Are genAI-fueled layoffs ever legit? Oracle may have found a way

Oracle is not the first company you think of when it comes to disciplined spending and cash management. 

But in recent months, Oracle has surprised some people. (When it was hit with massive contracts that would require huge capacity expansion, top execs refused to move ahead until they knew for certain the contracts were real.)

Now, it looks as if the company may be smartly adjusting to the generative AI (genAI) revolution — and the potential workforce disruptions it’s brought to many companies. 

The problem with many of those genAI-fueled layoff attempts is that decision-makers usually lack any realistic business plan. They simply think replacing humans with software will be a wise long-term move. 

But Oracle, at least according to one analyst, might well have figured out a legitimate reason for culling some of its workers. 

Oracle is preparing to rid itself of many of the people who handle product enhancements and features specific to one vertical/geography or even business. That comes in concert with plans to enable customers to make those alterations themselves — and to allow them to do so on a temporary basis if that is cost-effective for them.

Akshara Naik Lopez, a senior analyst with Forrester, believes Oracle will soon get to the point where customers can leverage the company’s agentic AI tools to create their own custom apps, or at least add their own custom functionality to existing Oracle apps. 

If that pans out, Lopez said, it could mean that some Oracle workers focused on those app expansions could be laid off without the cuts hurting customer capabilities. In theory, she said, it could allow customers to add those capabilities in whatever timeframe, and within whatever budget, they need. 

“Let’s say a customer wants certain capabilities that are not in the product line,” Lopez said. “You can use [Oracle’s agentic] platform and have it create something for you for just a short duration of time and then you can turn it off when you no longer want it. It’s almost transferring the power with the agentic AI capabilities to the customer, so they can actually do it themselves or with partners.”

For the moment, Lopez said, Oracle is not quite at “that sophistication or maturity level.”

But the idea raises some intriguing possibilities. Consider Microsoft. So far, it’s been busy pushing Copilot to make its Office apps, such as Word or Excel, easier to use. Instead of learning how Excel formulas work, users can simply explain to Copilot what they want a spreadsheet to do and, in theory, it will now just do that.

But what if Microsoft considered the Oracle approach? Instead of using genAI to make its existing apps easier to use, what if it allowed customers to give the apps customized new functionality?

Here’s a suggestion right now. Using Word to copyedit a document is useful, but it’s highly limited. Why wouldn’t I want it to use all of the data available to it — just like a professional copyeditor would? 

You could check names using LinkedIn and other resources and then say: “I notice that you have given this source a different title than I found on LinkedIn. Can you please doublecheck?” Or maybe, “The spelling you used doesn’t match the spelling I found in a recent news release.” Or even, “Here you said there are five things wrong with the announced plan. But in the text, you only seem to list four. Can you please fix?” Or finally, “You said the XYZ project began in July 2022, but I am finding other stories that all say it began in June 2022. Can you please verify?”

You can see how having options like that could improve Microsoft’s apps by allowing companies to tweak them to their benefit — similar to what it appears Oracle has in mind.

One of the things that’s interesting about Oracle’s plan is that it has a revenue risky element. All major software vendors have decades of experience upgrading and charging more for new capabilities. If customers can add their own features — even temporarily — whenever they want, why would they ever upgrade? Could ISVs counter with sharp increases in licensing every year even if nothing new has been added? How would that change Apple’s and Google’s mobile OS model, given that they are used to adding features for free?

It’s just one more example of how genAI is upsetting a lot of tech industry apple carts, and those disruptions are not always related to job layoffs.Are genAI-fueled layoffs ever legit? Oracle may have found a way – ComputerworldRead More