One Lesson from Oracle's Layoffs: You Don't Have a Relationship
Eric Guyer
1 min read
One lesson to take from Oracle's layoffs is … you (the customer) do not have a relationship with your account team. While this may seem obvious, I occasionally come across IT executives who operate, at least in part, out of loyalty to their sales rep. The only built-in memory in your "relationship" with Oracle is the volume-based discounts you have settled for in the past or what you are paying (extra) for, e.g., Advanced Customer Support.
To those employees affected, I know the feeling. Oracle #RIF'd me in 2003, a month after my wife and I bought a house. That was the first in a string of layoffs: Click Commerce, then Hewlett Packard Enterprise, then Forsythe Technology (a direct result of Oracle acquiring Sun). I should have seen them all coming, but didn't, because layoffs always happen to someone else. The feeling in all cases was … emptiness.
From what I am hearing, Oracle's recent rounds of AI-washed reductions have been largely random. Perhaps that can be a slight consolation. For some schadenfreude, check out Your Friends & Neighbors on Apple TV+ with Jon Hamm. Link in comments.