Former Oracle Product Manager Claims He Was Forced Out For Refusing to Sell Vaporware (theregister.co.uk) 81
A former Oracle employee filed a lawsuit against the database giant on Tuesday claiming that he was forced out for refusing to lie about the functionality of the company's software.
The civil complaint, filed on behalf of plaintiff Tayo Daramola in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, contends that Oracle violated whistleblower protections under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act, the RICO Act, and the California Labor Code.
According to the court filing, Daramola, a resident of Montreal, Canada, worked for Oracle's NetSuite division from November 30, 2016 through October 13, 2017. He served as a project manager for an Oracle cloud service known as the Cloud Campus BookStore initiative and dealt with US customers. Campus bookstores, along with ad agencies, and apparel companies are among the market segments targeted by Oracle and NetSuite. Daramola's clients are said to have included the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas at Austin, Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California.
The problem, according to the complaint, is that Oracle was asking Daramola to sell vaporware -- a charge the company denies. "Daramola gradually became aware that a large percentage of the major projects to which he was assigned were in 'escalation' status with customers because Oracle had sold his customers software products it could not deliver, and that were not functional," the complaint says. Daramola realized that his job "was to ratify and promote Oracle's repeated misrepresentations to customers" about the capabilities of its software, "under the premise of managing the customer's expectations." The ostensible purpose of stringing customers along in this manner was to buy time so Oracle could actually implement the capabilities it was selling, the court filing states.
As Daramola saw it, his job as project manager thus required him to participate "in a process of affirmative misrepresentation, material omission, and likely fraud."
"We don't agree with the allegations," Oracle told The Register "and intend to vigorously defend the matter."
The article also notes that in 2016 Oracle faced another whistleblower lawsuit, this one brought by a former senior finance manager at Oracle who'd said her bosses directed her to inflate the company's cloud sales. Oracle settled that lawsuit "while denying any wrongdoing."
According to the court filing, Daramola, a resident of Montreal, Canada, worked for Oracle's NetSuite division from November 30, 2016 through October 13, 2017. He served as a project manager for an Oracle cloud service known as the Cloud Campus BookStore initiative and dealt with US customers. Campus bookstores, along with ad agencies, and apparel companies are among the market segments targeted by Oracle and NetSuite. Daramola's clients are said to have included the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas at Austin, Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California.
The problem, according to the complaint, is that Oracle was asking Daramola to sell vaporware -- a charge the company denies. "Daramola gradually became aware that a large percentage of the major projects to which he was assigned were in 'escalation' status with customers because Oracle had sold his customers software products it could not deliver, and that were not functional," the complaint says. Daramola realized that his job "was to ratify and promote Oracle's repeated misrepresentations to customers" about the capabilities of its software, "under the premise of managing the customer's expectations." The ostensible purpose of stringing customers along in this manner was to buy time so Oracle could actually implement the capabilities it was selling, the court filing states.
As Daramola saw it, his job as project manager thus required him to participate "in a process of affirmative misrepresentation, material omission, and likely fraud."
"We don't agree with the allegations," Oracle told The Register "and intend to vigorously defend the matter."
The article also notes that in 2016 Oracle faced another whistleblower lawsuit, this one brought by a former senior finance manager at Oracle who'd said her bosses directed her to inflate the company's cloud sales. Oracle settled that lawsuit "while denying any wrongdoing."
It's called to "pull an Oracle" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's called to "pull an Oracle" (Score:4, Insightful)
That has been the IT industry's business model since forever.
In my experience the companies that create a polished product before starting to sell it go broke, or they can't sell it because there is no market for it, or the demand is there, but the market wants a different solution.
Well, they are in to make profit. (Score:2)
That does not involve actually doing any work or delivering any product if at all possible. That would only harm profits.
That is why games and movies from the industry that rapes the creative world are only good enough so you shell out money and keep doing so. Not good enough for you to actually consider them good.
The ideal end state of a for-profit industry is basically 100% theft, but with you holding the gun at your own or each others' head so that work doesn't have to be done either.
