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Oracle Lays Off More Than 1,000 Employees (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Mercury News, Oracle is laying off approximately 450 employees in its Santa Clara hardware systems division. Reports at The Layoff, a discussion board for technology business firings, claim about 1,800 employees company-wide are being pink-slipped. Oracle claims the company isn't closing the Santa Clara facility with this reduction in force. Instead, "Oracle is refocusing its Hardware Systems business, and for that reason, has decided to lay off certain of its employees in the Hardware Systems Division."
Looks like this is the end of Sun SPARC and Solaris.
The last of the Sun Microsystems people getting the boot. Sad.
There are 1000 job postings at Oracle for bilingual engineers... no doubt their H1-B replacements.
If only someone at the Oracle could have foretold this.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Oracle is less and less a software company and becoming more about making sales, then gouging their clients.
I feel for the 500 lawyers, 200 managers, 50 directors, 149 assistant and one temp programmer needing to find a new job...
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pink%20slipped
1) Oracle lays off workers.
2) Oracle announces they are moving manufacturing/design overseas.
3) Trump locks up the Oracle CEOs and forbids the company from doing business in the US or moving its assets overseas.
4) We don't have to deal with Oracle, Java, Solaris, or any of their other dribble ever again.
MAGA.
Thanks, Trump!
The NEW Oracle Advanced Hardware Systems Division, India opens ;)
As I understand it they are still going strong with SPARC, and unlike Sun/Oracle had been doing quite well producing performance oriented SPARC Processors. Now if only they could scale one of those, or simply use defective dies to create some low cost desktop/workstation priced machines to get mindshare back focused on them...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ok black list from using H1B's for some time unless they hire USC's first.
Where's Trump when you need him?
Simple math shows that Trump is likely irrelevant.
California salaries > Indian salaries + Trump import tax
Checking the nukes
Looks like good old Larry can fund himself another megayacht now.
Silence is a state of mime.
Litigation company fires anyone not necessary for litigation, and this surprises people?
Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, is considering setting up a display-making plant in the United States in an investment that would exceed $7 billion, company chairman and chief executive Terry Gou said on Sunday.
The plans come after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to put "America First" in his inauguration speech on Friday, prompting Gou to warn about the rise of protectionism and a trend for politics to underpin economic development.
You really have to admit that 30-50k new jobs is significant.
Gou said he told Son that the United States has no panel-making industry but it is the second-largest market for televisions. An investment for a display plant would exceed $7 billion and could create about 30,000-50,000 jobs, Gou told Son.
You can hate on him all you want, but if fear of Trump can bring manufacturing jobs back, the people whose livelihood depended on manufacturing jobs and who voted for him are going to be happy they did. As for the rest, you should all wish for more success stories, despite your personal opinions. It's not like any other president hasn't been an asshole. Why? "It's the economy, stupid!"
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
A Linux monoculture would be a terrible thing. It would lead to stagnation, like always happens when there's a monoculture of any sort.
Just look at what has been happening to Linux itself recently. The last few years have seen every major Linux distro switch to systemd. The only distros that haven't switched are little-used niche or hobbyist distros like Slackware (and if you think Solaris feels "antiquated"...), Devuan (I consider it a total failure at this point), and Gentoo (I don't want to wait a month for everything to compile).
Basically everyone using a modern version of Linux is part of a monoculture. They all use the Linux kernel. They all use systemd. They all use a lot of software from the GNU project. There's so little diversity. The differences that do exist are essentially cosmetic at this point.
A Fedora installation used to feel different from, say, a Debian installation. These days the biggest difference is whether you type "apt-get" or "yum" to manage packages.
Maybe it's more convenient for the distro maintainers, but it's awful for everybody else. It's not like the old days, where if we had problems with one major distro we could easily try another major distro that didn't use the same software and thus avoided the problems. But we've lost that ability. Now if we have a problem with systemd, for example, we can't just use another major Linux distro. We typically have to ditch Linux completely, and use something like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or dare I say it, even Windows instead.
