As far as corporate greed, inefficiency, terrible service and support goes, Oracle is the worst of all corporations.

A simple Google search for how Oracle extorted $150M USD from the State of Oregon and flat out lied to them about their implementation services should provide all you need to know about how Oracle treats its customers.

My attempts to rectify these problems got me fired from Oracle. It is political and it is a cash grab.

Do not go near Oracle.

I did that simple Google search. I read that Oregon demanded to own the project coordinator role, with ultimate authority, and only hired Oracle for labor and machines, against Oracle's advice, and then failed to actually hire an individual to fill that role. Oracle's hands aren't clean here, but don't whitewash Oregon's obvious screw ups.

Oracle executives flew out to Oregon 3 times, and on each occassion, made presentations that said the exchange was "72% done" and that if they would just wire them 53 million USD, everything would be done on time.

These were clear and deliberate lies, and as taxpayers, one should feel personally robbed by Oracle, regardless of the State of Oregon's overseeing the project.

https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2018/ibm-canada-pay...

And lots of golf.

After they make their requirements public usually a few companies show interest. The companies swear by their techs and claim it tested for requirements, yet almost always this new company have to back up after they prove themselves unable to keep up to their promises.

The IBM was the one delivering past several years of compute hardware, while other companies were just not able to do the same.

Claiming whole corp is rubbish because you know of one case where it didnt work out seems not right here.

There's still a huge amount of companies / public businesses running software based on Java 5 or 6 out there, just saying..

Oracle explicitly does not allow companies to cerify their software on AWS.

So just think about how much Oracle software the pentagon runs.

It’s hugely compelling to not go with AWS because Oracle won’t cerify nor grant you a license if your certify your ULA on AWS.

Financially alone might dictate going with Oracle Cloud over AWS. Regardless of which cloud service is technically better.

https://www.itassetmanagement.net/2018/06/12/are-you-sure-yo...

> There’s not a single tech company more aligned with the US government than Oracle.

I am going to have completely disagree with that too. If you have ever worked IT for the federal government, especially the military, the most absolutely clear answer there is Microsoft.

Also, as somebody else pointed out, thousands of Google employees recently wrote a protest letter to their CEO threatening a massive boycott over an existing tiny DOD contract if Google didn't pull the plug. That being said why would I consider them for another DOD contract that is thousands of times larger?

Google employees don't get to choose their customers. They certainly don't get to choose candidacy in a federal bidding cycle. If there is confusion on this matter then perhaps you are not a sells person or a business stake holder.

This theory is completely at odds with what actually happened. The reality is that workers at Google wield enormous power when they act together, and get to make the company drop a customer.

> > We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.

So the issue is specifically warfare technology, not DoD/military bureaucracy in general.

The bureaucracy exists solely to get warfighters downrange and on-target. I mean, what do you think they do all day, and why?

There are a few zealots that actually think like this, but most people realize that each stage in that chain is pretty lossy. There's a good portion of your wages that are not taxed, and there's a good portion of your taxes that are not directed to the DoD. Similarly, there's a good portion of the DoD bureaucracy that does not exist to get warfighters downrange and on-target - think of all the folks involved in procurement projects that are basically employment projects for defense contractors, or DARPA and the basic research it does, or the combat engineers building bridges in warzones, or the folks responsible for administering the VA and military pensions. You can be morally opposed to writing software that helps target drones while still believing that former vets should have access to health care.

No, actually there aren't. Whether or not they are successful or efficient is irrelevant. The money funding both the super efficient successful targeting system and the failed warfighter support system are fungible and come from the same "color" or pot of money.

It's not zealotry, it's understanding the purpose and mission of the organization.

Also the VA isn't part of the DoD. It's a Cabinet level agency.

Frankly it's getting annoying listening to people in tech talk about Defense matters as though they are authoritative.

[1]http://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/color-of-money

The "bureaucracy" of the Pentagon directly supports warfighting across the entire spectrum. Efficiencies in government credit card processing for an Army SSGT going on temporary duty to train on employing the MRAP, enable effective execution of wartime tasks. This is a well understood and ingrained sentiment.

Speaking from a contractual perspective what does a customer care about the service provider's employee motivations? How would the customer reach into the confidential internals of the service provider's office to qualify or answer that question?

> We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.

