Oracle’s recent round of layoffs left many employees abruptly cut off from their work systems, with some discovering their VPN access revoked and Slack accounts deactivated before receiving official termination notices. This immediate severing of access set the stage for a contentious period as former employees reviewed the terms of their severance packages.

Oracle’s standard severance offer included four weeks of pay for the first year of service, plus an additional week for each subsequent year, capped at 26 weeks. The company also covered one month of COBRA insurance. However, a major point of contention arose from the company’s decision not to accelerate the vesting of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). For many tech workers, particularly at Oracle, stock compensation constitutes a significant portion of their overall pay. Any unvested shares by the termination date were forfeited, leading to substantial financial losses for some individuals, including a long-tenured employee who reportedly lost $1 million in stock that was just months from vesting.

Further complicating matters, some employees learned that their classification as “remote workers” by Oracle meant they did not qualify for protections under the WARN Act, a federal law requiring 60 days’ notice for mass layoffs. This was true even for individuals who worked a hybrid schedule and were located near an office. Additionally, Oracle’s severance calculations integrated the two months’ WARN Act notice pay into the existing severance formula, rather than offering it as an additional benefit, effectively limiting the total compensation received.

A collective of at least 90 affected employees attempted to negotiate better severance terms, urging the cloud computing giant to offer packages comparable to those provided by other major tech companies undertaking layoffs. For instance, Meta’s severance started at 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks per year of employment, alongside extended COBRA coverage. Microsoft offered accelerated stock vesting and a minimum of eight weeks’ pay, with additional weeks based on service. Cloudflare provided lump-sum severance equivalent to base pay through the end of 2026, healthcare coverage, and accelerated stock vesting. Despite these examples, Oracle reportedly declined to negotiate, presenting a non-negotiable “take-it-or-leave-it” scenario to its former workforce. The company has not commented publicly on its severance terms or the employees’ attempts to negotiate.