At least we have the *BSDs to fall back on when Linux becomes unusable for us. And at least there's still a natural diversity among the different *BSDs. But it's a shame that we no longer have many options beyond the *BSDs. If they don't work for us, we're essentially stuck using Windows, or maybe mac OS.
But nobody cares.
the question isnt when will oracle stop supporting sparc, or when is solaris going to finally die, but what was it that Larry saw at the mega-yacht store that day that was worth the salary of 1800 employees...and does it light up?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Yes, that's in true in general. In this case, I think the formula in use is:
Hardware revenues - (California | foreign + Trump) hardware expenses Desired margins
Btw, on an unrelated note, I wish Oracle would GPL solaris and that project Indiana could resume as OpenSolaris.
I am really hoping that Trump is simply a genius and manages to have the cake and eat it too. There is the slim-but-now-not-non-existent chance that we can: 1) still stand for free trade, 2) end up with most of the high-tech infrastructure construction, rendering 3) the US a manufacturing powerhouse and export king. If Trump threatens enough that people actually build *mega-factory* in America, America will actually be best poised to export *megaFactoryProducts*. That said, it is going to be really hard to get there by threats alone.
More like tweeting about the size of something. He seems to be ... lacking in size confidence.
Setting up a new School of Masonry.
[...] the people whose livelihood depended on manufacturing jobs and who voted for him are going to be happy they did.
Except Trump isn't going to bring back the manufacturing jobs of yesteryear. A new factory today will hire a few dozen workers to handle a machine that does the work of 1,500 workers.
How am I going to tell my wife? My three kids?
We have a nice house in Santa Clara...how am I going to afford it now?
No no no no nonononnonononononononononono
Oracle Delphi could have predicted this.
Who says a Liberal Arts education/knowledge is worthless!!!!
Look how it has enriched our lives. Liberal arts is history, art, the finer stuff .... and the neurosciences geeks would argue that ALL human knowledge is interrelated.
I for one breezed through data structures because I used music analogies. Easiest 'A' in a two week Summer session ever.
"Oracle ... gouging their clients."
One example of Oracle's gouging, two stories:
Oregon settles bitter legal fight with Oracle for $100 million
Oregon Reaches $100 Million Settlement With Oracle
How it happens: Managers with no technical knowledge believe they can buy contracts for technology development. Technology companies know they can say anything and it will usually be accepted.
Another example of an ignorant manager assuming it is possible to manage technology without knowing anything about technology: Price for Failed Obamacare Website: $394 Million and Counting.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama often acts like a knowledgeable leader even when the depth of his knowledge is extremely shallow.
They better watch it - Foxconn is thinking of opening a $7 Billion display screen factory in the USA, on top of $50 Billion, and you know darned well that fear of Trump putting duties on them is part of it.
Nope. I don't know or believe that for a second. See, I'm not dumb. I can actually read that Foxconn had plans before Trump even threw his hat into the ring.
More importantly, I dislike governance by fear, and what I also know is that if ANYBODY on the left-wing side said anything like what Trump purports to do, the Republicans would shake in their boots at the vileness of government interfering with the free market, and most importantly, I know that the suffering factory workers in Asia, whose plight I also care about, will not be in Trump's thoughts. So not only will he be ignoring real problems, the political allies in the legislature won't be genuinely interested in doing the thing, at most, they'll appear to do it.
More likely, they'll get fed up with him, and toss him on his ass as soon as he gives them an opening.
You really have to admit that 30-50k new jobs is significant.
In a country of over 300 million? Nope. In a country with a workforce of 160 million or so. Nope. Heck, I still remember the right-wing shills complaining about people leaving the workforce and not even looking for jobs, thanks to Obama. Now you want me to praise Trump for a pittance?
Says more about you than the economy.