What is interesting is that the letter says this: This plan will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent. The letter is completely addressing the concern for reputational harm, but the company did not do so prior to the establishment of the relationship as a matter of its due diligence considerations. If this is cause for the DOD to pass on Google's bid for a larger project the harm is absolutely manifest. This is analogous to the Streisand Effect where the harm was neither well known nor established but achieves both due to the complaint - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Also, the DOD is the US military and those terms can be safely and definitively interchanged. I can affirm this as a military officer. https://www.defense.gov/About/DoD-101/

1. They didn't cancel the contract. Google pledged to not renew the contract in 2019, and established a "code of ethics" for AI usage, in response to employee outcry.

2. You're implying that this is a game of hurt feewings and it isn't. It's business. The government agencies have just as much to learn from PR backlash against themselves as Google does, because they hire from the public.

> You're implying that this is a game of hurt feewings and it isn't.

I also never said or implied that. I have worked all over the country and a few times out of the country. Only in the bay area and Seattle are people so social engrossed with intermingling their personal politics with their work. Most other locations, both inside and outside the US, would consider this ethically collusive. Whether or not that hurts peoples' "feewings" (as you put it) is up to the individuals involved.

A promise to not renew a contract is not even the same as not renewing the contract. For all we know, Google might renew it anyways. Either way, Google is doing what they were paid to do for the period they were paid to do it. The DoD has no reason to have sour grapes with that. Other government agencies absolutely have no reason to.

>I also never said or implied that. I have worked all over the country and a few times out of the country. Only in the bay area and Seattle are people so social engrossed with intermingling their personal politics with their work. Most other locations, both inside and outside the US, would consider this ethically collusive. Whether or not that hurts peoples' "feewings" (as you put it) is up to the individuals involved.

I don't know what you're getting at, I've worked across the country as well (though not out of it.) The consensus among workers is different because the power dynamics are different. When I was working in the midwest, tech jobs were rare and most people did not want to put their jobs in jeopardy.

Employees at Google just feel that they have job security, because they do. Not just those in the Bay Area, but certainly those in Pittsburgh, or New York City, as well. The proof is in the pudding: to the best of my knowledge, Google employees were not fired for protesting Project Maven.

But of course people in the Bay Area feel especially safe in their endeavors. Again, they are. If a Google employee gets fired for protesting, plenty of other bay area companies will be eager to sweep them up. Some will even throw in a sweet signing bonus to welcome them in.

I don't have strong opinions about whether or not these protests are good or bad, but plenty of people across the world would love to be able to speak their mind at their job without it putting their career in jeopardy.

The Bay Area is really just the perfect place for this because it is a highly liberal area (in some aspects, anyways) and people feel extremely safe. So you get these sorts of liberal protests. I'm sure it would play out the same anywhere if this set of conditions were true regardless of political leanings.

I do agree though that the ability to protest and boycott is an entitlement. How many security, facilities, janitorial, or vendor staff have that freedom at the Google campus? In that consideration it does not sound like such a campus achieves equal opportunity employment in theory, but perhaps might by contracting other those positions to service providers. If that is true and those service providers were to boycott a Google business priority it should be no surprise when Google would refuse to continue services from such vendors. Again, this is a horrible way to do business.

> I don't have strong opinions about whether or not these protests are good or bad, but plenty of people across the world would love to be able to speak their mind at their job without it putting their career in jeopardy.

I vote with my time. If I become disgruntled with an employer I find another. Tech jobs, even in the midwest, are always in crazy demand for talent. I certainly don't put my employer's business in jeopardy to enjoy externalizing a personal opinion.

> I'm sure it would play out the same anywhere if this set of conditions were true regardless of political leanings.

History does not reflect this. I am old enough to remember the bay area was just like this during the 80s since I lived in Santa Clara. More lucrative markets were not like that without regard for job security, such as the financial district of New York. Other geographies are not like that. Most people are not willing to risk their employment relationship for the sake of freedom of exercising politics and actually look upon as a negative and potentially damaging behavior. To make the assumption that other areas are likely reflective of one's own is a form of ethnocentricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

I believe you are correct about all of that.

>If that is true and those service providers were to boycott a Google business priority it should be no surprise when Google would refuse to continue services from such vendors. Again, this is a horrible way to do business.

