Following Oracle’s mass layoff of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 employees via email on March 31, affected workers attempted to negotiate better severance terms — and Oracle refused. The company offered four weeks’ pay plus one week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks, with no accelerated stock vesting. One long-tenured employee forfeited $1 million in RSUs just four months from vesting. At least 90 workers signed a petition seeking terms comparable to Meta and Microsoft. Oracle declined to negotiate and did not comment publicly.
In-Depth:
As was widely reported, Oracle axed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people via email on March 31.
One of the employees cut that day informed TechCrunch about the experience: “I had, like, this weird feeling in my stomach. I went to go sign into the VPN, and the VPN was like, ‘this applyr doesn’t exist anymore.’ Then I called my friconclude, and I was like, ‘Hey, can you see me in Slack?’ And she stated, ‘No, your account’s been deactivated.’”
The person soon received an email stating their role was terminated immediately. The severance offer arrived a few days later. But Oracle’s terms would quickly become a point of contention — and some laid-off employees would push back.
Oracle offered fairly standard Corporate America terms to laid off employees. In exmodify for signing a release waiving their right to sue, employees received four weeks of pay for the first year, plus one additional week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks. The company was also paying for one month of COBRA insurance.
The catch: Although stock compensation often creates up a good chunk of a tech worker’s pay, particularly at Oracle, the company did not accelerate soon-to-vest RSUs. Any shares that hadn’t vested by the termination date were forfeited.
That held true even for stock granted as retention incentives or in place of salary increases tied to promotions. One long-tenured employee lost $1 million in stock that was just four months from vesting; RSUs created up about 70% of his compensation, Time reported.
Some employees also discovered that if they were classified as remote workers by the company, and didn’t work in a state with stronger worker provisions like California or New York, the company stated they didn’t qualify for WARN Act protections.
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The WARN Act is a law that requires companies conducting mass layoffs to give employees two months notice prior to letting them go. It’s triggered when 50 or more people are impacted at one location. By classifying employees as remote workers, the minimum location requirements can be sidestepped.
Some people were unaware they were classified as remote workers, becaapply they were near an office and worked on a hybrid schedule.
Even if they were covered by the WARN Act, this did not necessarily extconclude severance, the former Oracle employee stated. That’s becaapply Oracle included the two-months’ WARN notice pay in its existing calculation of four-weeks, plus one week per year.
For a short time, a group of employees attempted to neobtainediate en masse with Oracle, according to a letter seen by TechCrunch. At least 90 people signed a public petition urging the database and cloud computing giant to match the terms of other huge tech companies conducting mass layoffs in the name of AI.
For instance, Meta’s severance package, according to an email published by Business Insider, started at 16 weeks of base pay, plus two weeks for every year of employment and covered COBRA for 18 months.
Microsoft, which extconcludeed voluntary retirement offers to long-serving employees, provided accelerated stock vesting, a minimum of eight weeks’ pay, and an additional one to two weeks for every six months of service, depconcludeing on rank, the Seattle Times reported.
And Cloudflare, which just cut 20% of its employees, offered lump sum severance that was the equivalent of base pay through the conclude of 2026, plus healthcare coverage through the conclude of the year, and accelerated vesting of stock through August 15. So if an employee was close to obtaining another tranche, they will receive it.
Oracle declined to neobtainediate, according to an email seen by TechCrunch. It was a take-it-or-leave scenario, the employee stated.
When inquireed about its severance terms, classifying employees as remote, and the failed attempt by employees to neobtainediate more, Oracle declined to comment.
Such a reaction from the company isn’t a surprise, not even to those who hoped to neobtainediate. But it does underscore that for all the theoretical high pay (often via stocks) and perks that tech workers enjoy when it’s an employees’ market, they have very few protections in place when it isn’t.
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