(So basically "intel
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IMHO, it's gotten so much worse. There were always bugs and always things that didn't quite meet expectations, but now you just know that *most* of the features are going to have problems, many serious.
And the documentation will range from poor to just missing outright. Many advertised features require scripting or coding to actually work at all (and I'm talking about buying an application, not an operating system or some kind of development environment).
Everything seems to be the product of whatever rush
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Or most commonly because most of their potential customers are half way through a failing "we've come so far, we're almost there, I swear" vaporware product and can't stomach flushing their current "investment" down the toilet. Then the vapor explodes and they don't have the budget to try again for a while.
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I'm not going to name names, but someone once told me that his job was to mock up hypothetical Oracle products using Macromedia Director. They looked like they were doing something, but they were not. It was just a demo. If the customer was interested enough, they would start coding a real product.
The fact that the tool of choice was Macromedia Director should tell you how long this has been going on.
Legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Legal? (Score:2)
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No more parking in gear with my Ford Puma 1.23 rev-5
Re: Legal? (Score:2)
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Funny)
What if someone sold a car claiming it had "full self-driving*"
* coming soon.
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I was looking at surround receivers, and a surprising number of them have features that will come in a "future update", without specifying when that update will come.
As for Tesla, I will not pay for full self driving now. Most likely FSD will not come until after I've sold the car and moved on to something new.
Re: Legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh I've definately seen this sort of thing before. A company I was at sold nearly half a million dollars worth of video conferencing systems to the govt on the promise that the manufacturer had said VOIP over IP would come soon. That manufacturer never did provide it instead opting to create a new product line. This left us massively in the ditch because said govt dept had invested well over a million in setting up the IT infrastructure to handle it. We got fucked badly by it and ended up taking back the entire stock of them and having to lawsuit the manufacturer to get them to refund us.
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I wouldn't buy the Tesla FSD on the expectation of actual FSD, but rather on getting the hardware 3.0 upgrades provided as needed so the latest software is fully functional.
It's pricy, but I don't think it is as irrational to purchase as it sounds initially. Currently, all FSD gets you is traffic cone images on your screen showing you what the car is seeing.
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was wondering about this. Tesla started selling "full self driving" in 2016, with the promise that the car could drive itself without a human in it from one side of the US to the other.
Current estimate from Musk is 2020 but realistically 2025 is probably optimistic based on their current progress.
During that time many Teslas have been written off in accidents. Insurance pays out... But how much? How much is a promise to deliver "full self driving" to a 3 year old car at some indeterminate point in the future actually worth? The price of that option keeps fluctuating and the description of it is different now, they are no longer promising cross-country autonomous travel, so it's not even clear if you can still buy it.
Tesla also promised to upgrade cars with the old "full self driving" hardware that proved to be inadequate to the latest version, so the car is more valuable than an identical model that doesn't have that contractual obligation attached.
I'm sure the insurance company thinks it is worth $0 because it doesn't exist yet and may never exist. For the owner it might be extremely valuable as either they are going to get a special magic edition that really does fully self drive or they are due a refund plus interest on their $5000 pay-out.
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I doubt anything will ever come of it, Tesla will just drag it out for as long as possible and haggle on definitions and blame regulatory problems. And if they do end up refunding money in a class action in the end they still got early sales and a huge low-interest loan to grow their business, for Tesla $5000 was worth a lot more in 2016 than it is in 2030 or whenever the lawsuit including appeals ends. That is if they manage to lose so badly they have to pay back in full and don't settle for a coupon off y
Or HDTV* (Score:2)
* not actually HDTV but 1280x720 or even less. We invented the new term "Full HD" to market *actual* HDTV.
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It is if you also include crashing as part of "driving". You could always claim in court that you emulated human drivers, including the stupid parts. I wouldn't expect jurors to buy that, but pro-corporate judges might.
Does have or will? They tint windows at the dealer (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, fuck Oracle. I would never buy from Oracle.
I do still want to be fair in the analysis here.
It says he was selling them, so he was talking to potential clients for future installations.
My question is whether upcoming features were promoted that were expected to be available in six months when the customer actually got the product installed.
