Your alarm goes off at 6 AM. There's an email from "Oracle Leadership." You've never gotten a message from that sender before. It says your job is gone, today is your last day, and severance details will arrive by DocuSign. By the time you finish reading, your company laptop is already locked.
This happened to up to 30,000 Oracle employees this morning. Oracle reported $17.2 billion in revenue last quarter, its best in 15 years. And it still fired nearly 1 in 5 of its people. The stock went up 6% today.
Oracle owes over $108 billion. The company signed a $156 billion deal to build AI data centers over five years, mostly for OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT). That requires buying roughly 3 million specialized computer chips. Two years ago, Oracle spent $6.9 billion a year on this kind of construction. This year it's $50 billion.
The 30,000 people who got that email are funding the gap. Investment bank TD Cowen estimates the layoffs will free up $8 to $10 billion in cash flow, money going straight into chips and construction. Oracle filed a $2.1 billion restructuring plan with regulators in March, and nearly $1 billion had already been spent before the emails went out.
Lenders are getting nervous. The cost to insure Oracle's debt against default has spiked to levels last seen during the 2009 financial crisis. Barclays downgraded Oracle's debt in November, warning the company is one step from "junk" status, the point where lenders consider you a serious default risk. Some banks have stopped lending to Oracle for these projects altogether.
The gamble gets worse. CNBC reported on March 9 that OpenAI, Oracle's biggest customer for all of this, is already looking at newer, faster chips from Nvidia. Oracle ordered the current generation and spent billions building out a massive Texas facility. OpenAI may not fully expand into it. The chips improve faster than the buildings go up.
Larry Ellison, Oracle's founder, owns 41% of the company. In September 2025, Oracle's stock hit $346, and Ellison briefly became the richest person alive at $393 billion. Today, the stock sits around $146. His fortune has dropped to roughly $201 billion in six months.
Oracle is spending borrowed money to build data centers that could be outdated before they're finished, for a customer already shopping for newer equipment. 30,000 people woke up to a 6 AM email because that's what it costs to fund a $156 billion bet when your lenders are running out of patience.
Voy a decir algo que no gustará a algunos, y es que el teletrabajo, como forma de vida no es sano ni beneficioso para las personas, ni psicológica ni físicamente, y a menos que sea obligatorio por alguna discapacidad, no debería ser una norma.
Las personas somos seres sociales, por lo que acudir a una oficina o incluso a un coworking responde a una necesidad humana profunda, que es, en muchos casos, el principal espacio de socialización auténtica que conservamos en la actualidad.
No se trata de cumplir con horarios, con calentar una silla ni con indicadores de rendimiento ni de eslóganes corporativos. Se trata de una cuestión de conexión. Ante la creciente crisis de soledad en la que viven muchas personas, con estructuras familiares más reducidas y menos hijos, el aislamiento se convierte en un riesgo real si no salimos de nuestro entorno doméstico.
Y la inteligencia artificial, la televisión y los dispositivos, que ofrecen una compañía simulada, están profundizando este vacío.
El teletrabajo es práctico, pero la desconexión social es dañina. Por eso, el simple hecho de ir a la oficina o a un coworking a trabajar un par de días a la semana puede marcar la diferencia: saludos de buenos días con un café en la mano, conversaciones espontáneas, debates cara a cara, risas compartidas, eso es el ser humano.
Los seres humanos no estamos hechos para vivir aislados ni viendo a través de una pantalla. El teletrabajo se ha sobrevalorado y es hora de que las personas y las empresas empiecen a darse cuenta de sus consecuencias.
A los que les jode, repetid conmigo: fumar NO es un derecho y no prevalece por encima del derecho del resto a no querer sustancias nocivas en sus pulmones. Si quieres joderte la salud, adelante, levántate y aléjate. No tengo que moverme yo de mi sitio para conservar mi salud.