to provide basic needs to millions of its own people - for them, it's a tsunami over the horizon with every sunrise. This is a perpetual crisis at the same scale, or larger, than the tsunami: hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions without adequate shelter, medicine or food to survive. Every day - all the time, with the casualties matching probably in a month (or even a week) what which arrived by tsunami in an hour - but which won't return for years, decades, centuries. While the US, Japan, Australia and the rest have vast billions of "discretionary" money available. Which we spend on what we see on TV, another factor which doesn't influence most Chinese.
Taiwan has little excuse for their stinginess, nor truly does the "special zone" of Hong Kong - their capitalist greed seems clear from the numbers. But the actual spending of the aid money is also controlling the donations. Much is going to the Indonesian military, which is an enemy of "China" (collectively), but an ally of the US, Japan and Australia. Of course there are strings attached by "our" governments, mostly relating to the suppression of Indonesian populations in the oil/gas rich Aceh region. The other regions in Thailand and even Sri Lanka have similar political/military polarization. Norway, a major oil producer, no doubt has interests along those same lines, though that country's global donations in general lead all nations in what should be a competition to fund sustainable global development.
So there's no barbarism going down. Except, I note, in your racist attitude towards Chinese Americans. Lots of them in Silicon Valley, so a SV company will inevitably become like China, the country most of them fled at personal sacrifice? Your comparison of Oracle's labor policies to China's really is an insult to the term "utter brutality". China tortures workers who complain, or threaten to organize; Oracle at worst browbeats them or doesn't renew their contract, leaving them free (the essential difference) to find another $100K:y job up the street.
Overall, you need a sense of proportion. Your oversimplifications betray the kind of severe error that any thinking based on racism will generate. Ellison is something of a Genghis Khan, but the Chinese "communist" mafia is not a metaphorical khanate, but nearly indistinguishable from their historical predecessors. Neither are particularly worthwhile, but you'll have a hard time finding people sympathetic to your anger when you've got nothing additional to offer.
--
make install -not war
PS 9 is already in the works. Wont be any new products. To me that is a 'dump'.
Last i heard it was 2013 for support. Support is only so they can migrate people over to pure Oracle products..
The PS line is still being dropped as a viable product. At least how i define it..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Really? What software was this?
I'm not challenging you, I really want to know. I work for one of the companies that provides outsourced customer care and billing for them and I'm interested to find out what you're talking about. We're likely going to be one of the providers that gets phased out over the next couple years as they consolidate their operations, and I'm curious to know what business software replacement you're talking about.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
You're right, so why bother planning for them or thinking about them? Try to go for option #1: get good at anything and if you lose your job, then find another.
Welcome to capitalism. People have tried other ways... and they haven't worked out so well.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Errr...
9% is a statistically significant difference, even on populations where the total count is unknown.
That is, even if I don't know how much US currency exists in the world, I could easily notice if 9% of it went missing. (just an example).
Most statistical measures consider canges of 5% to be statistically significant, and in cases where the measurements are cheap, accurate, and plentiful, that number can drop to 2.5% or even 1%.
Sorry. I tried to dig up the details earlier but gave up. Aha! A web search for "AT&T wireless CRM" turns up this article in CIO magazine that says it was a horribly botched upgrade of their CRM system (viciously customized Siebel) combined with a Federal deadline for number portability. They had trouble from December 2003 through February 2004, lost many thousands of customers, were for a time unable to sign up new customers, were completely offline for a whole week, and lost $100M. HTH.
No, the reality is not that stockholders DON'T ever talk to the company, they CANNOT talk to the company.
People at large companies are expressly forbidden to tell reporters or shareholders anything, only to defer them to PR.
So what does that leave an investor with? Well, they can deduce from company communications what they are up to in a layoff. If they are lucky they may have a friend on the inside who can give them an (always biased) point of view of why the layoffs really occurred, and how many good people are out instead of just deadwood.
But since most investors cannot get that, what they are left with is just the knowledge the company now spends $X per year on employees. Subtract the compensation packages for those leaving, and you have a new annual profit projection for the company which is better - and thus leads to a positive correction in the share price.
Always though this increase is temporary and tempered by the results the company actually achieves following a layoff. If they post bad numbers investors can get might spooked and head for the hills, as it is a sign they let go of the wrong people!
I mean, let's say you are an investor at Oracle - just HOW would you "talk to the company"?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's exactly what I see, just eliminating the people doing the same jobs as people Oracle already has.
Wake me if they start laying off PeopleSoft's employees doing work or getting sales through - that's when you know there is going to be real trouble.