Going back to your car analogy, dealers routinely sell cars with window tinting, anti-theft, nitrogen in the tires, upgraded floor mats etc. The car on the lot doesn't have those things until the sale is made and the dealer adds them.
"The features were in escalation" suggests to me they were top priorities for the development ans test teams to finish them up.
I was somewhat surprised recently when a panel of business people all agreed you should absolutely make the sale before you make the product. Making the product before you have any buyers is simply doing it wrong, they all agreed. Of course, you should be honest with the customer about when you'll be able to deliver.
Re:Does have or will? They tint windows at the dea (Score:4, Informative)
First off, fuck Oracle. I would never buy from Oracle.
At a previous client of mine (Fortune 500 corp), this was the official policy on Oracle.
Making the product before you have any buyers is simply doing it wrong, they all agreed.
That depends on how well you know your market. Plenty of companies are comfortable creating the products up front and putting them out there, and this still seems to be the norm. If you're unsure, doing a Kickstarter type of cycle is a good way to test the waters and gauge interest. But yes: you have to deliver. "Escalation state" doesn't mean the team is finishing things up with top priority, it means that your company is already late in delivering on its promises. So late in fact that senior management or the steering group / project board are stepping in, at the request of the PM or even the customer. That is what escalation means.
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> Escalation state" doesn't mean the team is finishing things up with top priority, ... senior management or the steering group / project board are stepping in
I don't know about where you've worked, but where I've worked, when senior management steps in it's suddenly pretty high priority for the devs. :D
I was momentarily thinking of purchase orders (Score:4, Interesting)
> > Making the product before you have any buyers is simply doing it wrong, they all agreed.
> That depends on how well you know your market. Plenty of companies are comfortable creating the products up front and putting them out there, and this still seems to be the norm. If you're unsure, doing a Kickstarter type of cycle is a good way to test the waters and gauge interest
I was thinking more along the lines of purchase orders than Kickstarter. Before the new iPhone is ready, Best Buy orders 500,000, Amazon orders 3 million, etc. For upstart consumer products Walmart might order 50,000 units for regional sale, then you have them manufactured. You don't manufacturer 50,000 of them and then hope Walmart buys them.
Of course B2B is different. In my experience with B2B, you get solid interest, if not actual orders, from several customers before you develop new features. Key, of course, is to tell the customers you expect to have the feature in version 14.0, to be released Q3 2020 - you don't pretend you already have it, unless you can deliver it within weeks.
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" intend to vigorously defend the matter"
whenever I read this, my 1st reaction is "oh, those fuckers are guilty".
I'm waiting for the party that says "these accusations are so baseless, we'll send the dumbest lawyer to ever barely pass the bar exam, drunk out of his mind with laryngitis and still win this case in a walkover"
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To extend the car analogy, as a customer I would be fine with that if the features are present when I collect the car from the dealer and pay.
In case of software, the same applies. If you sell a feature in a standard application, it better be implemented at the time of sale. This is also why I have not per-ordered any software in the past.
In case of custom software I'd want an explicit delivery date with a (financial) late delivery penalty.
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This. I HATE Oracle. Seriously. They've screwed me over so many times I will go to great lengths to avoid using their products. Vaporware is one of may reasons.
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Getting a sale is the ultimate "qualification" for a lead. Until they've given you a PO, you can puff up as much as you like in your quarterly sales meetings, but it's not a "sure thing" until it's signed.
I guess if you're on a long sales and purchase cycle, then selling what will exist in the future is reasonable. We do it all the time - pre-orders are an obvious one, as is defence spending, which is often "here's a few billion for you to make us a fighter", having seen no more than previous works, some pr
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Going back to your car analogy, dealers routinely sell cars with window tinting, anti-theft, nitrogen in the tires, upgraded floor mats etc. The car on the lot doesn't have those things until the sale is made and the dealer adds them.
A significant difference is that they have already designed those options and added them to cars in the past. They know how to fill the tires with nitrogen, the floor mats are already in production they just have to order a set, etc.
