The recent wave of mass layoffs at Oracle has drawn renewed scrutiny after long‑serving employees—some with more than 30 years at the company—revealed they were among those cut. The layoffs, which affected an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 employees globally, were communicated via early‑morning emails on April 1 and spanned multiple geographies, including the US, India, Canada and Latin America.
One of those impacted was Nina Lewis, a senior security professional who had spent more than 33 years at Oracle. Lewis shared her experience on LinkedIn, calling the termination unexpected and noting that many highly regarded colleagues were also let go.
"After 30+ years at Oracle, I join the 30,000 or so laid off today," she wrote, adding that the decision came as "quite a shock."
Lewis joined Oracle in the early 1990s and worked across several generations of the company's database and security platforms. In her most recent role as security alert manager, a position she held from 2012 until March 2026, she was responsible for translating vulnerabilities and emerging threats into clear guidance for enterprise customers. Her work bridged engineering, security teams and customers during active threat scenarios.
Earlier in her career, Lewis served as a senior principal ethical hacker and principal security analyst, conducting offensive security testing and advising leadership on risk exposure. She also contributed to database security design, worked on products such as Enterprise User Security, and earned four patents. Her experience included government‑linked network security research, making her one of the company's deeply embedded institutional experts.
In her LinkedIn post, Lewis speculated, without claiming certainty, that the layoffs may have followed an internal algorithm targeting senior individual contributors and mid‑level managers, particularly those with outstanding stock options.
ALSO READ: Oracle Names Hilary Maxson CFO Amid Massive Layoffs — Here's How Much She Will Earn
Similar Stories Emerge
Her post sparked an outpouring of responses from current and former Oracle employees. Debbie Steiner, another long‑tenured staffer, said she too had been laid off just short of her 30‑year anniversary.
Steiner's career spanned technical writing, information architecture and management. At the time of her exit, she was director of user assistance for Oracle TimesTen, overseeing documentation teams across three countries. Earlier, she played a key role in shaping docs.oracle.com, helping define product taxonomy, overhaul search systems, and build documentation tooling still used across Oracle.
Questions Over Knowledge Loss
The layoffs have reignited concerns within the technology community about how large firms weigh cost efficiencies against institutional memory. Iliia Karin, director of DevSecOps and platform engineering, warned that cutting deeply tenured employees carries operational risk.
"Thirty years of institutional knowledge doesn't disappear because a spreadsheet says so," he wrote, noting that system architects often understand not just how products work, but why they were built that way.
Others focused on compensation dynamics, suggesting that stock‑linked liabilities could influence layoff decisions, though Oracle has not commented on selection criteria.
According to reports, the workforce reduction occurred alongside Oracle's strongest organic growth quarter in more than a decade. Revenue rose 22% year‑on‑year, cloud infrastructure sales surged, and the company committed billions of dollars toward expanding AI data centre capacity—adding to the contrast between financial performance and workforce cuts.
ALSO READ: Oracle California Layoffs: IT Giant Cuts 700 Jobs. Here's What We Know
Essential Business Intelligence, Continuous LIVE TV, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
