Let’s be honest about what happened this year.
Oracle cut 21,000 people in twelve months, 13% of the company, and then came back in September for more. The filing says it’s “the adoption of AI.” That’s the polite version. The real version is that leadership bet the company on data centers it can’t afford, borrowed tens of billions to build them, and decided the cheapest line item to cut was us.
We didn’t find out from our managers. We found out from a 6 a.m. email signed “Oracle Leadership,” a signature with no human name on it, because no actual person wanted to put their name on it. Some people found out when their badge and laptop stopped working before the email even arrived. Years of quota, on-call weekends, and customer escalations, and the exit interview was an Okta error.
Meanwhile, the stock run made the chairman the richest man on the planet. Think about that. The same balance sheet that couldn’t carry your salary had plenty of room for the biggest personal fortune on Earth. Nobody at the top took a haircut. Nobody at the top got a 6 a.m. email.
And spare me the “AI efficiency” line. AI didn’t take your job. A $90 billion capex plan took your job, and AI is the press release. If the tools were really replacing headcount, they wouldn’t need to cut sales, customer success, and Health in the same breath as they promise customers better service.
This is the same company that turned license audits into a revenue strategy and turned Java into a compliance trap. Treating employees like a line item to be optimized away isn’t a new Oracle. It’s the same Oracle, just finally saying the quiet part with a layoff email instead of an audit letter.
To everyone who got cut: you weren’t the problem. You were the funding source.
To everyone still there: look at the capex number, look at the debt, and ask yourself who’s next in the queue when the next round of financing comes due.