Comment by kodablah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodablah | Hacker News Reader

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I don't see a big issue with this. I don't like Oracle as much as the next guy, but when the community votes to de-corporate project I think it is reasonable to lay off the people performing corporate maintenance. Surely those who voted to "community-ize" it (which I agree with) will re-hire these people to continue their effort lest they think these things just magically maintain themselves. Granted Oracle was one of those who voted. I think these are just reasonable ebbs and flows of businesses and shuttering or devolving yourself of products.

I think most of people's hate will come from hating Oracle or emotionally hating the idea of layoffs. In this particular case it's a damned if you do damned if you don't. One side wants Oracle to open everything and stop exercising control over things (e.g. their own branded JDK which was only differentiated by support and these kinds of tools). Another side lambastes Oracle for not keeping the people around to do the work. We all want less Oracle control over the JVM yet we all secretly want them to keep working on it and paying the people to do so.

My thoughts exactly. As is common knowledge, Oracle simply doesn't have any other positions for people with deep knowledge of Java. Once this project was over, there just weren't any other options than to fire the whole team.

This is also why the best armies throughout history have always executed their own battalions after every successful battle. Read your history books, people!

Do you have any references ? Edit: I'm looking for book / article recommendations as I like reading history, and can't believe they executed their own battalions.

High grade sarcasm detected.

sarcasm, i guess - i interpret the statement as: why would you want to keep competent people around, even though their specialties lie in a different area? because competent people are usually also competent when employed in a slightly different sector; the mythical super-programmer is unlikely to depend on a specific language/technology anyway.

the comparison wasn't a very good one though: firing your army could lead to soldiers defecting to a possible future enemy, who would then be stronger in an attack.

so what does oracle gain by firing a couple of excellent java devs?

+ no wages paid - they could defect to a rivaling database company: unlikely - bad press: oh well, that's just another drop in the bucket - they lose a couple of experienced engineers that could have excelled in other projects

They might have been looking to downsize anyways, laying off a team that is no longer needed anymore is an easy way to do that, as sucky as it is.

I think that what irks a lot of people is that Oracle has almost 300 open positions in the US for Java developers.

Why lay off experienced developers instead of moving them to currently unfilled positions?

I was having coffee in a co-working space last weekend and for whatever reason some company had posted their application to host an H1B visa. As part the application they said they were unable to hire a local senior Java programmer at the prevailing wage of 79,850 and they were going to pay this person 80,000.

I don’t take much value or meaning from open vague postings at large companies.

Do we know that they didn't offer to move them and just fired them? Or are we just assuming?

Edit: Keep in mind that not everyone would get that offer, so a couple people not getting the offer doesn't mean that nobody got it.

Meh, lateral movement in large companies is something we can scoff at across the spectrum. The compartmentalization of these large companies coupled with their insistence on in-office employees is surely a problem, it just didn't feel like that's where the hate was directed. Often in the case of layoffs by non-troubled companies, there are many valid "but [...], but [...], but [...]" arguments. I'm not sure there is much value in concerted anger at this one.

I wonder if they are actually filling those roles?

Can't speak for other parts of the org, but Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is growing fast. Most teams have a target to double+ staffing within 6 months, and from what I've seen, they're roughly succeeding with their goals.

I don't know that Oracle specifically works to transfer staff around (not been in a situation to know). The job boards _are_ open and available internally, and some of the OCI growth is happening via internal transfers. People from across the company are specifically reaching out to hiring managers.

Anyone else remember far enough back to when OCI referred to the Oracle Call Interface (C library)?

There's little traces of "OCI" with different meaning all over the place in Oracle, so far as I've seen. Guess it's just one of those useful TLAs that keep repeating.

Those open positions are in place for H1B visa and green card sponsorships. Also what sense does it make to employs a highly skilled java expert in ordinary java dev role ?

The nonsensical requirements around green card filings force all these large companies to constantly have open job positions that will never be filled. It is mostly to satisfy USCIS than anyone else.

Hint: Check San Jose Mercury News for job ads. Never apply to those jobs. You wont get it.

>what sense does it make to employs a highly skilled java expert in ordinary java dev role ?

Because, even though ordinary pays less than senior, most people prefer to be employed than unemployed.

$some_paycheck > $no_paycheck

Is it that hard to find a job in US nowadays? I can have quite a few job offerings if I wish so and I'm far from highly skilled expert.

I overheard a guy on a bus. It seems that he got axed, and that Oracle are slashing a rather wide cut over all java (jvm) development, not just Mission Control.

Agree. I mean what was the alternative here ? 1. Pay them to do nothing. 2. Pay them to do something unrelated to their deep expertise of Java.

By laying them off I think Oracle has made available a large pool of very good java experts for the rest of the companies out there and the best company will derive more mileage from them.

Of course this is assuming that this laying off is in accordance with their contract and Oracle has not put any unreasonable clause that prevents them from working for another company in similar position.

If any of those good people are facing financial hardship I am pretty sure they can ask for help and receive it from wider dev community.

Excellent point. I have exactly same thoughts when people claim open source projects are not real 'open source' when Google/Apple/Oracle etc dictate direction. The only way out is then either companies move their employees to work only on internal/closed projects or lay developers off if project is to become real open source.

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