As hundreds of Oracle workers awoke on Tuesday to an electronic mail informing them they have been being laid off, the employees possible didn’t know the tech firm had been busy making an attempt to rent overseas workers.
In response to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers knowledge, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to make use of H-1B employees in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Employers should submit the paperwork when searching for to rent overseas employees in specialty occupations like expertise. Some 436 of these petitions have been filed this yr alone.
Amazon, which in January stated it will axe 16,000 company workers, has filed for some 2,675 H-1B petitions throughout the identical two-year fiscal interval. That got here on prime of reports in October that the retail large was axing 14,000 company employees.
Information of Oracle’s makes an attempt to usher in overseas employees sparked outrage amongst some on social media.
One person on the app Blind, an nameless discussion board for verified workers, known as the H-1B petitions a “slap in our face.”
“If this doesn’t make you indignant, possibly it’s essential to learn some heartfelt posts on LinkedIn from Oracle workers who’re US residents and have been laid off after working at Oracle for years,” the person wrote.
One other commenter posted on the positioning: “Take a look at all massive tech corporations, they do large layoffs then rehire at decrease wage.”
A 3rd added: “Transnational companies are disloyal to the American state and the nation.”
Neither Oracle nor Amazon replied to requests for remark.
Corporations submit H-1B petitions searching for permission from the U.S. authorities to rent overseas employees as a result of they will’t discover native candidates with comparable abilities. Corporations have stated this system is important within the race to develop cutting-edge expertise, whereas critics say this system locations American employees at a drawback.
Corporations can also have to submit petitions to resume or prolong present H-1B visas.
The backlash this week got here after the corporate, chaired by billionaire Larry Ellison, knowledgeable “hundreds” of employees internationally that Tuesday could be their final day.
“After cautious consideration of Oracle’s present enterprise wants, we now have made the choice to get rid of your function as a part of a broader organizational change,” copies of the e-mail seen by Enterprise Insider said.
The terminated workers have been instructed they might be “eligible to obtain a severance package deal topic to the phrases and situations of the severance plan.”
H-1B visas have been the topic of an uproar in September after President Donald Trump signed a proclamation that imposed a $100,000 per yr price on some H-1B visa holders. This system is closely utilized in Silicon Valley and the sudden information despatched corporations that depend on the employees scrambling.
Oracle’s mass layoffs come as US tech employment had its worst begin to the yr since 2023, with AI blamed for tens of hundreds of brutal job cuts.
The primary three months of 2026 noticed 52,050 tech layoffs — a 40% bounce from the identical interval final yr, government teaching agency Challenger, Grey & Christmas stated in a report revealed Thursday, with synthetic intelligence more and more being blamed for the cuts.
Meta stated in March it was planning sweeping layoffs — with 20% of its workforce, or about 15,000 workers, on the chopping block, in response to Reuters.
