Brian Borzone

@MarketPalmer_ 10 years I will hold and then sell RE. It’s painful to manage, but appreciation will pay off. Then never again!

I know so many people who have exited the real estate game. Makes me think it's ripe with opportunity. But I tried being a landlord and didn't enjoy it. I'll stick to my low-maintenance index funds.

@realTomSlayton @gothburz Dude… this post is parody. Relax

@gothburz "This was the cleanest. 30,000 endpoints terminated in under 4 minutes." - This is disgusting, that was 30,000 people and families they are not endpoints. Oracle should be ashamed of itself; I'll never buy anything from Oracle.

I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Oracle Corporation. Last Tuesday, I sent an email to 30,000 people at 6 AM. Yesterday morning, I onboarded 1 person at $950,000 a year. Both were my responsibility. Both were executed flawlessly. The email said: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day." I signed it "Oracle Leadership." Not my name. Not the co-CEOs' names. Not anyone's name. Leadership. Leadership is a signature that cannot be fired. At 6:01 AM, our infrastructure team disabled 30,000 badges. Revoked 30,000 VPN tokens. Locked 30,000 laptops. Wiped 30,000 voicemails. Suspended 30,000 email accounts. By 6:04 AM, 30,000 people were staring at a login screen that would never accept their password again. The email reminded them they were "prohibited from downloading, copying, or retaining any Oracle confidential information." 3 people called the HR hotline before 6:15. 2 asked if the email was real. 1 asked if she could retrieve a photo of her daughter from her desktop. I directed all 3 to the separation portal. That's data security. I've managed 11 separation events. This was the cleanest. 30,000 endpoints terminated in under 4 minutes. I sent the email from a template in PeopleSoft called TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The v4 is important. Version 1 had a paragraph that said "we value your contributions." Version 2 shortened it to a sentence. Version 3 shortened it to "thank you." Version 4 removed it entirely. Legal flagged it in 2024. You cannot say you valued something you are discarding at 6 AM. Liability exposure. That's risk management. The co-CEOs approved the plan in 11 minutes. I timed it. I always time approvals. Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. They received $250 million and $100 million in stock option grants when they took the roles in September. They asked about the WARN Act filing timeline. They asked about the restructuring charge projection. They did not ask how the employees would be notified. They did not ask when. That's executive alignment. In January, TD Cowen published an analyst note. It said cutting 20,000 to 30,000 employees would generate $8 to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow. We needed that cash. Our AI data center capital expenditures are projected at $50 billion this fiscal year. We had a $20 billion shortfall. The 30,000 people were the shortfall. I don't call it that in the board deck. Slide 14 has a waterfall chart. The left column is labeled "Current Headcount Cost." The right column is labeled "Redeployable Capital." The 30,000 people are the bridge between the 2 columns. They are a blue arrow. Calibri 11pt. That's strategic planning. 1 day before the email, on Monday, our 5-year credit default swaps hit 198.6 basis points. That is the highest level in Oracle's history. Higher than December 2008. Higher than the financial crisis itself. The market is pricing our debt at levels not seen since Lehman Brothers still had a lobby. We carry $124.7 billion in debt on the books. We added $39 billion in 9 months. Our trailing free cash flow is negative $24.74 billion. I included this in the board deck on slide 3. Nobody discusses slide 3. Slide 3 is where we put the things that are true. That's transparency. By Thursday, the H-1B data reached the press. 