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Oracle to Layoff 2000 Jobs
Joey Benington writes "Oracle plans to cut 2,000 jobs across the Siebel and Oracle work forces after completing its merger with Siebel last week. 'We will retain 90 percent of Siebel's support, development engineers, sales and sales consultants,' said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. 'Most of the Siebel cuts will be in the back office, and nontechnical staff. The majority of the cuts will be Oracle people, not Siebel.'"
. . . on the news. What a screwed up world we live in today.
"The majority of the cuts will be Oracle people, not Siebel."
Oh thats OK then. 2,000 people is still a lot of people...
Oracle to layoff 2000 jobs
It should read, "Oracle to layoff 2000 people" Not jobs, people. People are losing their jobs. Its a sad thing.
FTFA: Delivery of the layoff notices has already begun, and the bulk of the pink slips will be handed out in the next few weeks
I think it's better to get canned before Christmas. That way, you don't rack up a shit load of credit card debt.
What in the hell does laying off *jobs* mean? I thought employees were laid off(or hired), and jobs were created or destroyed.
Although this could be correct if it were at Apple. Imagine:
"Apple lays off 1 Job(s)"
I have several friends at Oracle. I heard yesterday that they laid off over 20 people from just one floor at my friend's building. Some of them had been there for over seven years.
It should read, "Oracle to layoff 2000 people" Not jobs, people. People are losing their jobs. Its a sad thing.
A person losing their job is a scary thing for that person and their family. It's not necessarily sad. What is your philosophy when it comes to this? Once someone is given a job, does that mean they have it for life regardless of performance of the person or the company that person has chosen to align themself with? I can understand this statement coming from a brief moment of idealism or naiveness, but people lose their jobs. That's a necessary and proper action to maintain the economy as a whole. The realistic viewpoint is that most of the people laid off (especially the good ones) will go on to even better jobs.
That is not sad. Scary for them, but not sad.
I'm a big tall mofo.
http://www.dqindia.com/dqtop20/2004/compdetails.as p?rank=19
Good old market forces in action, folks. Nothing to see here, move along
Larry Ellison.
I don't know how many people noticed the subtle differences between what Safra Catz, Oracle CFO said and what Larry Ellison, its CEO said.
"We will retain...Siebel's product development and product sales and marketing teams," said Catz.
"We will retain 90 percent of Siebel's support, development engineers, sales and sales consultants," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Obviously Catz is the one who must be lying because no one would be daft enough(no, not even Ellison) to say 90% if it were really 100%. Makes you wonder how much trust should be placed in corporate annoucements.
Sad? Everyone in the tech industry should get laid off at least twice. Except me, but I'm really fucking good. (and I mean this in the least arrogant sense possible - most of you will never even glimpse my level, never mind achieve it.)
Based on this rant, I'm going to guess you just got a job in IT working at the help desk and can't believe how stupid those idiot users are. You know a lot about Windows XP and still think you know everything. You're likely a few years away from realizing just how little you do know and attaining humility.
It's OK. Many IT people go through this phase. Best of luck to you.
I'm a big tall mofo.
It seems like a popular move for companys lately to fire lots of people to make them seem 'leaner' and more 'competitive' however the us economy will never pick up if well paying jobs keep going the way of the ghost. if this continues eventually there won't be enough well paid employees to buy expencive products therefore reducing the jobmarket more. this is a bad trend imo.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb 2006/tc20060209_810527.htm
#!/usr/bin/english
I, myself, ask that nobody give me anything for Christams. I don't need anymore stuff. I have too much stuff as it is. But, unfortunately, there seams to be this "law" somewhere that people have to buy "stuff" for others and spend waayyy too much money.
I really wish Christmas was about friends and family. Getting together and having a nice meal, party, or whatever - no gifts! Sadly, that's not the way it is - at least here in the US of A.
It's too bad for the people who are losing their jobs, but there are always opportunities for talented, resilient individuals.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Layoffs are inevitable when one company buys another one. It's not "sad," it's a part of working in high-tech. Redundant positions are eliminated while typically (most of) the best people in sales, marketing, PS and dev are kept. Legal, HR, finance etc. usually totally get wiped out. Get over it and use it as an opportunity to find a better job. As for the Larry-bashing crowd: say what you want about Oracle and / or Ellison, but the fact is that it didn't really matter who bought Siebel -- layoffs were inevitable. The same thing happens when Google buys a company. I've personally been through two of them already in my relatively young career and everyone knew that layoffs were part of the deal. Besides, do you really think people who had been working for Tom Siebel were worried about something like losing their jobs? ;-)
Its [sic] People!