You can hate on him all you want, but if fear of Trump can bring manufacturing jobs back, the people whose livelihood depended on manufacturing jobs and who voted for him are going to be happy they did. As for the rest, you should all wish for more success stories, despite your personal opinions. It's not like any other president hasn't been an asshole. Why? "It's the economy, stupid!"
Ah, here's the thing, Trump won't bring them back, but he will absolutely insist he is, so the naive will be thinking the world is changing for the better, and all too easily believe that it's the GREAT TRUMP who is saving them, even as the Emperor's lack of clothes becomes apparent.
I agree there will be lots of "success stories" but that's the problem. See, it won't be true stories. It'll be works of fiction. And the kind of asshole that Trump is, is one that is very dangerous, though perhaps you might not be aware of it. He's the conniving deceitful sort that gets a roaring crowd behind him as he convinces Democracy to sign its death warrant.
He's very dangerous.
Time to end personal income tax and replace it with tariffs. Benefits citizens and sticks it to the Global Conglomerations and their "labor arbitrage" .
Given what I know about what it's like to work for Oracle, those who get to keep their jobs are the real victims.
Alternative Fact: Trump supporters are well endowed.
It's a known quantity. Oracle rep lie sell their substandard product with shitty support, piecemeal features, and a huge bill. You deserve what you get. Almost as bad as contracting with IBM, but not quite. IBM has decent support.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I wonder if Trump will claim this too as "made available 1000 highly skilled workers to Make us great again"
I wonder if Oracle is following the Cisco model of announcing layoffs of Americans at the front door while bringing in H1B workers through the back door.
And what happens when other countries either do the same to their own companies, or retaliate and erect tariffs on our products? Do you think corporations are going to cater to ~300 million max market (us) or a >1 billion market (and thats just china)?
Meanwhile sure we might have more jobs (minus the stuff that will be automated away), but everything is going to cost a lot more so who is going to be able to afford them? Domestic companies are offshoring not because they love foreigners or hate Americans, they are doing it because it leads to cheaper products.
There are over a million skilled manufacturing jobs unfilled right now. There's plenty to manufacture, but skilled workers willing to do blue-collar work are hard to find. Sure, we'll never return to the old days, "but the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This one combined with Microsoft's layoffs has already cancelled out the few hundred jobs Trump was so proud of keeping in the US a few weeks. Maybe the Oracle employees can get a job at Carrier.
I'm considering opening a $54 billion flying car company in San Jose CA. I'll employ at least 75,000 currently-out-of-work steel workers and coal workers. I'll pay them $117 per hour on a 30 hour work week, with full benefits including unlimited time off. That's what I'm considering.
Oracle *may* have just decided to not only save '$' but also to concentrate on the 1 really GOOD product they have: Their database engine. Java's turned up full of problems, their other wares & OS apparently (along w/ hardware for them) aren't turning profits like they used to (apparently).
* I've worked around it, often cross-platform from PC's & Servers to midranges - it was fast, stable, with good api's to access it with (generally pretty outstanding - was in many ways miles above offerings from IBM in DB2 or Microsoft's SQL Server imo & experience (solid 7++ yrs. @ that point in my former career as a programmer-analyst/software-engineer)).
APK
P.S.=> Still, it's never good news to hear folks lose jobs but, with a name like Oracle on your resume? You're probably going to land on your feet just fine for the next job you land... apk
There's plenty to manufacture, but skilled workers willing to do blue-collar work are hard to find.
Is the problem a lack of skilled workers willing to do the job or employers unwilling to train non-skilled workers?
Based on my experience in Fortune 500 companies, employers are looking for people who already have the necessary job skills and could start without any training. One manager told me that he could train me but it would be a waste of his time as I would only leave to get a better paying job at a competitor. Never mind that many employees were training themselves, getting certified and leaving for better paying jobs at competitors anyway.
