September 1: Oracle employees are watching the clock
The company has drawn up plans for another round of job cuts, managers have been asked to submit lists of employees whose roles could be eliminated, and the target is to bring payroll down by September 1, the day Oracle’s fiscal second quarter opens. Employees now expect the emails to land on the morning of September 1 itself, an expectation that comes from the workforce rather than the company, built on how the last round went. It said that after careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, the company had decided to eliminate the role as part of a broader organisational change, and that as a result, today was their last working day.
Business Insider first reported the plan, citing people familiar with it and an internal document, and said reductions on some teams could run into double-digit percentages. Oracle declined to comment and has not confirmed anything publicly.
On March 31, thousands of Oracle staff in the US, India, Canada and Mexico woke up at roughly 6 am local time to a note from “Oracle Leadership” that opened with a line about sharing difficult news regarding their position. Oracle employees have spent the last three weeks watching a calendar instead of a dashboard.
Another noted that nothing had landed at 6 am at Oracle’s India Development Centre, and reasoned that if the US wave hit first, IDC would follow the next morning, which is roughly how March played out. One laid-off senior manager said 70% of his compensation sat in RSUs and he was four months from $1 million vesting. A survey of 272 workers cut in March found 27% had stock due to vest within 90 days.
Then it told them severance would follow only after they signed termination paperwork, arriving via DocuSign at the Oracle email address they were about to lose access to.
On r/employeesOfOracle, a 52,000-visitor forum that has run a “probable layoff” megathread through August, one employee described checking email at 6 am on the Monday after payday just to confirm he still had a job. It thanked them for their dedication and impact. There was no HR call and no manager conversation. System access was revoked the same morning. The waiting has produced its own strange rituals. The other pattern employees keep returning to is stock. Restricted stock units make up a large slice of engineering pay at Oracle, and unvested RSUs are forfeited on exit.