I think the implied trade-off is between "IBM axes former SUN-division Foo, 5000 fired" and "Stuck in an unpleasant, but decently paid, job with benefits and no particular obligation not to just pack up and leave when a better opportunity comes along."
Oracle has already fired close to 7,000 people of the original 27,000 that were part of the merger, in June they announced a further 1,000 people to be thrown out but at the same time said they would hire 2,000 new ones mostly for the sales division.
I don't see how IBM could have done much worse, and I think that Java would have fared a lot better under IBM, which in the longer term would have probably meant more rather than less job security for the people working near Gosling.
If he was talking about the company as a whole IBM would have had to fire more than 8,000 people to date do be doing as bad for the employees as Oracle did, now of course we'll never know so we can't really make any statements about that but I find it hard to conceive of it being so bad. IBM is very image conscious and I think they would have had a hard time murdering the core team around java at this clip, let alone destroying the technical core of Sun and replacing it with 'sales'.
IBM has a policy of shipping as many jobs overseas as can be managed. They've moved tens of thousands in the last decade. What I've heard from friends suggests that it's not a pleasant environment for rank-and-file employees. AFAIK, Oracle doesn't have the same zest for shipping jobs overseas.
IBM's done worse before. In the late 90's my father was part of a first round of IBM layoffs -- in which they cut 6000 jobs... in Dutchess County, New York.
That was the <i>first round</i> of layoffs. Another few thousand got cut a year so later.
And I don't know how many they cut outside of Dutchess County...
IBM has a LOT of facilities in Dutchess County -- including their own HQ in Armonk. There are several significant plants there, and I think they still have some semiconductor manufacturing there -- which might help explain the severe pollution in the Hudson River from that area on down to New York City.
IBM's presence before that massive layoff was such that almost everyone in Dutchess County with a corporate job worked at IBM, it really felt like you either worked for IBM or you worked at the mall or a gas station. (I doubt that this is quite the case, but you get the point hopefully.)
I am fairly certain that until that massive layoff, there were hardly any tech companies other than IBM in the area. I didn't find any, at least. The only job opportunities I ever found in the area were at IBM.
I think they did close down a few facilities entirely during those layoffs. My mother's job moved from Meyers Corners to Poughkeepsie around then, because they closed down the MC facility IIRC. They probably sold or leased it out or something, it was a pretty large office building from what I remember.
It's pretty easy to imagine that when Gosling was employed by Sun, he enjoyed significant power to shape his own job. Under Oracle, he clearly did not have the power to make his own job into what he wanted.
It's not much of a stretch to believe that lower-tier technical staff didn't have that power to begin with, and hence did not feel the same sting of new management.
Yes, that's probably very true, in part this is Gosling being a similar sized fish in a much larger pond.
But if I compare that to google where there are lots of 'names' from just about every era of computing working and being reasonably happy I can't help but notice the contrast.
That changes the atmosphere of the place and that definitely does filter down to lower levels.