I've been in tech for nearly 40 years and this is nothing new. Most tech companies have the stability of fulminated silver and are one technology shift away from become the next Studebaker.
Oracle is big enough that they can absorb a pretty good beatdown before they become toast, but nobody and I mean nobody is immune. For example, Apple was nearly consigned to the dustbin in the mid '90's.
-1gcp, you hit that nail right on the head. Oracle used to be the BEST place to work, 20+ years ago, it's just in the last 5 years that it turned to cr*p (at least from my perspective). I'm too close to retirement to quit, although I am looking. Problem is, recruiters see my resume and they figure out my age then ghost me. Age discrimination is alive and well and how do you prove it, right?
So I stay and I don't completely hate it. If I get rif'd with severance, then great! Otherwise I hang out at Oracle and who knows? Maybe things will improve. Or not.
Great summary. Potential new customers don't want to touch Oracle with the proverbial 10 foot pole. And have in mind that all those p-ss-d off Oracle employees do eventually end up in other companies, driving the decisions.
I think Oracle has two really bad things working against it:
Oracle's customers hate Oracle. That is very, very bad. To have IT groups out there whose sole goal is to eliminate Oracle, because they have been treated so badly, is a very bad thing. You can't recover those customers once they have been screwed over.
Oracle's employees hate Oracle. There's a lot of "get whatever you can" out of the company and screw the long-term viability of the company. That's one thing that contributes to screwing over the customers. Pressure put on sales people by the management, puts pressure on the customers. Support is demoralized and doesn't care. Engineering is completely f---ed up and a lot of those people are just waiting to see if they can get a severance package. Everyone feels they have been screwed by the company and they want to screw the company back.
I think that these two things will make Oracle go down big-time. After the money runs out and the stock goes down, we will see an exodus of all remaining people who gave-a-sh--. Oracle will be a name of the past. It's not going to go on like IBM or recover like MS. IBM and MS never had these problems. Recent hires are here for their RSUs and once the stock tanks, that will no longer be a way to hire people.
You can't change the way customers and employees feel about the company. Once the company has completely destroyed these ties, the company will die. I believe that Oracle is different in that way. There is no chance of recovery, cause there is no one, customer or employees who really want that to happen.
I'm the OP. I should ahve expounded more. My point is that No company is immune to the changes wrought in the tech industry. The sector is littered with dead bodies like Burroughs, DEC and Ashton-Tate that is nothing new. It also means that a big Company like Oracle can survive better than most the same as Apple and MS have. It is however no guarantee. The bottom line is if you want to be in technology you have to be alert nimble and open to rapid change. This is an extremely volatile industry and always will be. Oracle is not immune, none of them are.
Good post.
Trillion ways to spin this, but good.