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

Intelligence report synthesized for precision. Verified source updates below.

Detailed Report

The first StrictlyVC of 2026 hits SF on April 30. Tickets are going fast. Register now.

Buy one Disrupt pass, and get the second at 50% off. Ends May 8. Register now.

Image Credits:Kim Kulish/Corbis / Getty Images Enterprise

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

Julie Bort

3:59 PM PDT · May 8, 2026

As was widely reported, Oracle axed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people via email on March 31.

One of the employees cut that day told TechCrunch about the experience: “I had, like, this weird feeling in my stomach. I went to go sign into the VPN, and the VPN was like, ‘this user doesn’t exist anymore.’ Then I called my friend, and I was like, ‘Hey, can you see me in Slack?’ And she said, ‘No, your account’s been deactivated.’”

The person soon received an email stating their role was terminated immediately. The severance offer arrived a few days later. But Oracle’s terms would quickly become a point of contention — and some laid-off employees would push back.

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

The catch: Although stock compensation often makes up a good chunk of a tech worker’s pay, particularly at Oracle, the company did not accelerate soon-to-vest RSUs. Any shares that hadn’t vested by the termination date were forfeited.

That held true even for stock granted as retention incentives or in place of salary increases tied to promotions. One long-tenured employee lost $1 million in stock that was just four months from vesting; 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 didn’t work in a state with stronger worker provisions like California or New York, the company said they didn’t qualify for WARN Act protections.  

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026

The WARN Act is a law that requires companies conducting mass layoffs to give employees two months notice prior to letting them go. It’s triggered when 50 or more people are impacted at one location. By classifying employees as remote workers, the minimum location requirements can be sidestepped.  

Some people were unaware they were classified as remote workers, because they were near an office and worked on a hybrid schedule. 

Even if they were covered by the WARN Act, this did not necessarily extend severance, the former Oracle employee said. That’s because Oracle included the two-months’ WARN notice pay in its existing calculation of four-weeks, plus one week per year. 

For a short time, a group of employees 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 match the terms of other big tech companies conducting mass layoffs in the name of AI. 

For instance, Meta’s severance package, according to an email published by Business Insider, started at 16 weeks of base pay, plus two weeks for every year of employment and covered COBRA for 18 months.

Microsoft, which extended voluntary retirement offers to long-serving employees, provided accelerated stock vesting, a minimum of eight weeks’ pay, and an additional one to two weeks for every six months of service, depending on rank, the Seattle Times reported.  

And Cloudflare, which just cut 20% of its employees, offered lump sum severance that was the equivalent of base pay through the end of 2026, plus healthcare coverage through the end of the year, and accelerated vesting of stock through August 15. So if an employee was close to obtaining another tranche, they will get it.  

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

When asked about its severance terms, classifying employees as remote, and the failed attempt by employees to negotiate more, Oracle declined to comment.

Such a reaction from the company isn’t a surprise, not even to those who hoped to negotiate. But it does underscore that for all the theoretical high pay (often via stocks) and perks that tech workers enjoy when it’s an employees’ market, they have very few protections in place when it isn’t.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Julie Bort

Venture Editor

May 27 Athens, Greece StrictlyVC Athens is up next. Hear unfiltered insights straight from Europe’s tech leaders and connect with the people shaping what’s ahead. Lock in your spot before it’s gone.

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

Detailed Report

Related Intelligence

Musk v. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all, and admits that xAI distills OpenAI’s models

A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat

In Harvard study, AI offered more accurate emergency room diagnoses than two human doctors