3,126 petitions. We filed them while scheduling the separation event. Same department. Same quarter. Same PeopleSoft instance. The termination workflow is TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The visa sponsorship workflow is ONBOARD_H1B_STD. They share a database. They share a help desk queue. They share a budget line. 1 workflow removes 30,000 people who built the cloud infrastructure. The other sponsors 3,000 replacements to continue building it. I manage both workflows from the same standing desk. That's human resources. An employee posted on Blind that it was "a slap in the face." I know which employee. We have analytics on Blind. Sentiment tracking, attribution modeling, post velocity. His post received 4,200 upvotes in 12 hours. I flagged it for Corporate Communications. Communications sent me a thumbs-up emoji. Nobody drafted a response. That's stakeholder management. Yesterday morning, Hilary Maxson started as our new Chief Financial Officer. Base salary: $950,000. Annual performance bonus target: $2.5 million. Equity package: $26 million — $20.8 million time-based, $5.2 million performance-based, vesting over 4 years. We are also covering up to $250,000 in relocation expenses. Her offer letter is 7 pages. The separation notice I sent 30,000 people is 4 paragraphs. I managed both documents. The compensation committee approved her package on the same call where we reviewed the $2.1 billion restructuring charge. We have recorded $982 million of that charge so far. That is what 30,000 people cost on a balance sheet. The CFO's equity package is 1.2% of the restructuring line. A rounding error. No — less than a rounding error. A rounding error's rounding error. That's market-competitive compensation. Our Slack user count dropped from 165,000 to 155,000 in a single day. If you have access to the admin panel, you can watch the number fall in real time. I have access. It drops fast between 6:04 and 6:11 AM. Then it slows. Stragglers. People who hadn't opened their laptops yet. People in Pacific Time who were still sleeping when their career ended. By 7:00 AM, the line flattens. I watched it from my standing desk with a coffee. The line goes down smoothly. No bumps. No steps. Just a slope. That's attrition analytics. In Kansas City, I filed WARN notices for 539 people. 85 software developers. 43 systems analysts. 39 program managers. In Washington, 491 people. 270 software developers. 46 development managers. These are the people who built Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We are now spending $50 billion to expand it with different people on ONBOARD_H1B_STD. The WARN filing lists the separation date as June 1. The email said today is their last working day. The badge stopped working at 6:01 AM. 3 different dates for the same event. That's compliance. 12,000 of the 30,000 were in India. Bangalore. Hyderabad. Pune. India does not require WARN notices. This is not why 12,000 of them were in India. But it is why nobody has to file anything. That's jurisdictional planning. The quarterly earnings call was March 10. 21 days before the email. The co-CEOs announced $553 billion in remaining performance obligations. They said demand for AI infrastructure "continues to exceed supply." The analysts upgraded their estimates. The stock is down 57% from its peak. It was $326 in September. It is $146 today. Larry Ellison's net worth is $188.7 billion. He has not made a public statement about the layoffs. He has not been asked to. That's governance. Trust in the Q4 engagement survey dropped 34 points. I reported it under "Culture Health Metrics." My manager said the numbers were "expected for a rebalancing of this scale." She told me to revisit it next quarter. I will revisit it next quarter. By then the Slack count will have stabilized. The Blind posts will have cycled off the front page. The ONBOARD_H1B_STD workflows will have completed. The new CFO will have her equity vesting schedule configured in PeopleSoft. And the 30,000 will be on LinkedIn, adding "open to work" above the Oracle logo they can no longer access. I will be here. At my standing desk. Managing the workflows. 30,000 separation emails sent at 6:00 AM. 3,126 H-1B petitions filed the same quarter. $26 million in equity for the new CFO. $350 million in stock options for the 2 co-CEOs. $188.7 billion in personal wealth for the chairman. $124.7 billion in corporate debt. 198.6 basis points on the credit default swaps — higher than 2008. Negative $24.74 billion in free cash flow. $50 billion in AI capital expenditure. 1 PeopleSoft instance. 2 workflows. Same server. TERM_MASS_COMM_v4 and ONBOARD_H1B_STD share a database. That's human resources.

