[drdaeman]

Nowadays, it's a lawyer company - not a technology/software company. Their only reason for existence is to keep selling licenses for the things they own for as long as they still can, so it's pretty natural they're holding on to anything (regardless of actual value) they can.

[vips7L]

It’s a huge company with different divisions.

Oracle is one of the leading researchers in JIT compilers, garbage collectors, and language interpreters.

[bigiain]

Part of me thinks that's just the Oracle equivalent of janitorial and catering staff, the people you need to keep around to ensure the people creating the company profit, the sales people and lawyers, can work most efficiently.

[geodel]

Yeah unlike other companies who keep technical staff on rolls to wash their feet and drink that water. Because profiting from technical work is unthinkable in industry.

[vips7L]

I honestly don’t see how those equate.

[coldpie]

I would never hire someone with Oracle on their resume. The complete lack of morals it takes to work there is immediately disqualifying.

[vips7L]

I think it’s kind of sad that you would have that opinion. Are the engineers working on OpenJdk completely lacking of morals?

How does working for Oracle compare to say working at Facebook or Google with all their privacy invasion tech?

[coldpie]

> I think it’s kind of sad that you would have that opinion.

Yeah. I don't like it either, but that's the world we've built. I wish an industry as important as ours had some standards of ethics, like doctors and real engineers do.

> Are the engineers working on OpenJdk completely lacking of morals?

Oracle attempted to make clean room reverse engineering illegal by arguing that copyright applies to Java's ABIs despite our entire industry relying on that not being the case, all so Larry Ellison could buy yet another yacht. So yeah, someone continuing to work on Java after it was acquired by one of the most evil companies on the planet definitely is consciously choosing to make the world a worse place and should no longer be employable.

> How does working for Oracle compare to say working at Facebook or Google with all their privacy invasion tech?

Facebook is also on my personal blacklist, yes. Less for their privacy invasion, and more for their eagerness to make a buck by helping spread misinformation and bringing about the end of democracy in the western world.

I don't feel as strongly about Google personally, but I wouldn't argue if someone else on the hiring team felt it was disqualifying.

[kstrauser]

Harsh, but understandable. I’d make an exception for first job out of school people. They might not know better yet. If someone worked for an Oracle customer before going to work for Larry, though, I’d be convinced they were the devil incarnate.

[freedomben]

I despise Oracle, and I think there aren't many companies out there as evil as them. I would be thrilled if they burned to the ground, figuratively speaking of course.

But that said, I think it would be dumb to jump to conclusions just based on having Oracle on the resume. You should at least ask them why they worked there, and why they left. For all you know, they had no idea how bad Oracle was when they started, and they left because they saw how evil they were. That is the exact kind of person that I do want to hire

[coldpie]

I guess I consider it part of one's ethical duty to research the places you work and decide whether you are willing to put your life's efforts behind supporting the company's behavior. Oracle very famously attempted to completely undermine how the entire software industry works and make unapproved interoperability illegal with their Google Java lawsuit[1]. If an applicant supported the company that filed that lawsuit by working for them, and doesn't feel enough shame to leave it off their resume, then I don't want to work with that applicant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_...

[johannes1234321]

Back when Oracle acquired Sun they told us "Sun had more lawyers per capita than we"

Interpretation on the fact and metric and the need to tell I leave up to you