Train AI so we can fire you (and take your bonuses) 🔪

Recently I wrote about how Zuckerberg installs special software on employees' computers to train AI on their activity. Oracle has gone even further.

Time magazine published an article about mass layoffs at Oracle. 30,000 people were thrown out into the cold. Here's the scheme:

1️⃣ First, engineers and technical writers were forced to document their work processes. Literally, they had to train internal AI models on what they do. Once the models were trained, employees were fired over the phone.

2️⃣ Long-time employees were deliberately targeted (62% of those laid off were 40+). The reason: they had a hefty package of RSUs (essentially promises to issue shares in a few years, but until the date arrives, the shares belong to the company).
Fire a tech lead a couple of months before the share issuance date, and millions of dollars stay on the balance sheet. According to analysts, this trick freed up to $10 billion in net cash flow for Larry Ellison. Where will the money go? To purchase GPUs and build new AI data centers. Employees literally paid for the video cards for their replacements with their own bonuses.

3️⃣ Larry Ellison tells investors from the stage: "Our programmers no longer write code; models write it."
The reality from engineers: internal AI tools generate digital garbage. Juniors happily dump this hallucinating crap into repositories. And the remaining seniors now work 60-80 hours a week, trying to reverse-engineer and fix what the AI generated.

Always remember cases like this when companies tell you that you are all one big family 🤷‍♂️