This is selling a feature that is not even designed yet as if it already exists and just needs an existing module loaded or a configuration switch turned on. It would be like the auto dealership offering you the Mr. Fusion option, then calling the factory and saying "It's not to
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> This is selling a feature that is not even designed yet as
Oh yeah? You must have read the article; I didn't see that in the summary.
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If the feature was already designed and working, they wouldn't have delays. They would just load the module or flip the switch.
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I think that the car analogy for this one would be selling a customer an SUV with 3 row seating, when the only car you have on the lot is a 2 door hatchback.
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It's a bit complicated.
In many fields, things are generally sold or orders placed before they are fully developed. This especially happens with hot products that retailers know they have to 'stock' up on. Like if a new hot TV, Iphone... is due out. The retailers place massive orders. Now is the product exactly as they were told it was going to be? Probably not.
In software, it just happens all the god damn time. Oracle is hardly unique here.
But the devil is of course what it is in the contracts. Generally if
Normal day at Oracle (Score:4, Informative)
I was not an employee of Oracle but I was working on a project using their software about 10+ years ago. The touted features of the product didn't match the actual functionality. When I complained, it accomplished nothing, so I started to document my experience on the usenet Oracle group. This pissed off all the DBAs who felt people should keep quiet. It resulted in me being "assigned" a contact with Oracle who provided me beta software I could work with that actually did work. I ended up getting my project completed to spec only because I complained bitterly that their advertised systems didn't work as advertised and I had to use some back room CGI scripts.
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Larry Ellison (Score:2)
Re:Larry Ellison (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Larry Ellison (Score:3)
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True, but, except for the name, doesn't most of it amount to a good description of most corporations?
Classic narcissist psychopath behaviour (Score:3)
I'm not saying Ellison is one, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
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Re:Larry Ellison (Score:5, Insightful)
This man destroyed Sun, the third greatest computer manufacturer after SGI and NeXT.
Oracle didn't destroy Sun, they did that themselves. Maybe Ellison didn't treat the pieces as well as people would have liked after he bought Sun, but Sun was already dead by then.
Sadly true (Score:2)
Unfortunately their corporate clock somewhere around 1995 and they still thought they could do skys-the-limit pricing for workstations and servers that were outclassed performance wise by high end PCs by the 2000s. If they'd been smart they'd have dropped their workstation prices to top-end PC money and updated them somewhat they could have eaten both Apple and MSs lunch in the hi end workstation market. By no, they kept charging $20K for something thats was outclassed by a $5K PC with Linux on it. And unsu
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If they'd been smart they'd have dropped their workstation prices to top-end PC money
They couldn't continue to develop SPARC and also make a profit by doing that. Of course, as you observe, they also couldn't continue to make a profit while keeping their absurd pricing. Conclusion, they should have dropped SPARC. But would anyone have kept using them if they had gone to PC processors? And more to the point, would they have dropped their prices anyway? Their i386 machine back in the day cost vastly more than any PC.
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Sparc is a good architecture and ARM show how non intel architectures can still be profitable. Sun could have dropped pricing on their on-sale models to keep customers happy and ponied up to invest in Sparc, whereas it seems to me they were happy to coast with little in the way of advancement in the latter years.
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Lets be fair (Score:1)
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I would say Commodore's fixation on 1970s hardware hacking instead of pursuing a coherent goal was responsible.
They had the 64. Instead of building on that, they released a bunch of incompatible, mutually exclusive orphan computers with no real use. The Amiga saved them only because it was designed outside.
The 128 was a bizarre computer. The 128 should have been the C65. The TED series should never even have been contemplated. The weird B series stuff also should have ended earlier.
They spread themselves to
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The 128 was a bizarre computer.
Well according to Bil Herd, it's chief designer, it was always supposed to be a stopgap before the Amiga came out with all of their 8 bit tech thrown in. Think he called it 8 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag and only because they couldn't quite fit 10 pounds. Only reason why it stuck around for so long was that it sold much so much better than they anticipated so they kept selling it and making money on it.
