‘Everything feels uncertain now’: Oracle employee speaks out after work access was locked amid layoffs

An Oracle employee says he was laid off after losing access to his work systems, with the separation email arriving about an hour later. The employee shared his experience in a Reddit post, saying he was completely shocked despite knowing layoffs were coming. With two years of experience at Oracle, he said he had never received a bad rating from his manager and was routinely given high-priority tasks.

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He had also recently started preparing for a job switch, but said the already difficult hiring market had made it hard to get calls or even be shortlisted despite hundreds of applications.

‘I tried to make sense of why I was included’

The employee said he joined Oracle as a fresher and, after two years, was still at a junior developer level with comparatively low compensation. He said there had been no promotion cycle during his time at the company.

Despite that, he said he was regularly trusted with important work.

“I had never received a bad rating from my manager and was in fact given multiple high-priority tasks routinely.”

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He worked across backend, frontend and automation, depending on where his team needed support. But when his access was suddenly locked, he said he struggled to understand why he had been selected.

“I tried to make sense of why I was included but gave up on it as nothing made sense from whichever pov I looked.”

The employee said the separation email arrived around an hour after his access was blocked. He also said the layoffs were known to be coming, but he was still shocked to find himself affected. 

Hundreds of applications, but no calls

The timing has made his next step even more difficult. He said he had recently begun preparing for a switch but was already anxious about the job market.

“Already I wasn't receiving calls or getting shortlisted even with hundreds of applications.”

He now expects to compete with other job seekers, including people who have themselves been laid off.

“Now it feels like I'll be competing for jobs among hordes of other people, many of whom are themselves laid off.”

Still, he said he was thankful that he did not have large EMIs or active loans. But without a backup and being early in his career, he expressed, “everything feels very uncertain now.”

The developer has two years of experience building Java Spring Boot microservices, along with OJET and Knockout.js UI development, and has also worked on personal MERN stack projects. He is now seeking full-stack or backend development opportunities and asked the Reddit community for leads, referrals and advice on navigating the situation.