Uncommon Sense📌

Uncommon Sense. Policy, economics, culture. Curious. Data first. Outcomes over ideologies.

[Uncommon Sense📌 @WeTheNormie]

@Polymarket Another way for the rich to get richer, and we die enslaved to debt and never owning anything. Trumps American Dream 🇺🇸

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

BREAKING: David Ellison’s Paramount has agreed to freeze its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery as a dozen US states seek to block one of the largest Hollywood deals in history on antitrust grounds, per FT

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

New Jersey bans grocery stores from using shoppers’ personal data to set prices, per TJV

[🦋 @mahammasghar]

Most men don't realize their inconsistent and nonchalant attitude make women feel asexual towards them. Y'all can go fuck yourselves.

[Introvert Problems @IntrovertProbss]

Vacations are cool, but have you ever stayed home in your pajamas and not spoken to anyone for a week?

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Since 2020, Walmart spent $37.6 billion in stock buybacks—enough to give all their workers a $23,550 bonus.

Instead, Walmart pays wages so low that many of their workers need Medicaid & SNAP paid for by taxpayers.

The real welfare queen is the Walton family worth $485 billion.

[Uncommon Sense📌 @WeTheNormie]

Main difference is social democrats (Nordic model) just tax more to fund social services through the private sector. Democratic socialists believe in that too, but go further, government actually providing some of those services itself, publicly owned options that compete on cost with private industry, or in some cases just replace it outright.

[Uncommon Sense📌 @WeTheNormie]

This isn’t a brag. It’s a confession booth.
He handed you the internal logic fully intact and let you sit in how monstrous it sounds when someone actually says it out loud.

The waterfall chart. The blue arrow. ‘That’s human resources.’

The people calling it a brag are the same ones who will never discuss slide 3. They’re reading it through the same corporate lens he’s deconstructing.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Oracle Corporation.

Last Tuesday, I sent an email to 30,000 people at 6 AM.

Yesterday morning, I onboarded 1 person at $950,000 a year.

Both were my responsibility. Both were executed flawlessly.

The email said: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day."

I signed it "Oracle Leadership." Not my name. Not the co-CEOs' names. Not anyone's name. Leadership. Leadership is a signature that cannot be fired.

At 6:01 AM, our infrastructure team disabled 30,000 badges. Revoked 30,000 VPN tokens. Locked 30,000 laptops. Wiped 30,000 voicemails. Suspended 30,000 email accounts. By 6:04 AM, 30,000 people were staring at a login screen that would never accept their password again. The email reminded them they were "prohibited from downloading, copying, or retaining any Oracle confidential information."

3 people called the HR hotline before 6:15. 2 asked if the email was real. 1 asked if she could retrieve a photo of her daughter from her desktop. I directed all 3 to the separation portal.

That's data security.

I've managed 11 separation events. This was the cleanest. 30,000 endpoints terminated in under 4 minutes. I sent the email from a template in PeopleSoft called TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The v4 is important. Version 1 had a paragraph that said "we value your contributions." Version 2 shortened it to a sentence. Version 3 shortened it to "thank you." Version 4 removed it entirely. Legal flagged it in 2024. You cannot say you valued something you are discarding at 6 AM. Liability exposure.

That's risk management.

The co-CEOs approved the plan in 11 minutes. I timed it. I always time approvals. Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. They received $250 million and $100 million in stock option grants when they took the roles in September. They asked about the WARN Act filing timeline. They asked about the restructuring charge projection. They did not ask how the employees would be notified. They did not ask when.

That's executive alignment.

In January, TD Cowen published an analyst note. It said cutting 20,000 to 30,000 employees would generate $8 to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow. We needed that cash. Our AI data center capital expenditures are projected at $50 billion this fiscal year. We had a $20 billion shortfall.

The 30,000 people were the shortfall.

I don't call it that in the board deck. Slide 14 has a waterfall chart. The left column is labeled "Current Headcount Cost." The right column is labeled "Redeployable Capital." The 30,000 people are the bridge between the 2 columns. They are a blue arrow. Calibri 11pt.

That's strategic planning.

1 day before the email, on Monday, our 5-year credit default swaps hit 198.6 basis points. That is the highest level in Oracle's history. Higher than December 2008. Higher than the financial crisis itself. The market is pricing our debt at levels not seen since Lehman Brothers still had a lobby. We carry $124.7 billion in debt on the books. We added $39 billion in 9 months. Our trailing free cash flow is negative $24.74 billion.

I included this in the board deck on slide 3. Nobody discusses slide 3. Slide 3 is where we put the things that are true.

That's transparency.

By Thursday, the H-1B data reached the press. 3,126 petitions. We filed them while scheduling the separation event. Same department. Same quarter. Same PeopleSoft instance. The termination workflow is TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The visa sponsorship workflow is ONBOARD_H1B_STD. They share a database. They share a help desk queue. They share a budget line.

1 workflow removes 30,000 people who built the cloud infrastructure. The other sponsors 3,000 replacements to continue building it. I manage both workflows from the same standing desk.

That's human resources.

An employee posted on Blind that it was "a slap in the face." I know which employee. We have analytics on Blind. Sentiment tracking, attribution modeling, post velocity. His post received 4,200 upvotes in 12 hours. I flagged it for Corporate Communications. Communications sent me a thumbs-up emoji. Nobody drafted a response.

That's stakeholder management.

Yesterday morning, Hilary Maxson started as our new Chief Financial Officer. Base salary: $950,000. Annual performance bonus target: $2.5 million. Equity package: $26 million — $20.8 million time-based, $5.2 million performance-based, vesting over 4 years. We are also covering up to $250,000 in relocation expenses. Her offer letter is 7 pages. The separation notice I sent 30,000 people is 4 paragraphs.

