Under IBM, Mass Layoffs at Red Hat No Better Than Oracle Under Larry Ellison (Treating Workers Like Disposables - Even Enemies - Overnight)
IBM also compels them to sign NDAs to avoid backlash from them
While checking Team Blind for company gossip (some are expecting Microsoft layoffs again), I stumbled upon this week's rant about Oracle's layoffs. This is what it said:
My blood boiled reading what Oracle did to laid off employeesMy blood boiled after reading about what Oracle did to employees it laid off. Honestly, this is one of the coldest and most disgusting ways a company can treat people who helped build its business.
I genuinely feel bad for Oracle employees dealing with this.
What makes it even crazier: an Oracle recruiter reached out to me last week about an OCI role. I told them to fuck off OCI( not the recruiter personally, because they’re just doing their job) and do justice to their employees.
Article about Oracle
“Oracle wiped out an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 jobs on March 31 - all via email. Employees found out the way you'd find out your ex changed the Netflix password: the VPN just stopped working, Slack accounts went dark, and then a termination email landed a few days later with a severance offer attached.
The package? Four weeks of base pay for the first year, plus one week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks. One month of COBRA. Sounds survivable - until you remember that at Oracle, stock can make up 70% of someone's total compensation. And Oracle forfeited every unvested RSU. No acceleration. No exceptions - not even for retention grants or stock tied to promotions. One employee lost $1 million in shares that were literally four months from vesting. Then came the WARN Act twist. Employees classified as remote workers in states without strong labor protections were told they didn't qualify for the federal law requiring 60 days' notice before mass layoffs.
Some of these workers didn't even know they were classified as remote - they'd been showing up to the office on hybrid schedules.
A group of roughly 90 laid-off workers tried to fight back, signing a petition urging Oracle to match what Meta, Microsoft, and Cloudflare offered their departing employees. Oracle's response? Hard no. The company declined to negotiate, declined to comment, and declined to accelerate a single share.“
How is this any better than what Red Hat did weeks ago? It cut off its own workers (400+ of them, blocked out of the systems without prior notice) and offered them no assurances or benefits, only some Web page and apparently nothing personalised.
See, under IBM the respect for the worker (or peer) does not exist. █