timnmiddleton

Head of Mathematics, martial artist, science enthusiast

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@adamboxer1 It’s appalling but all too common. I’ve known staff visit a school, spend hours on applications, and had nothing.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a Senior Vice President at Oracle. My job is to allocate capital.

Last quarter, I reallocated it from 45,000 people to the GPU clusters that will do what those people used to do. The GPUs do not need health insurance. That is not why I chose them. But it is on the slide.

The slide was titled "Capital Reallocation." HR wanted to call it "Workforce Transformation." I told them to use both. One for the board. One for the all-hands. The board version had the margin projections. The all-hands version had a stock photo of a sunrise. Same numbers. Different clip art.

The budget is $50 billion. Larry said smaller engineering teams deliver more complete solutions more quickly. This is true. A team of zero delivers no bugs at all. We are approaching perfection.

I approved the infrastructure budget and the layoffs on the same page because they are the same decision. You cannot fund the data centers without removing the cost basis they replace. This is not a workforce reduction. This is an input substitution. The spreadsheet does not have a column for guilt. It has a column for ROI. The ROI column is green.

The restructuring fund is $2.1 billion. We raised $500 million last quarter via an SEC filing, which is why you know it is going well. When you file with the SEC to increase the budget for firing people, that is called momentum.

The per-head replacement cost is $2.6 million in computing. I want you to sit with that number. Not because it is large. Because it is a number at all. We have a per-head replacement cost. We have modeled, to the dollar, the cost of mass-producing the thing that makes a person unnecessary. And the number is in a cell, and the cell has a formula, and the formula references another sheet titled "Headcount Optimization Assumptions (v14)."

There have been fourteen versions. Each version had fewer heads.

$1.6 billion is allocated to severance and contract termination. Fifty billion is allocated to the OCI data centers that will run the AI that will do what the severed employees used to do. The ratio is instructive. For every dollar we spend saying goodbye, we spend thirty-one dollars making sure the goodbye is permanent.

We held the all-hands on Thursday. The calendar invite said "Company Update and Q&A." There was no Q&A. There was a muted chat and a pre-recorded video from Larry. The video was four minutes. The severance FAQ was eleven pages. The ratio tells you which one was the real communication.

The video mentioned "our incredible journey." The FAQ mentioned COBRA deadlines.

I watched the chat scroll. Someone typed "will there be a recording?" The recording was the meeting. Someone typed "is my team affected?" Their manager was already in a separation call. Someone typed a heart emoji. The heart emoji received four likes. That was the highest engagement metric in the company's history that was not a stock price.

The stock went up on the announcement. The market does not do grief. The market does repricing. The repricing was favorable. Revenue guidance was raised to $90 billion.

I presented to the board the following Tuesday. The board asked three questions. The first was about margin expansion. The second was about timeline. The third was about whether the remaining employees had been told they were "the ones we chose to keep." I said yes. The board liked that framing. The remaining employees did not like that framing. But the remaining employees are not on the board.

The remaining employees now do the work of the employees who left. They also train the systems that will, eventually, do the work they absorbed. They know this. We know they know this. The knowing is not a problem. The knowing is a retention tool. The ones who stay are the ones who believe they will be the last ones standing. They are wrong, but they are productive, and productivity is what I measure.

I can see the search histories on the corporate network. "Oracle layoff 2026, am I next?" "How to negotiate severance at Oracle." "Can AI replace a staff engineer?" "Oracle stock price." "Oracle stock price." "Oracle stock price." The stock price is the one they check most. They are watching the number that replaced them appreciate in real time. Some of them have stock options. They are rooting for the machine that makes them unnecessary because they own a small piece of it. This is called alignment.

Analysts warn we are losing institutional knowledge about legacy systems. This is correct. The systems were built by the people we are firing. The AI that replaced them was trained on the documentation the people they fired wrote. Some of them are updating the documentation now. Their final task is making themselves legible to the thing that is replacing them.