I managed both documents. The compensation committee approved her package on the same call where we reviewed the $2.1 billion restructuring charge. We have recorded $982 million of that charge so far. That is what 30,000 people cost on a balance sheet. The CFO's equity package is 1.2% of the restructuring line. A rounding error. No — less than a rounding error. A rounding error's rounding error.

That's market-competitive compensation.

Our Slack user count dropped from 165,000 to 155,000 in a single day. If you have access to the admin panel, you can watch the number fall in real time. I have access. It drops fast between 6:04 and 6:11 AM. Then it slows. Stragglers. People who hadn't opened their laptops yet. People in Pacific Time who were still sleeping when their career ended. By 7:00 AM, the line flattens. I watched it from my standing desk with a coffee. The line goes down smoothly. No bumps. No steps. Just a slope.

That's attrition analytics.

In Kansas City, I filed WARN notices for 539 people. 85 software developers. 43 systems analysts. 39 program managers. In Washington, 491 people. 270 software developers. 46 development managers. These are the people who built Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We are now spending $50 billion to expand it with different people on ONBOARD_H1B_STD.

The WARN filing lists the separation date as June 1. The email said today is their last working day. The badge stopped working at 6:01 AM. 3 different dates for the same event.

That's compliance.

12,000 of the 30,000 were in India. Bangalore. Hyderabad. Pune. India does not require WARN notices. This is not why 12,000 of them were in India. But it is why nobody has to file anything.

That's jurisdictional planning.

The quarterly earnings call was March 10. 21 days before the email. The co-CEOs announced $553 billion in remaining performance obligations. They said demand for AI infrastructure "continues to exceed supply." The analysts upgraded their estimates. The stock is down 57% from its peak. It was $326 in September. It is $146 today. Larry Ellison's net worth is $188.7 billion. He has not made a public statement about the layoffs.

He has not been asked to.

That's governance.

Trust in the Q4 engagement survey dropped 34 points. I reported it under "Culture Health Metrics." My manager said the numbers were "expected for a rebalancing of this scale." She told me to revisit it next quarter.

I will revisit it next quarter. By then the Slack count will have stabilized. The Blind posts will have cycled off the front page. The ONBOARD_H1B_STD workflows will have completed. The new CFO will have her equity vesting schedule configured in PeopleSoft. And the 30,000 will be on LinkedIn, adding "open to work" above the Oracle logo they can no longer access.

I will be here. At my standing desk. Managing the workflows.

30,000 separation emails sent at 6:00 AM. 3,126 H-1B petitions filed the same quarter. $26 million in equity for the new CFO. $350 million in stock options for the 2 co-CEOs. $188.7 billion in personal wealth for the chairman. $124.7 billion in corporate debt. 198.6 basis points on the credit default swaps — higher than 2008. Negative $24.74 billion in free cash flow. $50 billion in AI capital expenditure.

1 PeopleSoft instance. 2 workflows. Same server.

TERM_MASS_COMM_v4 and ONBOARD_H1B_STD share a database.

That's human resources.

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Ok, Jamie: Let me clear things up for you.

If my 5% wealth tax on billionaires was enacted you’d owe $135 million more in taxes & a family of 4 making $150,000 or less would receive a $12,000 payment.

Oh, and you’d still be worth more than $2.5 billion. Seems pretty fair to me.

[Uncommon Sense📌 @WeTheNormie]

@freedomtevye @malec2025 @mandyarthur @grok $3.8B/yr buys bombs for free to Israel. Same $3.8B in infrastructure creates 2-3x more jobs. We’re choosing the least efficient job creator and calling it a win.

[PoliticsGirl @IAmPoliticsGirl]

🚨DANGER. DANGER. DANGER.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

I spoke to Anthropic’s AI agent Claude about AI collecting massive amounts of personal data and how that information is being used to violate our privacy rights.

What an AI agent says about the dangers of AI is shocking and should wake us up.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control:

TikTok
CBS
CNN
HBO
Discovery Channel
BET
Cartoon Network
Comedy Central
DC Studios
Fandango
Miramax
MTV
Nickelodeon
Paramount
PlutoTV
Showtime
TBS
The CW
TNT
Warner Bros.
And more

This is oligarchy.

[Simons @Simon_Ingari]

Employee: It looks like we made $1.3 billion this year.

Boss: That’s terrible news.

Employee: Uh, that’s a lot of money. Why is that terrible news?

Boss: Because last year we also made $1.3 billion.

Employee: Oh right, I forgot — it’s not enough to make an insane amount of money. We also have to make more than we used to.

Boss: That’s correct. And simply paying our executives seven-figure salaries won’t cut it. We need more.

Employee: Alright, I guess we could try making our product better to sell more.

Boss: Hmm, that sounds expensive and hard.

Employee: How about we create some new products to sell?

Boss: No, that’s going to take forever. I need an immediate solution I can implement right now — something that makes me look really good and takes basically zero effort.

Employee: Oh, please no.

Boss: Layoffs!

[The Random Recruiter @randomrecruiter]

POV: You’re 43 minutes into a 2 hour commute to go sit on Zoom calls in a different building

[Jemele Hill @jemelehill]

So Congress is just a concept of a plan?

[The Lobster @LikeableLobster]

There may have been a few miscalculations on The Lobster’s part.

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

MAGA MATH: We can replace income taxes with tariffs.

2025 budget: $7 TRILLION
2025 tax revenue: $5 TRILLION

2025 Tariff Revenue: $195 BILLION.

You’re being lied to because Trump thinks you’re dumb enough to believe it.