Employers don't train. Never have. Not really their core competency. The failure lies elsewhere, but it is a failure, and one we must address as a society as unskilled jobs dwindle away.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Companies "think" about doing things all the time. Get back to us when it actually happens. Secondly, even if it does happen why do you presume Foxconn won't just heavily automate it so as to hire as a few people as possible?
Employers don't train. Never have. Not really their core competency.
That's because bean counters on Wall Street declared training as an unnecessary expense back in the 1980's. Since then it has become the public school system responsibility to train students into employees. If you don't know how to flip burgers out of high school, you're unemployable for the rest of your life.
Damnit, Trump.
I guess this coupled with the announcement about Solaris last week means Oracle is finally finished squeezing the last pennies out of the SPARC/Solaris architecture. Admittedly it's very rare to see new implementations of a proprietary UNIX...every place I've dealt with in the last few years is trying to rid themselves of all the legacy code and hardware that keeps them on Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc.
I wonder what kind of cost/benefit calculation they came up with. The company I work for has a bunch of mainframe stuff still in production, and they pay a king's ransom to CA to license a package that hasn't changed in ages, but must keep running no matter what. I can't imagine Oracle is giving away Solaris and SPARC support contracts and licenses...it must be a massive amount and certainly enough to keep a bunch of Solaris engineers on staff to fix the occasional bug. 1000 people is a lot though -- I wonder how many of those were in sales? Salesmen are expensive in terms of all the meals, rounds of golf and strip club visits they have to give away to customers.
You know what would suck? Oracle kills the old Sun, then miraculously opens a new office in a "low cost geography" so they can keep squeezing for another 20 years! This is what HP did with OpenVMS for a long time before they got tired of supporting it and sold it to a third party.
Not just the 80s - employers have never been willing to train for skilled labor, unless you go back to old-school apprenticeships, starting at age 12 and replacing later schooling. With some relevant training, employers will generally soak of the cost of the last 10%, just as you do when hiring someone from a non-identical job elsewhere. But that takes proving that you've already learned the basics, or a similar skill (and thus proving you can learn).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Bureaucracy is not an enabler.
Bureaucracy does not produce anything.
Bureaucracy does not increase wealth.
Oracle sells Bureaucracy, and only Bureaucracy.
Kill it.
Kill it with fire.
So why not "outsource" to somewhere cheaper in the center of the country. Just pick a breadbasket state and go for it. The map here is a good reference: How Much $100 is really worth in every state. Think of it like playing with exchange rates, but domestically.
Hope you saved some money
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
You can hate on him all you want, but if fear of Trump can bring manufacturing jobs back, the people whose livelihood depended on manufacturing jobs and who voted for him are going to be happy they did
It's really fascinating how insane this presidency is. The left in the developed world has traditionally been against globalization and free trade, precisely out of fear of low-wage jobs not being competitive against developing countries overseas. Also out of fear of environmental and labor exploitation in countries with less regulations. It was the conservative, pro big business agenda to push for more globalization and free trade.
Now you have Trump, who is a businessman himself and ran as a Republican, yet moving into a direction that runs counter to a few deeply rooted Republican beliefs. And despite his plans, he has still filled his cabinet with a few big business players who you'd think have little love for some of his isolationist plans. Similar story with NATO, his views of Russia and his not so conservative opinions on gay rights and abortion.
Trump has been voted by a few deeply conservative circles and disillusioned, low-class liberals, he is actually quite on the left with some of his policies, yet his cabinet is right, sometimes far-right, whereas his party is conservative... I'm just waiting for this presidency to implode onto itself. There are too many contradictions.
It won't help either that unfortunately Trump is such a twit.
That's only half of a business plan. Where's your revenue?
I can actually read that Foxconn had plans before Trump even threw his hat into the ring
Cite your source, please. I think the jobs issue is much more complex than Trump lets on. But, the last 4 presidents certainly weren't friends of manufacturing. I do see the Foxconn commitment as "fear of Trump". But, I can be convinced otherwise should you find an article demonstrating something counter to Reuters article.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
There was no intention to imply anything good about Donald Trump.
