Laid-off Oracle workers tried to negotiate better severance. Oracle said no. 

As was widely reported, Oracle an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people have been cut by email on March 31.

One of the employees that day told TechCrunch about the experience: “I had a weird feeling in my stomach. I went to the VPN and the VPN said, ‘This user no longer exists.’ Then I called my friend and I was like, “Hey, can you see me in Slack?” And she said, ‘No, your account is deactivated.’

The individual soon received an email stating that their role was being terminated immediately. The resignation offer came a few days later. But Oracle’s terms would quickly become a point of contention — and some laid-off employees would withdraw.

Oracle offered fairly standard Corporate America terms to laid-off employees. In exchange for signing a waiver waiving their right to sue, employees received four weeks of pay for the first year, plus one additional week per year of service, up to a maximum of 26 weeks. The company also paid for one month of COBRA insurance.

The catch: While stock compensation often makes up a sizable portion of a tech worker’s pay, especially at Oracle, the company hasn’t been accelerating its acquisition of RSUs. Any shares not vested on the termination date are forfeited.

This even applied to shares awarded as retention incentives or in lieu of salary increases associated with promotions. One long-tenured employee lost $1 million in stock just four months after acquisition; RSUs made up about 70% of his compensation, Time reported.

Some employees also discovered that if they were classified as remote workers by the company and did not work in a state with stricter employment standards such as California or New York, the company said they did not qualify for WARN Act protections.

The WARN Act is a law that requires companies conducting mass layoffs to give their employees two months’ notice before laying them off. It is triggered when 50 or more people are affected in one location. Classifying employees as remote workers can circumvent minimum location requirements.

Some people didn’t know they were remote workers because they were near an office and working a hybrid schedule.

Even if they were covered by the WARN Act, it wouldn’t necessarily mean an extension of the layoff, the former Oracle employee said. That’s because Oracle has included the two-month WARN notice period in the existing calculation of four weeks, plus one week per year.

A group of employees briefly tried to negotiate en masse with Oracle, according to a letter seen by TechCrunch. At least 90 people signed a public petition urging the database and cloud computing giant to adhere to the terms of other major tech companies that are carrying out mass layoffs in the name of AI.

For example, Meta’s severance package, according to an email published by Business Insider, started with 16 weeks of base salary, plus two weeks for each year of employment and covered COBRA for 18 months.

Microsoft, which expanded voluntary retirement offers to long-serving employees, provided accelerated stock awards, an eight-week minimum wage and an additional week to two weeks for every six months of service, depending on grade. The Seattle Times reports this.

And Cloudflare, which has laid off only 20% of its employees, offered a lump sum severance package that was the equivalent of base salary until the end of 2026, plus healthcare coverage until the end of the year, and accelerated stock vesting until August 15. So if an employee was about to get a new tranche, he will get it.

Oracle refused to negotiate, according to an email from TechCrunch. It was a take-it-or-leave scenario, the employee said.

When asked about the layoff terms, classifying employees as remote workers and employees’ failed attempt to negotiate more, Oracle declined to comment.

Such a response from the company is not a surprise, even to those who hoped to negotiate. But it does underscore that for all the theoretical high wages (often through equity) and benefits that tech workers enjoy when it’s an employee market, they have very little protection when it isn’t.