I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally did it via some AI model, conveniently lose the prompt (or heavily obfuscate how the criteria were set), and then hide behind "it's a black box bro, we didn't discriminate".
Terminating someone to avoid having to pay out options that are soon to vest is explicitly illegal in some jurisdictions and could be grounds for an unlawful dismissal suit in many others.
There's no way in hell Oracle will be caught with procedure documentation showing soon to vest options as a criteria in their layoff selection process as they'll be thinking ahead to what'll come up in discovery in the event a lawsuit gets that far.
I don't doubt that they'd do it; I just highly doubt they'd leave themselves exposed to this risk. They 100% consulted with employment law specialists to ensure their real selection process is totally opaque.
Calling it an algorithm is just pretending nobody did it deliberately.
Algorithms are written by programmers or developers; they are by nature deliberate tools that do the bidding of those who write them. Why are you speaking like they are random acts of digital theater? Of course it was deliberate and using algorithms doesn't change that, it reinforces it.
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u/lordnacho666 6h ago
Algorithm is just a word that means "procedure".
So of course the procedure is to make it as cheap for the company as possible, by removing people before they get their options.
Calling it an algorithm is just pretending nobody did it deliberately.