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  petilon
  Oracle's credit rating has been downgraded to a notch above "junk" status [1].That means they can't borrow cheaply anymore. The only way to raise cash now is to cut payroll, and that's what they are doing. And what are they doing with the cash? Buying Nvidia hardware to rent out to OpenAI [2].All Oracle is doing is unpacking Nvidia servers and plugging them in. This is a commodity business, Oracle has no IP in this. To fund it they are making deep cuts to their software development business which does have proprietary IP.That may have made sense when it was originally announced because AI hype was at its peak at the time. Indeed, Oracle's stock shot up when Stargate was announced, and Larry Ellison briefly became the world's richest person. However, since then the AI hype has evaporated, and hyperscalers are no longer being rewarded with a higher stock price. Oracle stock has dropped more than 50%, and companies NOT investing 100s of billions in AI hardware are now being rewarded, such as Apple.[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/magazine/takeaways-larry-...[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_LLC
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  sailfast
  > We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us.Why do companies bother with this horse excrement? Does a sentence like this make anyone feel better?Most times, I wish they'd just send the honest truth. "Hey, we screwed up. We over-hired and ran out of funds so we had to let you go to make payroll" or "Our M&A strategists overpaid for an over-leveraged company and now we have to figure out how to pay down the debt. Your position was cut as a result."Obviously corporations owe nothing to nobody (apparently) but I'd love it if the patronizing language stopped.
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  a34729t
  My employer has somehow managed to avoid the constant layoffs since 2022 trend, shockingly, and I think this is a big reason we have relatively low churn despite not having many promotions, refreshers, etc (on top of some relatively uncommon benefits for a large tech company). I was recently interviewing a few engineers from FAANG+ companies who are desperate to get out of the squid games and quarterly layoff fears. I wish more companies would realize what a selling point this is, and I wish my CEO would publicly brag about how is he is competent enough to not need to churn through 10+% of his workforce a year AND have great stock price growth over the last 6 years.
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  lambdaone
  While I feel sorry for the people involved, Oracle as a company richly deserves this, for reasons far too familiar to everyone here. This is a come-uppance that has been waiting to happen for decades.
• rinconrex
  As someone also freshly laid off (not Oracle though), let me solemnly acknowledge my new cohorts. Best of luck to everyone, it's tough out there. Stay sharp and focused, hoping for the best.Oracle is in a spiral it seems. Is Stargate still plugging along?
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  3pm
  I wonder how this holds up in the age of AIhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
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  rf15
  I love the smell of [layoff emails] in the morning.Makes me wonder why they're shedding so much and if Zitron was a little right after all.
• maerF0x0
  https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/23/oracle-ai-job-cuts-layoffs-2...Versus https://www.techtimes.co.uk/oracle-new-layoffs-restructuring...It's unclear how many were actually cut because the 21000 / 13% numbers were reported nearly 3 months ago?
• horns4lyfe
  How many h1bs are they filing for?
• dzonga
  oracle could've cruised nicely but nope greed and Larry Ellison's ego (add his son's too) - they bit off more than they can chew.
• freediddy
  I'm confused... Did you expect anything different from Oracle?
• toomuchtodo
  Related:Here's the severance package Oracle offered laid-off US employees - https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-severance-package-us-... - September 14th, 2026
• ags16
  Banks threatened Larry with a margin call for his $80B loans with stock collateral?
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  jmclnx
  >The company has not disclosed how many workers were affected by the latest cutsOne of the first things that "progressive" politicians should do if they take power is require large companies to disclose the exact number of firings before people are notified.
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  Traubenfuchs
  Stop cheering. Oracle still offers a free arm 4x6GB kubernetes cluster and 2 free amd cpu‘s.It‘s the best free platform for learners and small scale operations.
• brycewray
  Off-topic, but I hate the use of the word "photo" in the caption under the AI-gen'd image:> (PHOTO: GEMINI AI)Yells at cloud
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  dominotw
  Thats how they usually happen ? They are always "cold"
• ath3nd
  [dead]
• mikelitoris
  Oh boy here we go again
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  nielsbot
  Too bad they weren't unionized--I assume that would have helped.The workers who built the company and created its worth (obviously not evenly distributed) now get a "thank you very much goodbye" e-mail. I think they deserve ownership and to take part in these decisions.
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  chasd00
  I doubt it was cold as in no prior information cold but more like "cold sounding". If the layoffs affected > 50 employees then it would have triggered the CALWarn act which is the California additions to the federal warn act. So the oracle employees got 60 days notice and have known the email was coming today for 2 months. If they didn't then Oracle owes them 60 days of pay and benefits.