[muskstinks]

I don't think its that easy.

Look at their employee numbers over the years:

(ai generated):

Oracle Corporation Employee Count (2010 - 2025)

Legend: Each '' represents approximately 4,000 employees.

  Year | Employees
  ------------------------------------------------------------------
  2010 |  (105,000)
  2011 |  (108,000)
  2012 |  (115,000)
  2013 |  (120,000)
  2014 |  (122,000)
  2015 |  (132,000)
  2016 |  (136,000)
  2017 |  (138,000)
  2018 |  (137,000)
  2019 |  (136,000)
  2020 |  (135,000)
  2021 |  (132,000)
  2022 |  (143,000)
  2023 |  (164,000)
  2024 |  (159,000)
  2025 |  (162,000)

Note: Oracle's fiscal reporting for the full year 2025 ended on May 31, 2025.

They clearly did something crazy at corona and undoing this as a lot of companies did before already.

[dijksterhuis]

> (ai generated)

here's a link to an actual source for people who also don't trust ai generated stuff

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ORCL/oracle/number...

edit: this source also includes data/graphs on stock price and bunch of other metrics, rather than just one number over time.

[jonas21]

The graph in your Macrotrends link shows the exact same numbers as the AI source, but is harder to read and the page is half ads. It's not an authoritative source -- the data was most likely parsed out of Oracle's earning reports by some janky regexp. I don’t know why you would trust this more than AI.

[dijksterhuis]

> harder to read and the page is half ads

with an adblocker ... there is one ad on the page just above the graph about "Unlock Macrotrends Premium" which takes up 1.5/2cm of the page, while the graph underneath it takes up like 15cm. Then there's a bunch of other information on the page, none of which are ads. yes, there's a "you only get 5 page visits free" whole page pop-up thing, but there's an easy and well-known way round that for individuals who understand basic internet browser usage.

maybe start using an ad-blocker? pretty much everyone else does these days.

> the data was most likely parsed out of Oracle's earning reports by some janky regexp.

which is probably what the ai would do... or more likely it's just stealing it from the source i linked, since the numbers are exactly the same...

also, probably not because see (1b) below.

> I don’t know why you would trust this more than AI.

because (1a)

> Fundamental data from Zacks Investment Research, Inc.

> Built on Zacks Investment Research — trusted by institutional investors, academics, and financial professionals for over 45 years. [0]

I'd take people who have been doing this stuff for 45 years over some new-fangled toy that's well known to hallucinate and get things wrong in ways that appear authoritative.

also, on that (1b)

> Zacks employs a rigorous quality control process to make sure all data points are recorded accurately. For each company, a trained analyst enters the data from SEC filings, which is then double checked by a senior analyst. Once the data is entered, a senior analyst signs off on final completion after reviewing all the data. In addition, the data is subjected to a battery of automated checks to verify balancing relationships and correct errors. All data items are reviewed by multiple sets of trained eyes as well as automated computer checks. [1]

and (2) because that site provides other contextual information that is helpful, like the fact that Oracle's stock price has been trending downwards, which is possibly a reason why they felt the need to make cuts now. [2]

ai gives you the answer you want -- not the answers you might actually need.

[0]: https://zacksdata.com

[1]: https://zacksdata.com/static/docs/Zacks_Fundamental_Data_Ove...

[2]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ORCL/oracle/stock-...

edit1: apparently you're not using an adblocker, wtf dude, it's 2026. use an adblocker.

edit2: added (1b)

[adi_kurian]

It's okay to use the chatbot. Nothing bad will happen.

