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Here's a useless anecdote: I was fired from Oracle a couple years back, and it was done as pleasantly as one could expect. It completely depends on who's runni

Here's a useless anecdote: I was fired from Oracle a couple years back, and it was done as pleasantly as one could expect. It completely depends on who's running your department. I was in storage testing. My direct manager had mediocre people skills, but the director is a superb manager in all respects, and she was the one who pulled the trigger in a face-to-face meeting with me. She made it as clean and honest as it gets. I'm not a huge fan of the company, but I wouldn't hesitate to work for her again. Obviously the experience of a singe drone has little bearing on anyone else. I feel bad for everyone getting pushed out of the boat this month.

nine_k 8y ago
> I'm not a huge fan of the company, but I wouldn't hesitate to work for her again. This. I always find myself loyal not to the company but to my (extended) team.
toyg 8y ago
I left when the writing was on the wall; it took another 4 years for them to pull the plug on the rest of the (UK) group, because the slow-erosion strategy wasn't working quickly enough; but they were given a pretty fair treatment, by all accounts. Oracle is a massive company, even with trade unions here in Europe. They will not screw you over, as long as you agree that their first and foremost priority is their bank account and act accordingly.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Could you describe the slow-erosion strategy?
  - nate_meurer 8y ago
    In its most honest form, it's just letting attrition work naturally. Slimy companies do things to undermine morale and make work untenable for established employees, especially the expensive senior ones. Good example is IBM abruptly banning remote work. Marissa Mayer was known for this kind of thing at Yahoo too.
  - toyg 8y ago
    Any sort of promotion stopped, pretty much all career progression options were taken off the table, and people were not replaced when they left. Management was almost entirely dedicated to opening similar offices in countries with lower salaries (and labor protections...), then sending us out to train people there. When it failed in one place, they tried again elsewhere, and again, and again... Our office kept shrinking, both in terms of workforce and actual desk space, while workload per head inevitably went up as people moved on. A year after I left, they moved to a smaller office, and after another couple of years they closed for good. It was all very predictable.
monocasa 8y ago
StorageTek?
- nate_meurer 8y ago
  No, just Sun, briefly, but I worked with a lot of StorageTek people.
xtracto 8y ago
This is when I cheers Mexico's government work rules (Oracle is firing in Mexico too): By law of you are fired without a reason attributable to you, the company has to pay you 3 months salary.

nine_k 8y ago

> I'm not a huge fan of the company, but I wouldn't hesitate to work for her again. This. I always find myself loyal not to the company but to my (extended) team.

toyg 8y ago

I left when the writing was on the wall; it took another 4 years for them to pull the plug on the rest of the (UK) group, because the slow-erosion strategy wasn't working quickly enough; but they were given a pretty fair treatment, by all accounts. Oracle is a massive company, even with trade unions here in Europe. They will not screw you over, as long as you agree that their first and foremost priority is their bank account and act accordingly.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
solarkraft 8y ago
Could you describe the slow-erosion strategy?
- nate_meurer 8y ago
  In its most honest form, it's just letting attrition work naturally. Slimy companies do things to undermine morale and make work untenable for established employees, especially the expensive senior ones. Good example is IBM abruptly banning remote work. Marissa Mayer was known for this kind of thing at Yahoo too.
- toyg 8y ago
  Any sort of promotion stopped, pretty much all career progression options were taken off the table, and people were not replaced when they left. Management was almost entirely dedicated to opening similar offices in countries with lower salaries (and labor protections...), then sending us out to train people there. When it failed in one place, they tried again elsewhere, and again, and again... Our office kept shrinking, both in terms of workforce and actual desk space, while workload per head inevitably went up as people moved on. A year after I left, they moved to a smaller office, and after another couple of years they closed for good. It was all very predictable.

monocasa 8y ago

StorageTek?

nate_meurer 8y ago
No, just Sun, briefly, but I worked with a lot of StorageTek people.

xtracto 8y ago

This is when I cheers Mexico's government work rules (Oracle is firing in Mexico too): By law of you are fired without a reason attributable to you, the company has to pay you 3 months salary.