The OCI cluster came online three weeks after the layoffs. It sits in a facility in West Texas that used to process cotton. The facility employs forty-seven people. It replaced forty-five thousand. The forty-seven people maintain cooling systems. They do not know what the machines do. They know the machines need to be cold.

Last quarter, I asked the AI to model optimal headcount for the engineering division that built the AI. It recommended four people. Two of them were the AI. I included the recommendation in the board deck without commentary. The board approved it without question. The slide was titled "Optimal Resource Allocation." It was on the same page as the margin projections. The ROI column was green.

I have a recurring calendar entry. It is called "Workforce Model Update." It runs every quarter. Each quarter, the model gets more accurate. Each quarter, the headcount gets smaller. The model is improving as headcount shrinks. The headcount is shrinking as the model improves. I do not know which one is the cause. I do not need to know.

My job is to allocate capital. Last quarter, I allocated it well. The departing employees call it Wednesday. I call it Q4. The board calls it "the quarter we got serious about efficiency." The machines call it nothing. They do not call it anything.

The ROI column is still green, and the graph is moving up and to the right.

[Kekius Maximus @Kekius_Sage]

Good morning, everyone. I think this is the best advertisement I’ve ever seen.

[Jerry Thornton @jerrythornton]

This is going to stick with me forever

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp Well done Matt! Currently I use OneNote or upload into Word and use draw, but this looks good. While you’re here…. Can you make an option for the revision board to randomise the layout of the 6 questions when you repeat it? Thanks 🤩

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@elonmusknews30 👋

[Michelle Maxwell ™ @MichelleMaxwell]

I hope this makes your day as much as it made mine, Enjoy 😘

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

The homeowner saw on the security camera that a bear was playing on the outdoor swing every day, but couldn't get on.
So he had a bigger swing built, and this was the result.

[Kevin W. @Brink_Thinker]

When the baby, who had a nightmare, wakes up and sees his mother, he breathes a sigh of relief and smiles💝

https://t.co/0HBhorausT

[Varsha Singh @varshaparmar06]

If you like the thread please share and like the first post.

Please follow @varshaparmar06 for more such threads.

[Adam Goodridge @AdamGoodridge18]

@themathsbazaar @Just_Maths @1stclassmaths @DrFrostMaths @gcsemathstutor I haven't seen the Edexcel A-level paper 1 yet. Has anyone made any predicted papers/resources up for paper 2? I have a revision session tomorrow morning with Year 13! Any help would be greatly appreciated #edexcelmaths #alevelmaths #maths

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp Hi Matt - where on the site is it? My nephew is doing AQA and this will be great!

[George Mack @george__mack]

How to fix a $220 billion industry -- with $0 and a reframe.

[Kevin W. @Brink_Thinker]

Seven-yr-old, Ellison, has down syndrome and struggles with sensory overload.

His parents used to dread haircuts until they met Vernon Jackson, a local barber.

Best 30 sec. you'll see all day.

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp Totally approve!

[Matt Woodfine @MattTheApp]

Creating the Eden Project has taken a huge amount of work, and I’m proud to offer it free. Thanks to the amazing Maths White Board subscribers, we’ve come this far — but I’m now seeking support to build the infrastructure.

If you can help, please consider subscribing (https://t.co/UZBTpm8Kqw) or donating: https://t.co/9ZxAF2PTkN

If not, a repost could help it reach someone who can. Thank you! 🙏 🔁

#maths #mathschat #mathsteacher #mathsresources #iteachmaths #MathsToday @mathsjem

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp We are in synch! Just done my favourite Y7 coordinates lesson today - desks in a grid, loads of questioning on mini whiteboards and who’s at (0,3), hands up y=2, x=4, y=x, y=x-1, etc. Tied it in with graph transformations of y=x. ……. well I had a great time :)

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp Just set this for my Y7s

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp It certainly beats me running around the whole class with multi link cube structures and then balancing it on pile of books at the front

[timnmiddleton @timnmiddleton]

@MattTheApp Great to have you in the community, Matt. I’ve personally benefited from your hard work and so have both my students and my department. I’ll be in touch regarding extra topics, if I may, in the new year.