---

> Yes — the universal fallback is `full-time employees`. That phrase appears in the employee-count disclosure across Oracle's filings in this run. ([Securities and Exchange Commission][1]) > > If you want the exact string to paste into `Cmd-F`, use these: > > * FY2010: `As of May 31, 2010, we employed approximately 105,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][1]) > * FY2011: `As of May 31, 2011, we employed approximately 108,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][2]) > * FY2012: `As of May 31, 2012, we employed approximately 115,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][3]) > * FY2013: `As of May 31, 2013, we employed approximately 120,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][4]) > * FY2014: `As of May 31, 2014, we employed approximately 122,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][5]) > * FY2015: `As of May 31, 2015, we employed approximately 132,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][6]) > * FY2016: `As of May 31, 2016, we employed approximately 136,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][7]) > * FY2017: `As of May 31, 2017, we employed approximately 138,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][8]) > * FY2018: `As of May 31, 2018, we employed approximately 137,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][9]) > * FY2019: `As of May 31, 2019, we employed approximately 136,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][10]) > * FY2020: `As of May 31, 2020, we employed approximately 135,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][11]) > * FY2021: `As of May 31, 2021, we employed approximately 132,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][12]) > * FY2022: `As of May 31, 2022, we employed approximately 143,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][13]) > * FY2023: `As of May 31, 2023, we employed approximately 164,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][14]) > * FY2024: `As of May 31, 2024, we employed approximately 159,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][15]) > * FY2025: `As of May 31, 2025, we employed approximately 162,000 full-time employees` ([Securities and Exchange Commission][16]) > > If the browser/PDF viewer is annoying, use this order: `full-time employees` → `As of May 31, 20XX` → `Employees`. The first one is usually the fastest. > > [1]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312510... > [2]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312511... > [3]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312512... > [4]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312513... > [5]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312514... > [6]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312515... > [7]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312516... > [8]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312517... > [9]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312518... > [10]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000156459019... > [11]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000156459020... > [12]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000156459021... > [13]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000156459022... > [14]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000095017023... > [15]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000095017024... > [16]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000095017025... ```

[johnnyanmac]

>Nothing bad will happen.

Funny to say that in a story like this.

I simply don't trust a chart with a botched legend to begin with.

>Legend: Each '' represents approximately 4,000 employees.

That's what put me off and once again reinforces that blindly copying AI does in fact bring harm.

[muskstinks]

I verified it before and generated the graph with gemini for c&p it into hn

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

To be fair, the stats are more trustworthy with a source link. Especially if you admit to using AI to generate the text in your comment (which is now actually against the guidelines, but I suspect most will forgive it if it's not too egregious, even after such an admission; in this case, it's nice formatting for being inline with the comments on this page), it would help to disclose where the actual data is coming from. I'd just include the link to where you verified the numbers, otherwise the comment is fine. (I mean, that's just my opinion, but there you have it.)

[hyperpape]

If I do my python right, from 2010-2020 they grew by 2.5% annually, from 2020 to 2025, they grew headcount by 3.7% annually.

After the layoffs, they'll apparently now have grown by 1.0% annually since 2020.

So yes, from 2021 to 2023, they had a huge spike, but overall, it's a net slowdown in growth relative to the 2010-2020 period.

If this was about reversion to the old pattern they'd have done a smaller set of layoffs or simply wait for a few years of zero growth.

[throwaway5465]

Or a pickup from 2015 - 2021 which was 0% growth.

It's tricky to pick an end-of-decade year also - recessions tend to happen +/- 2 years of the end of each decade in the USA, or at least have done since records began in the 19th century. For example 2010 was recovery over 2008/2009's bust. It's not like comparing March to Ma4ch for a crude seasonal adjustment.

[_aavaa_]

You did the Python right but the analysis wrong. Looking at it on a graph you can see that interpreting a single growth rate for the entire period (even if you stop pre-covid) doesn’t make sense.

You can see linear growth from 2010-2017. Then slow decline or at best a flatline from 2018-2021. Then they went crazy in 2022-2025.

Now if we just do 162k - 30k we are back to 132k, basically same ballpark as pre-COVID.

[franktankbank]

That's not how stocks are measured on wall street. They picked the dumb metric.

[sethev]

> They clearly did something crazy at corona

They acquired Cerner, which had ~30k employees.

[ge96]

Cool to be part of history I used to go into that office Innovations campus

Saw someone had a license plate say MPAGES ha

[CoolGuySteve]

Even at 100k employees I’m still dumbfounded by that number. What do all these people do all day?

