“It was all over in less than 20 minutes…” Oracle employee reveals how he was laid off on Zoom call

Oracle

For Oracle employees in India, even a simple “project update” email now brings stress. Many say these meetings often end with unexpected layoff news instead of routine work updates. According to a report by Economic Times, recent job cuts at Oracle have left thousands of workers worried about their future.

One employee from the database team described how fast it all happened. “It was all over in less than 20 minutes — a Zoom invite, my manager on the call, and then the HR person telling me I was being let go. They said it wasn’t about my performance but purely business reasons. My system access was cut immediately. I was also due to get stock benefits in February, but now I’ve lost them,” he told ET . Telling his parents, who depend on his income, was the hardest part.

Another employee said he joined a meeting thinking it was a business update, only to realise it was a layoff call. “The HR person only explained the severance package. It felt very cold and mechanical,” he said.

The layoffs are mainly happening in Oracle’s cloud unit, which includes engineering, data center operations, and AI teams, both in India and the US. Some reports suggest that almost 10% of Oracle’s staff in India may have been affected, though the company has not confirmed the exact number.

Globally, the trend is similar. Tech news site CRN reported that over 300 employees in California and Washington were recently let go. At the same time, Oracle is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. The company has signed a major deal with OpenAI to build massive new data center capacity in the US.

For Indian employees, this feels like a big shift. Only a few years ago, Oracle had announced huge investments in Bengaluru and training programs for Indian students. Now, workers are being shown the exit with little warning.

As one employee summed it up, “You don’t even get time to process it. One minute you’re working, the next minute you’re out.”