Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts

akis33 172 points 152 comments September 14, 2026
www.techtimes.co.uk · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (20 comments)

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.

jmclnx

>The company has not disclosed how many workers were affected by the latest cuts One 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.

dominotw

Thats how they usually happen ? They are always "cold"

mikelitoris

Oh boy here we go again

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.

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

freediddy

I'm confused... Did you expect anything different from Oracle?

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?

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.

3pm

I wonder how this holds up in the age of AI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

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.

ags16

Banks threatened Larry with a margin call for his $80B loans with stock collateral?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

toomuchtodo

Related: Here's the severance package Oracle offered laid-off US employees - https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-severance-package-us-... - September 14th, 2026

horns4lyfe

How many h1bs are they filing for?

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