[hyperpape]

1. They maintain and sell one of the largest relational databases.

2. They're the primary maintainer of one of the largest programming languages.

3. They do tons of HR/ERP type software.

4. They have a supply chain division (my company is a direct competitor, and we have 2000 employees--it's a drop in the bucket, but a few thousand here, a few thousand there and it starts to add up. Afaik, their supply chain org is bigger than ours).

5. Other things I probably don't know about.

Many of these things come with swarms of consultants who implement the software for companies that don't have any internal technical competency, which swells the number of workers by a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not remotely a fan, I like to quote Bryan Cantrill's rant. However, they do a lot of things.

[burningChrome]

>> Many of these things come with swarms of consultants who implement the software for companies that don't have any internal technical competency,

I have some anecdotal evidence for this. I worked at a medium sized family owned business. They were going through a massive ERP upgrade/replacement. One of the bids was from Oracle. The company was able to essentially test drive each company they were reviewing to see if the software was going to be a good fit.

Oracle's sales team was like a having a football on site. They sent over no less than about 20 people to swarm our pretty small office, barge into the dev spaces and generally annoy the fuck out of everybody for several months. The other vendors? They sent one, maybe two people to work alongside us as we test drove their software.

It was funny being in those meetings listening to people talk about the Oracle people. Nobody even remembered how good or bad their software was. Every single comment was about how overbearing and pushy their sales people were.

Needless to say, we went with a different company.

[bombcar]

That sales process is directly tied to the type of customer they're aiming for, which is larger than a "medium-sized family-owned business".

They mis-aligned but for someone like Boeing or United, they'd go gaga over the footy-crowd.

[mikeyouse]

They also own multiple other huge companies that had tens of thousands of their own employees working in completely different areas (Netsuite, Cerner, Acme, etc)

[PyWoody]

6. Lawyers

[B1FF_PSUVM]

"The first thing we do, let's AI all the lawyers" ?

[raverbashing]

Also their cloud

And all the supporting legal team of course.

[hyperpape]

No better proof that they're a huge company than that I could forget about an entire public cloud offering. Good point.

[baumy]

I remember reading this post years ago, and it has stuck in my brain ever since: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

So I suspect the answer is: they need _at least_ 10x as many engineers to get things done as you would expect. Maybe more like 50x

[B1FF_PSUVM]

That was a highlights grade comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights )

And the last comment by 'oraguy' - I hope he just picked up another id because "never work for Oracle again" ...

[muskstinks]

what a horrible horrible read :|

Clearly shows that either no one understands the whole picture anymore or that it became so diverse custom, that this is the only way of handling this now.

I think though that these companies are more business companies than tech companies and move themselves into this nightmare.

[bombcar]

It's even more wild when you realize that other similar-sized enterprise companies don't have all that and either leave bugs to sit around for decades, or randomly break shit trying to fix them.

[seniorThrowaway]

That is really wild

[rocmcd]

Unless you have worked with Oracle or other big enterprises, you may not realize the scale of how these companies operate and the breadth of what they actually do. Just by looking at their product page[0] you can see they offer software, hardware, cloud, consulting, support, and even financing solutions. In addition to the technology and product people (of which there are many), you also need HR, sales, marketing, accounting, support, etc for the entire global organization.

Sure, 100,000 people is a lot, but Oracle also does a lot.

[0] https://www.oracle.com/products/

[blackaspen]

This! They do _everything_.

In the real world, there are a lot of things you need to run a business: HR, ERP, Financing, Cloud, Compliance, CRM, etc. There is really only one company who can sell them all to you on one piece of paper, and that's Oracle.

[bombcar]

Salesforce does one aspect of what Oracle can do (Access as a Service) and they have 83,000 employees. Oracle may actually be pretty lean.

[stackskipton]

Oracle sells alot of software that is accompanied by hordes of consultants to set it up.

Last F50 I was at did a PeopleSoft migration. We probably had 400 Oracle employees pass through the doors over 2 years helping to get it off the ground.

Most Enterprises don't just buy software and that's it. They buy software + support to implement it for their business.

