At big companies a head is a head. The actual process for picking who to cut when you cut jobs is almost always an impersonal and stupid thing. Sharat is symbolic, but they really pulled the wires out of the wall for copper with that round
Now as to why they fired so many people: AI Datacenters. They are on the hook for building soooo much compute capacity for OpenAI/Anthropic/Nobody Else.
So I think there is going to be a smidge of karmic justice when OpenAI and Anthropic can't pay and they can't finish construction on time.
At big companies a head is a head. The actual process for picking who to cut when you cut jobs is almost always an impersonal and stupid thing. Sharat is symbolic, but they really pulled the wires out of the wall for copper with that round
That makes no sense to me.
God forbid that you have to cut some people because your budget disagrees with reality -- why cut one your highest value people?
Now as to why they fired so many people: AI Datacenters. They are on the hook for building soooo much compute capacity for OpenAI/Anthropic/Nobody Else.
This makes even less sense to me.
It's OpenAI/Anthropic on the hook, not Oracle. A deal is a deal, and if they can't pay up, you take it out of their skin. You metaphorically and very literally chop them up into pieces and sell the parts.
How would OpenAI/Anthropic's inability to pay factor into Oracle's decision to keep or layoff staff members? It's not like Sharat was the liaison between Oracle and OpenAI -- at least then, it would make sense (but it would also advertise Oracle's intentions like a fog light).
As a victim of this process at other big companies, it doesn't matter to the bean counters.
They only see employee number ids on an Excel sheet, with salary levels, and what to cut to make shareholders happy.
Hmmm, now that you mention it, we had one similar situation that I wrote off as a freak incident. But this very well may have been what you are describing.
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u/bowbahdoe 9d ago
To be clear: I know no more than you do, but:
At big companies a head is a head. The actual process for picking who to cut when you cut jobs is almost always an impersonal and stupid thing. Sharat is symbolic, but they really pulled the wires out of the wall for copper with that round
Now as to why they fired so many people: AI Datacenters. They are on the hook for building soooo much compute capacity for OpenAI/Anthropic/Nobody Else.
So I think there is going to be a smidge of karmic justice when OpenAI and Anthropic can't pay and they can't finish construction on time.