Oracle Terminates Long-Time Employee Amid Pregnancy

Layoffs at Oracle Raise Concerns Over Treatment of Employees

Oracle has faced renewed scrutiny on social media after a pregnant employee was laid off via email with no prior warning. Austin Massey, the husband of the employee, shared a post on LinkedIn detailing the manner of the layoff, which he described as abrupt and dehumanizing.

The employee, Layla Massey, was 30 weeks pregnant and had been with Oracle for four years, starting out as an intern before joining full-time. In her role, she worked across engineering, product, and developer advocacy functions, often operating as both an engineer and a product manager. Massey helped build FreeSQL, Oracle's next-generation SQL learning platform, from the ground up, and it is now used by thousands of developers.

The layoff has coincided with Oracle's global restructuring, which has affected tens of thousands of employees worldwide. According to company disclosures cited by Moneycontrol, an estimated 12,000 staff in India have been affected by the job cuts. The layoffs have also been linked to comments by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who remarked that AI systems are increasingly writing the company's code.

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The manner of the layoff has been criticized, with Layla Massey saying she was locked out of all internal systems without a call, meeting, or conversation with her manager. Her husband, Austin Massey, noted that the couple has a 17-month-old child at home and that Oracle "couldn't pick up the phone" to discuss the layoff. He urged the tech community to consider his wife for software engineering or technical product management roles, saying that she "deserved better than an email."