That's only half of a business plan. Where's your revenue?
Ask the multi-billion-dollar dot-com companies.
We don't need no steenking REVENUE!
Well done you orange midget that's a thousand jobs you've killed off now. AND the last lot we lost from Microsoft! How many people are going to be in work after you've done your "job saving" huh?
The infrastructure and support staff it takes to manage what the bots are doing takes a little more than "a few dozen workers" in those factories. Think shipping, raw materials, management... that's why they have such large parking lots. Full automation is coming, buts it not quite here yet.... there may not be many assembly line jobs left, but forklift drivers, automation specialists, various clerks and faces... they still put a LOT of people to work.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
The estimate is 30,000 to 50,000 new jobs. Not a few dozen workers. And that's only the beginning
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Small employers have always trained people on the job.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
BS. This is just Foxconn playing el Presidente Tweety's ego. He's such a rube.
The infrastructure and support staff it takes to manage what the bots are doing takes a little more than "a few dozen workers" in those factories.
Not according to The Wall Street Journal.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-factories-are-working-again-factory-workers-not-so-much-1482080400
First off, it the article said "could", not will. This is just a play to Trump's ego, he's such an easy mark.
The estimate is 30,000 to 50,000 new jobs.
For American or foreign workers? When I tried to break into electronic assembly work in Silicon Valley in the 1990's, all the work was done by Filipinos who came over to the U.S. to work these jobs. Being the only white guy in line when a company was hiring, I was told to go away when I asked for an application.
First, you are full of shit. Foxconn originally planned to reduce overall employment at their factories by replacing workers with robots, while building new factories, so they could increase production while reducing headcount. It didn't work out quite how they hoped. Turns out it's easier to replace white-collar jobs with Watson. When AI learns how to code AI, the trend will accelerate.
Also, the reuters story I linked to also talks about Foxconn's plans for another $50 billion in investment - that's a total of new jobs than all the employed in Wyoming.
Sanders would have been better - far better - but Clinton would have been worse.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The estimates of employee count are Foxconn's.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Trump is actually very left-leaning on gays and lesbians, transsexuals, and abortion. What he says now and what he's done in the past are contradictory. I'd say actions speak louder than words. Like all politicians, he says whatever he has to to get elected. It's also why he's labeled a RINO - Republican In Name Only.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Never mind that many employees were training themselves, getting certified and leaving for better paying jobs at competitors anyway.
So do the math. Which is better, from the employer's perspective: Paying to train employees and watching them leave for better paying jobs at competitors, or letting the employees cover the cost of that training themselves?
Breakfast served all day!
http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa...
"Oracle America, Inc. has filed 2999 labor condition applications for H1B visa and 1876 labor certifications for green card from fiscal year 2014 to 2016. Oracle America was ranked 23 among all visa sponsors. Please note that 49 LCA for H1B Visa and 102 LC for green card have been denied or withdrawn during the same period."
So, wonder what this will say for 2017? And wonder if these H1Bs were let go before the layoffs?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It's not the they sell "bureaucracy", it's that they lock you in and charge too much.
Their products are indeed targeted toward "enterprise" applications, where you want stability and reliability, which is sometimes called "bureaucracy". If you are a smallish risk-taking start-up, then Oracle products are probably not for you.
However, Oracle's problem in the enterprise arena is that they gradually trick you into paying an arm and leg over the longer run. Now that MS-SQL-Server is focusing more on the high-end, and there are open-source products like PostgreSQL and MariaDB, customers are migrating to alternatives, at least their low/mid-sized systems. Oracle will bleed customers if they continue their vice grip ways.
I thought DB-centric hardware was a potential growth industry for them: custom-built database servers that are optimized for Oracle databases potentially could kick the competition's rear ends, kind of like how custom/dedicated neural net (AI) hardware is now "big".