I though Soylent Green was people?? Dang it.
It should read, "Oracle to layoff 2000 people" Not jobs, people. People are losing their jobs. Its a sad thing.
Yes, it is a sad thing (no sarcasm). However, I would like to point the grammar finger back at you and mention that "layoff" is a noun; the headline should read Oracle to Lay Off 2000 People
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
A loss of 2000 jobs can mean that a substantial larger amount of people lose their job. Think part time workers, for example.
Come on, how else is Oracle going to afford to keep sponsoring their elite yacht racing?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It's the owners who are receiving the benfits of this mentality who are going to win with globalization - not the workers. They're fucked. Labor, including smart people (90th percentile - .1*1 billion = 100 million very smart people in India alone!), is a commodity, now.
Another avenue is creativity. Not just the artsy folks, but being creative with new products and services and try to create your own asset to own.
Just what I've been hearing from folks who are making it in this new economy.
Two months ago the WSJ predicted that Oracle would layoff 2,000 people after the merger, so this news should not be a surprise.
FUCK Larry Ellison! This guy has more money to spend than all of his workers put together, yet he is still greedy for more.
It is a pity the IT industry is not more unionised, we could stand up to this sort of shit if we were.
Is anyone here prepared to get out in the streets to support their fellow IT workers?
Most people will find better jobs? You're presuming that there happen to be other companies around that can better exploit these worker's skills. Better than Oracle anyway. That use of the term good is a tautology. The ones who could find jobs were good by definition and the ones who couldn't were bad by definition. My impression is that bad workers are better at finding work than good workers. They *have* to be.
what is sad is the increasing centralization of corporate power which is going on.
Anyone out there know what kind of severance packages these employees will get?
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
There is an unlimited supply of ordinary opportunities for ordinary people.
Extraordinary people (Larry Ellison) have to make their own extraordinary opportunities.
Don't worry about those 2,000 people. They'll bounce back in no time.
Dude - it is sad. What's sadder is people like you who say it isn't sad, it's all about what's "good for the orporation" and actual human beings don't matter. Oh, by the way, chances are good a loved one of yours may die of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. But it's not sad, it's just a fact of life. Get over it and find new loved ones.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
There went the last chance to have a text column larger that 4000 bytes!
We sure as hell were. First due to the general direction of the company and business, and then after the surprise announcement that we were being bought out by the last company we ever thought would do so.
As others have written, the cuts are primarily back office where there's job duplication such as with HR and IT. Siebel already went through two painful rounds of cuts over the past few years; whoever's still with us is top-notch, although a few people in crucial departments have been cut not due to competence but petty management behavior (we miss you, EK). We've cleaned our deadwood and it's Oracle's turn: four percent is pretty low for a merger of this size.
And of course Oracle's CRM department is going to take a beating. Our software works (when configured properly) and theirs didn't which is why they bought us instead of just crushing us in the marketplace. Oracle almost took down a couple companies with their crappy CRM (I know, I know, but relatively speaking) and year-late implementation. Our software works and is pretty much just being rebranded.
I wonder if we're going to change the color scheme.
2000!? I tought there was only 1 Jobs and he's working for Apple. Am I missing something? Pixar made clones?
When you're on top, the people below matter to you less.
When you're at bottom, those above you matter more.
We have a word for this, it's called Greed.
I know that this could never be measured in any kind of way, but I have to wonder... how many of these 2000 jobs lost are a result of open source competition? Are these jobs the direct result of Postgre SQL giving away their product? Is this the start of the decline of IT as we know it, because of Free software?
I don't respond to AC's.
Makes you wonder how much trust should be placed in corporate annoucements.
Always start out assuming a corporate announcement is a pile of stinking malicious lies until your research proves you wrong....
Me?? A cynic!?!? Naaaaaah.....