As for the TED series, which Bil also had a big hand in developing, that was originally supposed to
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Linux destroyed Sun, unless you were using the mega iron from Sun, a server from Dell with Linux would work perfectly fine at half the price.
That thread is full of hilarious comments. (Score:2)
TL;DR:
* One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison
* Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley is based on Larry Ellison.
* And so it the movie version of Tony Stark.
* "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison."
Or course they deny the allegations... (Score:2)
They would deny abusing contractual agreements and contracts as well, and likewise deny that they bully customers and engage in unfair market practices to retain customers via legal obligations.
That doesn't mean that Oracle does not do those things. It just means that their PR team knows which end of their bread is buttered, and by whom.
Seriously, when I look at modern corporate PR, I have this gut-instinct parallel with 1900s style business practices and PR.
The industry is in dire need of regulation, rega
Same old story (Score:2)
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Other places he won't get a job ... (Score:2)
Vick's
Juul
Oracle LE (Score:2)
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Fuck Oracle (Score:3)
Oracle vs. Oregon:
https://www.marklogic.com/blog... [marklogic.com]
uhh... (Score:2)
that's very naive of him, it's his job. It's so common that feature that don't work properly are sold to customers, it's also the customers fault for buying something they haven't checked if it's actually doing/working what it's supposed to do. If you don't want to do what Oracle expected you to do, than you were clearly wrong for the job, and you should have known that before you took the job. If you're in customer relations, you know you have to tell stories to keep your customer as long as you can. Clear
It's still a crime. (Score:2)
Actually a whole series of crimes.
Which he will be part of if he doesn't speak out, as soon as somebody else does.
What kind of Nazi henchman type person are you anyway? Since when is it OK just because it was somebody's job? That didn't work at the Nürnberg trials and it won't work here.
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He could have believed (if he was dumb enough — but he was a salesdroid, so...) that the features would be forthcoming. Presumably his employer told him that they would be. Then he repeated his employer's lies, not knowing they were lies. When he realized he was being used in a fraud scheme, he blew the whistle. What part of this do you have a problem with?
Can anyone say SAP? (Score:2)
Obligatory SAP joke: (Score:5, Insightful)
You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room, AND:
You go up to her and say: "Hi, I'm great in bed, how about it?" -- That's Direct Marketing
You give your friend a buck. She goes up and says: "Hi, my friend over there is great in bed, how about it?" -- Thatâ(TM)s Advertising
You somehow get her mobile number. You call and chat her up a while and then say: "Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?" -- Thatâ(TM)s Tele-Marketing
You recognize her. You walk up to her, refresh her memory and get her to laugh and giggle and then suggest: "Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?" -- That's Customer Relationship Management
You stand straight, you talk soft and smooth, you open the door for the ladies, you smile like a dream, you set an aura around you playing the Mr. Gentleman and then you move up to the girl and say: "Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?" -- Thatâ(TM)s Hard Selling
She comes over and says: "Hi, I hear you're great in bed, how about it?" -- That is the power of Branding.
She comes over and says: "Hi, I hear you're a lying cheating asshole who sucks in bed, but everyone's going out with you, so there must be something... How about it?" -- Now that, my friends, is SAP!
Career Over (Score:2)
What he is asserting to be fraud is just about everything a PM does to one degree or another at all the major tech companies. Cloud, AI, CI, and automation solutions are mostly hype with few practical advantages. Everyone is selling and blowing smoke.
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Part of it's history (Score:1)
I read the book, The Difference between God and Larry Ellison* [amazon.com]
The author interviewed many former Oracle workers. This story doesn't surprise me.
* God doesn't think he's Ellison
[Correction] Re:Part of it's history (Score:1)
Correction: "its history", not "it's history". Modnays.
There are so many... (Score:2)
"a process of affirmative misrepresentation" (Score:2)
Must be Monday.
Doing it for decades (Score:1)
I remember going to a big deal in Washington. They were introducing oracle forms. Sounded like just what I needed. The company I worked for was a partner. So I called up the VP. Wanted this software pronto! He said - yea, about that. It's crap. You're wasting your time with it. Let's talk in a year.
I never did end up using oracle forms.