back to article Oracle cuts cloud jobs with Seattle hit hard as AI spending soars

Oracle issued layoff notices for more than 300 people in Washington State and California this week, according to state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings in those states. In California, 143 employees at Oracle's Redwood City office received layoff notices, effective October 13, 2025; in Washington, 161 …

  1. herberts ghost

    In for a penny, in for a pound

    I never understood why you should want to put your critical data(base) in someone elses cloud. Just doubled your attack surface. Added to vendor lock-in. The cloud is viable for test and, in my case, models and stats crunching.

    1. Scene it all

      Re: In for a penny, in for a pound

      I used to work for Oracle and once the company president came to visit our office. (This was before Catz had that role.) In his speech he explicitly stated that "vendor lock-in" was a key part of the company's business strategy.

      1. Tim99 Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: In for a penny, in for a pound

        I heard this on an Oracle course in ~1987, and have posted it before...

        Q: What do you call Oracle customers? A: Hostages.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In for a penny, in for a pound

        It's been obvious for decades!

    2. EdSaxby

      Re: In for a penny, in for a pound

      Absolutely agree with you, but if you try to raise those issues with your average enterprise architect they will simply brush them away.

      Adapting the old-IBM cliche..."No one ever got fired or moving to cloud"

      1. Dinanziame Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: In for a penny, in for a pound

        Any cloud maybe not, but people should be fired for choosing Oracle

      2. Sudosu Silver badge

        Re: In for a penny, in for a pound

        Until the bill arrived...

  2. m4r35n357 Silver badge

    I bet . . .

    0 lawyers were harmed.

  3. kmorwath Silver badge

    From Dumbai to DumbAI

    Same results.

  4. Brl4n Bronze badge

    all this ai talk makes me sleepy

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "AI will take your salary in capex before it can take your job"

    Never a truer word said. This could easily be a bubble of epic proportions. All that money sucked out of productive economy on top of massive debt. If "they" can't get AI to replace humans, which probably is dependent on stopping hallucinations and macro understanding (GAI), this will fall apart. The result of all that capital having been blown away will cause a massive spike in debt on top of the debt mountain while human unemployment is high and skills have been lost. And ... it is a race against time. Not only must GAI be achieved it must be achieved before the bubble bursts. But this really is a Terminator scenario. Imagine you have human like intelligence but faster and of course robotics, because how can you replace people without sophisticated robotics, why is there an assumption we can control it or it will be kinder than us. We aren't kind to each other!

    Where is the off ramp? All I see is naked, raw, all out competition. That unchecked competition could be the undoing of us if it brings a new species into existence that becomes top of the 'food' chain.

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