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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!
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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.
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
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.
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.
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
"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.
...life HARD.
The bottom line isn't the only (or even the best) way to judge the contribution of a company to society. Many of the places I've worked at have had a relaxed atmosphere, even if the actual rate of "work" or "productivity" was lower than in a competitor's more agressive business. I'd still rather work for the relaxed business. ;)
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 -
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.
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.
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
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.
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make install -not war