Granted, mergers and buyouts almost always mean big layoffs, but this is just another story that will scare people (in the U.S. at least) away from the tech professions. Next I suppose Ellison will make some speech about how it is so hard to find qualified workers in the U.S. because the public education system is so bad.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
... various government and tech leaders in the U.S. are waving their hands and bemoaning the shortage of tech workers. And wondering about the decline in students interested in engineering and computer science.
... I'm that kind of idiot ... Never mind.
HELLO!??! What kind of idiot works their butt off studing for four years to enter a career that is stressful, demands never-ending study, and calls for ever-increasing sacrifices of personal time in return for a job that offers middling pay and doubtful prospects for long-term employment?
Oh wait
You can layoff 2,000 people. You can cut 2,000 jobs. But you can't layoff 2,000 jobs.
Anyone who tries to justify what Larry did is a moron. I was laid off yesterday from Denver and everyone can tell you it was not about duplicate positions. My manager told me that they never even contacted him to ask his opinion on who to let go. It was all chosen by some executives in California who just wanted to reduce numbers.
They even had the balls to tell us they might call us if they realized it was a mistake and wanted you back. Does that sound like the "ethical" way to do things for a company?
For heaven's sake, learn the basic rules of grammar.
Wonder what they'll do with the smaller companies they're lined up to acquire. Business Week says they'll be snapping up Zend (PHP), JBoss, and something called "Sleepycat".
b 2006/tc20060209_810527.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/fe
What's really sad is your lame-ass equation of the loss of a job with the death of a family member. Get a clue and either quit whining or go work for the government or in some unionized industry where you can continue to be another happy cog in the glacially-paced wheel, punch your 35 hour / week clock and get your 13 weeks of vacation a year. Some of us actually are willing to take on greater risk for greater potential reward and don't want you lightweights fucking it up for us. Got it?
The whole point of Oracle picking up Siebel was to get the best-of-breed CRM package and integrate it into the Oracle suite. Naturally this causes some redundancies (on the Oracle side) and people are going bye-bye.
The only irony is anybody at Oracle who thought their job was safe when the acquisition began; if you're on the dog product you should be updating your resume as soon as you smell rumors of an acquisition.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
This is trimming redundancies in 2 CRM packages that are soon to be one CRM package. AFAIK there's no such thing as an open-source CRM solution.
Of course, AFAIK there's no such thing as a proprietary CRM solution but that's just the cynic in me.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
You're stupid. Most young tech workers can only dream of getting laid off. You get severance pay at your original salary plus unemployment for two months. If you get another job during those two months (pretty easy right now in the bay area), it's like getting double salary.
First, they're outsourcing more work to India, according to printed reports in the Wall Street Journal (not free, so no link). Hence the reductions.
...
Secondly, they're getting their hat handed to them by MySQL. I attended (via webcast) a MySQL introduction, and probably 90 percent of the online chat Q&A was from Oracle Developers and DBAs like me asking about migration from Oracle and tutorials on the same, as well as differences such as the more TSQL-based triggers (instead of the PL/SQL ones that I learned first).
Thirdly, my guess is their CEO wants to buy a new boat to race in the America's Cup with
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LOL what greater potential reward? Here's a clue: you're not a star and there is no reward. But, keep trotting towards that carrot, my friend.
I mean... I downloaded JBuilder, tried it, didn't like it, and removed it. Since I was using Netbeans all along I just kept on using it. No need to make a big fuss about it and start sacking people, sore lusers... IMO you're better off working for Sun.
Two months ago the WSJ predicted that Oracle would layoff 2,000 people after the merger, so this news should not be a surprise
They also noted that Oracle was, coincidentally, outsourcing jobs to India.
None of this is a coincidence.
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On a positive note, getting laid off is (usually) better than having the whole company shut down. At my last company the people who got laid off also got a few weeks of severance pay, while those who stayed a few more weeks till the end didn't get anything. Hopefully the Oracle/Siebel folks will get a good severance package and also have a network for finding new jobs. Or maybe SAP will come calling. :)
``it didn't really matter who bought Siebel -- layoffs were inevitable.... do you really think people who had been working for Tom Siebel were worried about something like losing their jobs?
That doesn't quite jive with this:
``The majority of the cuts will be Oracle people, not Siebel.''
Yeah, I was like "Oracle's gonna lay off Steve Jobs? 2000 times?)