@gothburz For those unaware… this is not how these or most other mass layoffs happen. They happen over time. A good portion are attrition vs actual pink slips.

@CoachSwit As a parent you tell the coach what your son’s pitch count & days rest are if necessary. Overbearing parent? If coaches have a bad track record then yes. Did it. Coaches hated me. My son was only pitcher to stay healthy. Only kid to make it to D1 & excel.

H.S. baseball opening week. D1 commits throwing 100+ pitches in 45°. College coaches must love that. Shouldn’t matter if you’re a D1 commit or not… but this is just wild. Why are we doing this?

@TheJacobTurner How is he paying a blended tax rate of 15%? That would mean he makes no money at all. That is unrealistic. More than likely his top rate went down but he’s still paying 26 to 29% marginal rates.

Pro baseball player retires at 35. Did everything right. *Maxed out his MLB 401(k) *Optimized his Solo 401(k) each year Retired with $3,300,000 in those accounts. His thought? “I’ll just let it keep growing and not touch it.” Sounds smart…until it’s not. Fast forward to age 60. That $3,300,000 has grown to $22,600,000. Then his silent partner steps in, the IRS. Between 20%-40% of that money belongs to the tax man. An upcoming tax bill between... $4.5M to $9.04M You see, here is what he missed... After retiring, his income and his tax bracket dropped. A perfect time to convert (move) this money from his tax-deferred bucket (traditional retirement accounts) to his tax-free bucket (Roth retirement accounts). Example: He shifts all $3,300,000 from traditional retirement accounts to Roth accounts over ~ 10 years. In that time, he pays a blended tax rate of ~ 15%. He is prepaying his tax bill for a total of $495,000. The other $2,805,000 now grows tax-free. So at age 60, he is looking at a balance of roughly $19M. The difference is that he has cut out his silent partner, the IRS. In doing so, he saved a few million dollars off his lifetime tax bill. This is the part most athletes miss. The window of low income when you retire. And in that window, you have control.

@FredLambert @elonmusk Remember, behind every Waymo is a Filipino remote worker…

$TSLA folks were plain wrong about Waymo scaling. @elonmusk was plain wrong about Waymo. Tesla was wrong to give up on sensor fusion. It was wrong to sell a driver-assist system as 'Full Self-Driving'. These are not controversial statements. They are simply facts.

@TheMattViera They spend too much?? 🤗

40% of people with an income of $500,001+ are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Why?

@ka_grieco @barnes_law Good. Using old munitions helps precision in the future. No one’s running out of munitions.

Yikes. The US has burned through ~850 Tomahawks in 4 weeks. That's roughly a quarter of the inventory. At ~600 produced/year, that's ~1.5 years of production gone in a month. Hard to see what long-term political goal this buys. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

@TechLayoffLover I’ll take things that never happened but sound bad for $100 Alex…

MASS EXTINCTION EVENT at a major SaaS company in Austin 347 engineers below L5 got the call at 9am this morning Every single L3 and L4 across product, platform, and infrastructure Badge access revoked by 9:15am. Slack deactivated. Laptops remotely wiped. Official memo from the CPO: "Elevating our engineering standards and technical excellence" Reality from my source inside: One L7 with Cursor now ships what an entire 8-person junior pod used to deliver The math is devastating - $47M in annual salary eliminated overnight 312 people with an average of 2.3 years experience walked out carrying cardboard boxes Most of them relocated from other states just 18 months ago when the company was "scaling aggressively" One L4 had just closed on a $680k house in Cedar Park last month Another was 6 months into the internal mobility program, grinding leetcode to hit L5 The real gut punch: these weren't underperformers. 67% had "exceeds expectations" on their last review Leadership literally said "we're not firing you for performance, we're eliminating the need for your level" The 23 remaining senior engineers are now expected to maintain velocity using AI tooling and 31 offshore contractors Each senior engineer's workload just tripled but they're calling it "opportunity for growth" Stock jumped 8.4% in after-hours trading The future of software engineering just played out in real time If you're L3 or L4 anywhere... start updating that resume

@TMT_arabic @barnes_law 🤗 because it’s international waters!

@BarbellFi Don’t do free money, even for family. That incentive to payback, that fear of failure, that is real!

When my son is ready to buy a house We’ll loan him the full purchase price He’ll make monthly payments to us 30 year mortgage at 0% interest Thanks to the bank of Mom & Dad 💰

@cojobrien @chrislhayes That’s it? 20 million? The rise in real wages for US workers would far eclipse that number. That would make it a win. Math!

85 people have paid the $100,000 H-1B fee so far, totaling $8.5 million in revenue. But fee revenue from H-1B apps abroad is down $28 million. So the fee — justified by a paper claiming the revenue-maximizing fee was >$100,000! — appears to have lost the government $20 million.

@nextlevelbb I have seen dozens of “birthday boys“ who are technically almost a year older than every other kid do this at age 12… It rarely works out long-term for them

The best 12u player I've ever seen didn't play a day of college baseball and was average as grits as a high school player. As a 12u he hit 28 homers in a 16 game season and was unhittable on the mound. He threw gas at 12. Why didn't he get better? He and his parents thought he was a superstar and thought they invented baseball. They let 12u success absolutely destroy his career. This happens with players of all ages. I watch high school players that are ranked really high and committed to P5 programs that absolutely stink. They were good at one time compared to their peers. But now a lot of their peers are better baseball players than them. Why? It's because they let an ounce of early success absolutely destroy their career. They believed the hype, they thought the rankings were real. Their parents believed the hype. The people around them believed the hype and nobody told the kid the truth. The kid turned into the high school big leaguer instead of the real big leaguer.