Letting go of redundant personnel after a merger is not news, it's just an expectation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
*disclaimer* my company bought some version of the peoplesoft HR web page crap. I think it sucks, becuase (1)it's broken a lot, and (2)our HR people use it as an excuse for why they can't be bothered to do their jobs anymore. */disclaimer*
I don't want to be the wet blanket on the roast-Larry party here, but I have to ask: has anyone actually USED the PeopleSoft product? I'm not asking if you've seen a demo, or if you dated some dumb chick from Dublin who worked on their customer service team. Have you USED it?
it's TERRIBLE.
My company bought a license last spring. Yes, it was after the initial offer. No, nobody seemed to be worried that Larry has more money than God and always gets what he wants. Yes , I thought it was a short-sighted and poorly qualified decision. No, nobody asked me.
From a user's perspective, it's never worked right. We bought a whole bunch of shit from them, including payroll, timesheets, forms administration, approvals workflow, etc etc etc. Payroll is the only part that sort of works correctly, 11 months after the purchase was announced.
oddly, last week I had a problem with my timesheet, so I opened a support ticket. The technical guy assigned to support the peeholesoft application called me, and told me that everyone in the company was having the same problem, and that nobody from PS would return his phone calls.
to the people who still work at the PS HQ in Dublin: steal stuff now, becuase in a week, there won't be anything good left. To the Oracle folks supervising the "merger:" do the world a favor and fire everyone now, and just pretend that Peoplesoft never existed. Give away copies of 9i or 12i or whatever, those poor customers you just bought have suffered enough.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Companies are not always (or even often) fair I'll readily admit, but nothing in the process I described disallows fairness.
I would hope Oracle is being generous with severance packages. Being laid off is not necessarily bad, I know people who have used it to take several months off and re-think how they wanted to work.
I'm just not sure I see these particular layoffs in and of themselves as being unfair, it's almost like calling a chemical reaction unfair. Especially software people should understand something like this at a high level, a system with duplicate elements is inefficient and companies are really refined sets of common business processes. Of course there are people involved in these "components" but what you must realize is that while there are people at the other end too (like Elllison) he doesn't really have much of a choice either. Could he really keep those people? Perhaps, but what happens in ten years when the money is sucked out of Oracle by extra staff he cannot use and he has to close the whole company? Companies have to have some reflexes that help with survival.
Such actions are just part of what businesses do - the element of fairness I think comes into play in the mechanics of how actions are actually implemented, where the humans at the top level can make choices. And the details of that we do not know yet. But it can be fair, and reasonable, if the company tries. And sometimes they do try (though often it seems they do not).
So you do live in a universe that contains fairness, but you must try and seek it out and protect it. If you are at a company like Peoplesoft and someone like Oracle is trying to take you over, then you need to activate your part of that "at-will" employment option and start looking for somewhere else to be - or at least beef up savings to last through a future search!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Get over it.
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get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
Ah yes, the LNP debacle. I did hear about this now that you mention it. Thanks for the reply.
Siebel is a piece of shit, from what I hear. AWS took away the number management piece from us when they implemented LNP and I did hear they had major failures. By that time, I had moved out of that area of the business supporting that customer directly, so I didn't get to experience any of the fallout first-hand.
It will be interesting to see what Cingular does to pull the former AWS' collective heads out of their asses. You are correct, IMO -- they have been doing a slow circle around the drainhole for years.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Poor /.ers
The naivite of some around here is stagering. If you truly believe that dealer closers cloe those millions of follars deals do on the basis of a few fucking football tickets, then you are more naive than most.
And if you think a fscking programmer (he, like you most likely) can grasp the complexities of such transactions then you are beyond hope.
You are watching too many Hollywood movies, in those the manager is always bad, ignorant and greedy and the geek in the company's basement is all knowing and can save the world if he has a macintosh.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... be prepared to give up your cozy lifestyle.
Countries without capitalistic mechanisms to allocate wealth are normally shitholes.
You are welcome if you want something like that, but ton't expect too many enthusiatic backers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... but in any decent sized company your are drilled about not giving interviews to the media unless your are cleared by the company.
This is standard practice, so frankly I don;t see why you are making it sound like something so extraordinary.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Don't be such an absolutist ass. Where did you get my being against capitalism from my last post?
Capitalism unrestrained is just as bad as overregulation. I'm talking about balance - the kind of balance where the vast majority don't get completely screwed over, not a total equalization of accumulated wealth.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
A company's stock simply moves up or down based on the "knee jerk reactions" of the majority of people holding shares when anything changes in the company.
You mistyped "people". You meant "institutions". If multiple institutions decide to dump a stock, watch out!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
At the University of Florida, "PeopleSoft" has become the catch-all excuse for grad students and staff not getting paid, for payments coming from the wrong account, underpayment, etc.
Ahh, I love technology!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
PeopleSoft employees have made the mess the customers are stuck with today. The PeopleSoft staff ought to be tagged so that others can avoid hiring them.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.