Oracle laid off an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 employees via email on March 31, 2026, and subsequently declined to improve its severance terms after a group of affected workers attempted to negotiate better conditions.
The company offered four weeks of pay for the first year of service, plus one additional week per year of service, capped at 26 weeks, along with one month of COBRA health insurance coverage. Critically, Oracle did not accelerate unvested restricted stock units (RSUs). Any shares that had not vested by the termination date were forfeited — including stock granted as retention incentives or in lieu of salary increases. One long-tenured employee lost $1 million in stock that was just four months from vesting, with RSUs making up approximately 70% of his compensation, according to Time.
At least 90 laid-off employees signed a public petition urging Oracle to match severance packages offered by other large tech companies. Meta’s package started at 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks per year of service, with 18 months of COBRA coverage. Microsoft provided accelerated stock vesting and a minimum of eight weeks’ pay. Cloudflare, which recently cut 20% of its workforce, offered lump-sum severance equivalent to base pay through the end of 2026, plus accelerated stock vesting. Oracle declined to negotiate, presenting a take-it-or-leave-it position, and did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Some employees also discovered they did not qualify for WARN Act protections, which require two months’ advance notice before mass layoffs. Oracle had classified certain workers as remote employees, allowing the company to sidestep the law’s location-based thresholds. Some of those workers were unaware of their remote classification, as they worked near an office on a hybrid schedule.
The episode highlights the limited protections available to tech workers during large-scale layoffs, even for those whose compensation is heavily weighted toward stock grants.
Source: TechCrunch