Tuesday morning, thousands of Oracle employees around the world made their coffee, opened their email, and found out their careers at one of the world’s largest companies were over.

No phone call. No manager conversation. A message from “Oracle Leadership,” sent at 6 a.m., told them their role had been eliminated and that today, the day they were reading these words, was their last working day. Access to systems was cut almost immediately.

Let’s be clear about what actually happened

This came despite Oracle reporting an “exceptional” last quarter, with revenues up 22% and financial results that “exceeded expectations.” The job cuts are expected to free up between $8 and $10 billion in cash flow — money earmarked for a massive buildout of AI data centers.

This isn’t a struggling company cutting costs to survive. This is a highly profitable company choosing to fund an AI infrastructure bet, and doing it on the backs of tens of thousands of people, without warning, without conversation, without dignity.

That is a values choice. Full stop.

But here’s what I really want to talk about

Employees did not receive any advanced notice or communications from HR or management teams. No meetings were scheduled for one-on-one discussions. Systems locked. Done.

The people who were let go will carry that with them. But what about the people who weren’t?

Right now, every person still working at Oracle (and at every company watching this unfold) is updating their internal model of what kind of organization they work for. They are recalibrating their trust. Their engagement. Their willingness to go the extra mile, to speak up, to bring their best thinking to the table.

That cost never shows up in an SEC filing. But it is real, it is significant, and it compounds over time.

How you treat people on their worst day tells them everything

The Oracle termination email said: “We thank you for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made.”

That sentence, delivered that way, is not gratitude. It is a liability shield.

I believe organizations can make hard decisions and hold onto their humanity. Those two things are not in conflict...unless leadership decides they are. Layoffs happen. Restructuring happens. But there is always a choice about how you do it: whether you treat the person on the other end of that news as a human being or as a line item.

The leaders I most respect know that the answer to that question (made in the hardest moments) is the truest measure of what they actually stand for.

A question worth sitting with

If your organization had to make significant cuts tomorrow, how would you do it? Would your people (the ones leaving and the ones staying) feel seen? Would there be a human being on the other end of that conversation?

That’s the work. And it starts long before the moment of chosen investment forces the question.

Hit reply and tell me what you’re thinking about all of this.

— Moe

P.S. If you want to go deeper on building organizations that can handle hard moments with integrity, the Human Systems Guild founding cohort opens April 14. [Learn more and apply here.]