[CoolGuySteve]

Sure but what did those guys do all day? 400 people is a lot of people

[stackskipton]

Write code to connect this system with that system. Teach people what setting does what. Integrate with Entra ID. Create custom reports that hordes of Executive on our side want. Scale out the system from undersized nodes we originally gave it. That's all I picked up by just listening to them. I wasn't involved in the project, just sat nearby listening to it.

This is extremely customizable software that is designed to pretty much run your entire business and touched by over 40k employees. It requires a ton of care and feeding. There is plenty of people who dedicate themselves to PeopleSoft. Zip Recruiter is showing 5 jobs near me for "PeopleSoft Administrator"

[odyssey7]

The need to teach people what setting does what is a sort of consulting moat that AI dismantles when it can access the right context.

[zdragnar]

They don't make any of the documentation for those settings easy to find or understand because the support contracts make them so much money.

[irl_zebra]

Creating powerpoints. Presenting the powerpoints to others in synchronous meetings.

[chasd00]

The training team and what's called 'Change Management' for an F50 company that's spread across the globe implementing a new application like an ERP could be 100 people by itself. It's extremely complex and hard to do those kinds of projects which is why many ERP migrations take a decade to complete if not fail entirely.

[kadushka]

Probably had a lot of meetings

[davidw]

"Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?!"

[pearlsontheroad]

plus yearly support maintenance

[zipy124]

Almost certainly a large amount of support staff, so management/HR/IT etc... Then you've got your customer account managers, sales, lawyers/finance etc.... Given they do an insane amount of B2B and government sales I can see this being easy to reach tbh. Governement contract processes require an insane amount of bureacracy and negotations.

[ra_men]

I’m guessing development is so slow that they have stacks of teams working in parallel to accomplish what 1 team could normally.

[shusaku]

When you send your database a query, who do you think is gathering those tables?

[kwisatzh]

More than 70% of the employees are probably Sales/Support/Service -- on par with any large enterprise firm (Think Cisco/Salesforce/ServiceNow etc)

[drowntoge]

Well, whatever Oracle is doing, which brings us back to a question very similar to your original one.

[hulitu]

Solaris ?

[jabl]

Didn't they fire most of Solaris devs some time ago? Incidentally, Solaris been stuck on 11.4.x for, well, forever and a half..

[Simboo]

Me too. Anyone here to enlighten us?

[mandevil]

In June 2022 the Oracle acquisition of Cerner (a EMR now billed as Oracle Health) closed, so that would be after the 2022 date and before the 2023 date. Cerner was 28,000 employees.

If they do cut back to their size before the acquisition, while continuing to try and support the EMR, they will be doing a lot more with fewer employees.

The acquisition has already had a lot of bad consequences: https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cerner-health-larry-e...

[lenerdenator]

The "Something crazy at corona" would likely be, in part, their purchase of Cerner Corporation in 2021-2022. I want to say there were 10k-ish employees? Maybe more?

I have friends there who have described how bare-bones things were. This is only going to make it worse.

I would not patronize a hospital system that intended on staying on Cerner Millennium EMRs for the foreseeable future. If things were bad before, they'll only be worse now.

[bombcar]

From what I've heard Epic can be as bad, but at least they're dedicated to one product.

[perching_aix]

But the up curve at the end very clearly tracks with AI adoption and not Corona?

[RobRivera]

You need to pair hc with revenue, otherwise this data tells only one story, hc growth.

[gib444]

Where's the annual revenue for context? Those numbers are almost useless alone.

[muskstinks]

Feel free to add more info to this discussion.

I only wanted to point out that number of jobs in context of the company growth. I found 160k already a huge/gigantic number though.

[gedy]

Their profit doubled from 2010 to 2025 though, no?

[hbn]

What's the point of posting statistics if they're not fact-checked and come from no verifiable source? At best they're right but we don't know until someone else fact-checked it for you, and at worst you're just spreading misinformation and we don't know until, again, someone else fact-checked it for you.

If you want to use AI to find information like this, tell it to grab you a source and post that.

[Foobar8568]

More employees to release less stuff.... Smell like consultancy.

[jimbokun]

So they are returning to 2015 headcount.

(EDIT: or 2021)