- Western Union installs telegraph lines across America and suddenly a boss in New York can fire someone in California without looking them in the eye.
One wire, entire crews gone, no conversation, just click and silence. Workers called it getting telegraphed out.
Tuesday morning Oracle did the same thing but faster.
30,000 employees opened their inbox at 6 AM to find five lines from Oracle Leadership saying your role has been eliminated and today is your last day.
Access revoked before they finished reading, no call from HR, no heads up from their manager, just a DocuSign link and a note that unvested stock was already gone.
Oracle fired 30,000 people before they finished their coffee!
byu/Vouchy-MOD inEntrepreneur
Posted by Vouchy-MOD
10 Comments
The telegraph comparison is actually perfect because nothing has really changed except the speed. Companies just got more efficient at being cold about it.
The part that gets me is the access being revoked before people even finished reading the email. Like you couldn’t even give someone 24 hours to save their personal files or say bye to their team? That’s not a layoff strategy, that’s just cowardice dressed up as security protocol.
And the no call from HR or their manager thing is wild. These are people who probably sat in meetings last week talking about Q3 goals and roadmaps like everything was fine. Their managers almost certainly knew and just sat there saying nothing.
The unvested stock being gone immediately is the cherry on top too. Years of “we compensate competitively with equity” and then poof, thanks for your loyalty here’s a DocuSign.
I get that layoffs happen and sometimes they’re necessary but there’s a difference between cutting roles and treating 30,000 people like a batch process. The way you let people go says more about your company than any careers page ever will.
Ok?
Oracle fired 30,000 people before they EVEN got a chance to drink their last office coffee!
Actual article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm296jzzl9yo
OP, are you a bot?
Or, is this AI slop the best you could generate?
The layoffs have been known about for almost 2 months. I know people that work there and have been on pins and needles waiting for them to be announced to see if they made it. I think a lot of people are feeling relief that the waiting is finally over and they can make a move to whats next.
Holy shit this sub is the titanic and it’s going down fast.
Legal? yes. Ethical? no. It lacks both dignity and humanity.
I’m traumatized from reading THIS, can’t imagine what receiving that email was like…
AI slop post. Yawn.