@dmuthuk You think the US will give them any of that? You need to get serious…🤗🤗

It is no longer the question of US and Israel ending the war. The war would end only if Iran decides so. Iran is already asking for US to vacate the middle east, money for rebuilding the country, removing sanctions and a strong international agreement preventing any future attack on it by US and Israel. Iran cannot be destroyed by US and Israel. US couldn't even do that to Afghanistan. Israel would not be comfortable with not having US bases in the middle east. They would feel immensely threatened. We need to remember conflicts can last for many years too. Iran has nuisance value to keep destroying oil Infrastructure in gulf. If Iran keeps regularly attacking oil depots, airports, civilian buildings and so on, middle east would no longer be attractive for business, immigration, investments and even tourism. $200 oil can become a reality. It would lead to huge economic turmoil across the world. This war is no longer under the control of US and Israel. Khamenei was not only the political head of Iran but also religious head for Shiates across the world. US and Iran sees the world completely differently. For US, every single American life is important whereas martyrdom is celebrated in Iran. US has united Iran by killing their supreme leader, who was both their political and religious head. US and Israel has already started talking about eliminating the new leader of Iran, Mojtaba. This would make Iran's stand only tougher. The hatred is mutual between Israel and Iran. A delicate balance has been maintained all these years. No other US President agreed to get into war with Iran on behalf of Israel. They clearly differentiated between supporting Israel and attacking Iran. I think Trump and Netanyahu has dragged the world into a mess. I don't see this problem ending any time soon unless Iran agrees. I've no clue what would and who can make Iran agree.

@MarioNawfal @barnes_law I would disagree, when this war ends, the US will have bases in the Hormouz Strait

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 THE U.S. DOESN'T HAVE THE BOOTS TO SEND Col. Macgregor says the ground war fantasy is just that a fantasy. 30 years ago the U.S. had 800,000 soldiers. That army no longer exists. Modern warfare has changed everything. Any ground force that can't control the airspace above it gets paralyzed by drones. The moment you pick a harbor and start unloading troops the missiles start hitting. And the bigger truth nobody wants to say out loud: When this war ends, the U.S. is out of the Middle East. No bases. No staging grounds. Gone. @DougAMacgregor

@watwatwat46 @spencerreiss @ianbremmer False. Any important buildings, personnel, etc., emptied out beforehand. It’s actually a fairly old base, which means it’s actually opportunistic to rebuild! I already…

@spencerreiss @ianbremmer The Fifth fleet HQ in Bahrain is currently rubble

as of today, the united states has no capacity to reopen the straits of hormuz / defend tanker traffic. if president trump is correct and there are no more targets to hit in iran, i’d say that’s a rather serious dilemma.

@yeluacaM @EricRWeinstein 🤗.

@EricRWeinstein BBC World has a free livestream. UK-POV but no cheerleading and has foreign correspondents in Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and some info from inside Iran via BBC Persia. Worth 10 mins to check-in periodically.

Is there no place to simply get news on Iran, Israel, the Gulf, US forces and the Middle East? Everyone is cheerleading for something or the other. I want to know what is actually happeing to first approximation. How are you accomplishing this if at all? Thx in advance.

@mikealfred I’ll take things that aren’t happening for 100 Alex…🤗

Currently on a first class flight to Dubai. Noticed something interesting: economy passengers all looking out the windows and discussing the possibility of drone and missile attacks. Every single person in first class is buying Bitcoin and coding with Claude. Lesson in there.

@Jihooncrypto @barnes_law My goodness it looks like the country with the world‘s largest helium supply might come out of this in good shape! Oh wait… That’s the US!

@jchal Chico, CA. True college town. Town is built around the college. These other places you list are big cities that also have colleges.

Top College Towns: 1. Athens, GA (by a mile) 2. Oxford, MS 3. Austin, TX 4. Madison, WI 5. Boulder, CO What did I miss?