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

[waveclaw]

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

Yeah, I know what 'two companies merged' really means.

I interned at a company in college that was 'merged' with another company. This was at a telecom company in the mid 1990's. One day there was a Big Boss type giving a lossy PowerPoint presentation on Big changes in the industry (i.e. the Inernet.) The next day all the old company's signs came down off the building. The day after that? I got to move from an intern cubicle to a manager's office. Of the hundreds of engineers on my floor, only a few of the interns and managers were left. Everybody got fired.

I watched super-programmers with 35 years of coding under their belts walk out and forge start-ups that made them personally rich. Meanwhile, the remaining interns^H^H^Hemployees toiled away on building 'glue' code. Once learning to do world-class software engineering, we now migrated data from the original, unsupported and well-designed systems to the new company's 'manadatory upgrade' (and piss-poor) products.

Oracle+Peoplesoft will be just as bad. I can garuntee that as soon as what's left of Peoplesoft finishes the needed 'glue' code to migrate Peoplesoft data into Oracle 11i or whatever there will be a sudden increase in PeopleSoft 'alumni.'

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.

Megers, feh! There are only stupid takeovers and product assimilation in the business world. Someone is either buying your top talent (never happens) or your top product (to shut it down.) If you couldn't hire away the top talent before, they won't stay now. Product closures is just capitalism in reverse. There is less competition and far too often the inferior product is the only product left in the market. People that think mergers are like happy marriges of two companies have never personally seen the look of pure greed on a pre-merger CEO's face.

I'm not bitter though, it's just that the idea of mergers and the reality of mergers have nothing to do with each other.

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.

Step Three

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

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.

Re:Step Three

[PeeAitchPee]

No, the point was to eliminate a competitor through acquisition and enable the combined Oracle / PeopleSoft / JD Edwards to better compete in a market dominated by SAP.

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.

From the article

[Quixote]

On the news, Oracle shares rose 15 cents - 1.1% - on Nasdaq

Maybe there is a justification for eliminating some of these jobs, but Wall St's myopic viewpoint (job cuts => profit!!!) has always bugged me.

Looks like a winning strategy to me...

[Cylix]

Step 1. Buy Competing Technology
Step 2. Destroy Said Technology
Step 3. Slowly Move Those Customers To Core Product
Step 4. Profit!

Re:Larry may be good at business but...

[QuasEye]

That reminds me of an old joke - "What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?" "God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison."

Welcome to Corporate America

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Corporations are not a democracy.
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. /waits for the revolution

Oracle's Business Philosophy

[Detritus]

"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"

Oracle takes a dump on people

[GtKincaid]

I realy should read headlines more carefully . This time though ,it looks like i wasnt too far off.

To clear up some misperceptions

[afabbro]

There seem to be a few misperceptions here about what's happening.

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.

Re:4,950 people ... fucked over.

[gorjusborg]

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.