But for some reason it didn't pan out and they are laying off DB hardware people. Any server hardware experts out there who can explain why AI-dedicated hardware is paying off BUT NOT dedicated database hardware?
Why can neural net custom/dedicated hardware kick generic server arse while DB hardware cannot? Is it something about RDBMS's in general, or does Oracle simply suck at hardware?
Table-ized A.I.
If that were true it wouldn't be cost effective to export jobs to third world countries.
That how it goes. Get trained and jump to a new job. Some employers make you sign a contract. You must work x years if we pay for y class.
If that were true it wouldn't be cost effective to export jobs to third world countries.
Manufacturing is returning to the US because it's cheaper than China. The use of automation reduces the amount of labor needed to run the factories here.
He hasn't drone killed hundreds of innocent people in the last few days so he's already doing better than the previous two administrations.
So do the math.
I find your lack of math skills disturbing. ;)
Paying to train employees and watching them leave for better paying jobs at competitors, or letting the employees cover the cost of that training themselves?
You left out the last part of employees training themselves: "and watching them leave for better paying jobs at competitors." Either way the employee leaves and the resulting turnover cost more in money to find a replacement than an existing employee.
Paywalled...... Sucks, I would have loved to read that. Oh well. I guess if I wanna afford to read the Wall Street Journal I better Check. These. Out.. Instead.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Paywalled...... Sucks, I would have loved to read that.
Or read it on Yahoo for free.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-factories-working-again-factory-170300301.html
He's Right wing on some things, and Left wing on others. Yeah, he supports LGBT rights, while on abortion, his current stance supports banning late term abortions, except for the usual rape, incest & life of the mother. He's also opposed to publicly funding abortions, hence the Mexico City executive order of today
His trade policy is arguably Left Wing, although I've seen plenty of Conservatives switch over to his side: the Tom Friedman arguments don't hold water w/ people when they start losing their jobs Left and Right. But on most issues - like Law & Order, Border Security, Immigration, National Security, Extreme Vetting, those policies are very much Right Wing. His policy on Russia - dunno whether it qualifies as Left Wing, since Putin was ex-KGB, or Right Wing, since Putin is Russian Nationalist. But his anti-Muslim geopolitical stance is pretty much anathema to Leftists just about everywhere.
As someone who once worked for a company led by a former Oracle Exec, this is par for the course. Larry Ellison is legendary for his "environment of fear" where they lay people off every 6 months both to keep people afraid for their jobs, and to pump up bonus money for the middle management above the people in question.
Happened at the company I worked for, and though I was ostensibly safe due to my skill set, I finally got sick of watching good people that I had worked with for over a decade that I knew were doing good work being laid off to meet a quota.
Fuck Oracle. Fuck Larry Ellison, and fuck every exec that learned that horse shit from him.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
To get around the paywall simply search on google "U.S. Factories Are Working Again; Factory Workers, Not So Much" under 'News' and follow the link. Prest! Paywall bypassed. Works on most every major news site.
Well, they used to. I got hired on at Sun in 1998 after doing PC administration for a few years. I wanted to learn Unix, was willing to take a job on the lower rung of the ladder to get the experience, and they were happy to get someone who knew the difference between a CPU and a keyboard, was educable as I had a biz degree and a Netware cert (that never used). I also have good people skills to do the kind of customer support one got from companies back in that time period, and that Sun prided itself on.
They sent me to training locally and in California and paid for the certs in Solaris 2.6, which was the newest one at the time. You were also obligated, at that time, to do at least 40 hours of training per year either at SunEd or engineering brownbags or whatever. Later on, requirements included getting the Solaris Networking cert or Java, your choice. All on the company, all on their time.
What companies don't need now, which they did then, was a massive group of US people to do this work. Now the work can be done by Rajeev in India as easily as it can be done by Roger in Indiana. H1-Bs, and all that. There is no incentive for companies to train. However: if these manufacturing jobs are really, really begging then maybe that will come around again.