What's good business is very much opinion, many people would work for less money to keep their dignity. It's not exactly a Silicon Valley secret that Google is not the highest paying employer, after all.

>To make the assumption that other areas are likely reflective of one's own is a form of ethnocentricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

When I said "anywhere" I meant "in the United States." Personally, I believe culture in the U.S. is more similar than it is different. This point could be debated but there's not much of a point since I doubt there's an agreement to come to with that.

I also was not intentionally referring to all types of jobs, just software developers. It obviously doesn't make as much sense with the power dynamics of jobs that are seen as unimportant. Programmers also take months to get ramped up in a company, and carry a lot of trade secrets and knowledge that they will take with them when they leave, making it very different from a line cook for example. Therefore, you probably don't want to fire a programmer if you don't have to, and you especially don't want a bunch of programmers with important domain knowledge to all leave at the same time.

So quite a bit less broad than "anywhere."

Still, I do not have as much life experience as you, and I do not know why Silicon Valley was different in the 80s. If I had to guess, I'd guess it's because there was no Internet, and the job market was insanely different. Today most software companies have standardized on things, but in the 80s there were plenty of different microarchitectures and programming languages you might need to know on top of other mandatory skills that are not so common anymore. Nowadays for most software developers you don't need to care about microarchitectures and everyone uses languages that look like C or JavaScript. The big tech companies were definitely a lot smaller. Employees sometimes even had more direct say than they do now. Reading old stories about Apple on Folklore.org or Quora paint a picture of an employer that employees respected, but disobeyed frequently. But if they wanted to protest, would anyone hear them? Apple wasn't the massive company it is today in the 80s. Without the Internet, their message might've gone unheard entirely. And, without the Internet, a lot of employees might not have even known about a DoD deal or the implications, positive or negative, that it might have.

Basically, comparing the tech industry of the 80s to the tech industry of today feels a bit strange. Today the tech industry is one of the world's largest. In the 80s, it was very impressive if you shipped 1000 computers.

I write JavaScript for living and I have mostly worked large monolithic Java shops, so I know this is a lie, at least in software. Most software developers are simply happy to press buttons against a framework while continuously achieving a paycheck. The thought continuous refactoring or doing it free, as in open source contributions on your personal time, is still a complete mystery to many corporate developers.

Dignity is certainly not immediately present in much of the code I have seen in my career. If dignity were the principle aspiration people would not be selective in its application. I suspect the motivation is something more immediately socially conforming. Contrarily, dignity is often expressed by rejection to conforming social pressures.

> But if they wanted to protest, would anyone hear them?

The bay area has never had a problem with this and in the past didn't need social media to prove it. More traditional media channels were sufficient. The area is substantially more sensitive and less diverse now though.

> [...] I know this is a lie, at least in software. Most software developers [...]

Many != most, and even if it did, different interpretations != a lie.

Who makes everything for Google? Who makes everything for the shareholders?

The workers, the employees. If they don't want to work on something that is against their morals and ethics as a whole, they get to decide that.

Capitalists somehow forget that the workers even exist and are a necessary part of businsses, and seemingly think that all work that gets done is by pure magic. It's an immoral and unethical to not care what the workers say in quest of your personal profit.

If the requirements for this are anything like the ICs then Oracle doesn't offer enough to truly compete. It'll be either Google or Amazon in the end with Microsoft winning a side contract to provide Exchange, AD, and Office365.

"Oracle Cloud" is vaporware.

Source: I work for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

https://cloud.oracle.com/data-regions

I'm sorry that you work for Oracle.

In reality, I suspect most of these data centers are just private co-locations.

Aliyun is just as bad of course but at least it’s users have the ultimate excuse

In my case, the guy spent half the pitch flat out lying to me about AWS and how Amazon charges etc. (sample lie "They basically don't let you transfer any data out once it's in the cloud"). I let him go for quite a while before I revealed that I actually know what I'm talking about and calling out his bs ("Gee that's pretty weird because I host quite a few servers in AWS and I'm able to get data from them just fine. I wonder how that works?")

And how much does transferring 1PB of your data from AWS to say GCP cost, with those outrageous egress costs?

That's how they stop you.

Spoiler: they did.

The Pentagon would be crazy to do business with Google after their employee revolt. They can't afford that kind of elevated ideological-based risk and instability.