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Most of the /. posts make it sound like these poor bastards are in really bad shape. Most Oracle DB admins, engineers, developers are in very high demand so the layoffs are nothing but a temporary vacation for them as they move into new $100,000k+ per year positions elsewhere.
The company I work for looses a lot of Oracle DBAs to bigger fish elsewhere all the time. I guess the Oracle DBAs here must hate making the measly $120k they offer at this company.
Nothing new to see here, move along...
I wonder if these layoffs have anything to do with the oracle building being closed yesterday at lunchtime.
I work right down the street from the Oracle headquarters and I often go there for lunch in one of the main buildings restaurants. I went there yesterday only to find security guards turning everyone away. I asked what was the problem, he said there was a 'problem' that would be cleared up soon.
Instead of whining about the machinations of capitalism, join it. Go here, or here, or go through your bank, open an account, and start buying the shares these companies have out on the market.
Way before Katrina came along, I bought $10,000 worth of VLO, back when this company was $10. My mouth was watering after they became the biggest oil refining company in the United States (they took over Diamond Shamrock not too long ago).
After Katrina hit, I had well over 5x my original investment and dumped the stock. So, now I have almost a year's worth of wages I'm sitting on, and I can take this money and go put it somewhere else.
These companies that layoff workers are only doing it for one single reason: to please Wall Street. Any Wall St. analyst would be shocked if a merger or acquisition did NOT involve layoffs, since that is primarily a driver for the merger in the first place (increase market share + lower costs == higher returns).
So, if the company is doing the layoff is a sincere, sound manner... why not invest? Oracle and SAP have pretty-much shutout all the other accounting (er... "ERP") systems on the market... MAS-90/100, Solomon, J.D. Edwards, and a myriad of other big speciality systems... they are ALL going the way of the dodo.
POS vendors are probably the next target to be consolidated after this (which I would breathe a HUGE sigh of relief if that happened... do you know how many different POS systems are out there???)
Seriously, just like the Pope looking like the Emperor from ROTJ, Ellison looks like Beelzebub.
--Chag
...are these the jobs:n y&idco=30057s =bestcomp&empid=21518
http://bestjobs.neogen.ro/?1=1&bj_nl_p=show_compa
or maybe these:
http://locuridemunca.acasa.ro/index.php?m=common&
Romanian Anonymous Coward
I think you're not reading the right message from those government and tech leaders. I don't hear them saying the U.S. needs more "tech workers." I'm hearing them saying we need more scientists and mathematicians. Science is the font of innovation. That's where new ideas and new products come from, ultimately. As we transform into an "information economy" -- in other words, a society whose primary asset is intellectual capital -- we need people to generate new ideas or we won't have anything to sell.
That doesn't mean we need our universities to churn out more middle managers at Oracle -- or more coders, for that matter. When I hear "tech worker" my brain translates that into "clock puncher." What does it mean to be able to "work tech"? At one time the automobile was revolutionary technology. But the only people who get hired for their ability to work an automobile these days are cabbies and truck drivers.
Breakfast served all day!
It appears that Oracle likes to lay off people in February. Larry likes to play game with the people in Oracle. I'm glad I'm out of it and never will go back to and place that loves back stabing and murderous play like that. I rather go to Iraq at least I have some weapsons to fight back.
This is 2 CRM products in development, of which Siebel is the better of the two. So, you lay off the ppl on the dog. It has little to do with their outsourcing efforts, however you feel about them.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I had a college professor tell our computer organization class that, "You now know more than 99% of the world about how computers work." All because we wired some circuits on a bread board and talked a bit out binary arithmetic.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I had no idea that many of Steve's relatives worked at Oracle!
Swisssushi - When the going gets tough, get some tenderizer
This is 2 CRM products in development, of which Siebel is the better of the two.
... well, you may not want to do the math, but most people will.
I'm not disagreeing that, of the CRM products, Siebel might have a better version. But when we're talking Oracle layoffs, you should read the Wall Street Journal analysis of their cash flow, rather than focus solely on one product sector.
And if we see x,000 jobs created in India within six months of x,000 jobs eliminated in the US
Economics is the allocation of scarce resources amongst many choices - and if Larry wants to finance a new team or buy out some Open Source products, he may decide to renege on his word and deep six "extra" employees.
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