Subejct Line Blank E1 - Oracle Layoffs and the Meaning of Email

On March 31, 2026, Oracle initiated a massive layoff, believed to be its largest ever, with 20,000 to 30,000 employees worldwide, including in the US and India, abruptly terminated via a 6 a.m. email. The email, sent from "Oracle Leadership" rather than HR or managers, stated that roles were immediately eliminated due to reorganization

Transcript

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Some emails are opened, some are ignored, and some emails should never be sent in the first place. This is behind the inbox. I'm Marcus, and today we're not talking about performance, open rates, or click-through rates. We're talking about how email is actually being used. And what happens when a system designed for efficiency is applied to a situation that requires something very different. Let's start with the event or the news. Recently there were reports of layoffs at Oracle where thousands of employees were affected globally. In many cases, people found out through an email. Early in the morning, 6 a.m. to be exact. No meeting, no call, just a notification waiting for them when they woke up. Now, this is not completely new. We've seen similar patterns across the industry. Over the last two years, more than 400,000 tech employees have been laid off. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta have all gone through large scale reductions, and in many cases, those communications have been delivered through mass channels. Ergo, email. And in fact, a 2023 study by Resume Builder found that 44% of companies that conducted layoffs notified employees through email or Slack. Not in person, not over video, through digital messages. So this is not just one company making a questionable decision. This is becoming a pattern. Why it feels inhumane? Because the reaction most people have to this is not technical, it's emotional. It feels wrong. And the reason it feels wrong is very simple. Difficult decisions are supposed to have friction. They're supposed to slow things down, they're supposed to involve a moment where someone can ask questions, process what's happening, and understand what's coming next. Email doesn't do any of those. When the friction disappears, humanity disappears. In the world where there's little humanity left, if any, so why emails fail here? And this is where it becomes relevant for us. Because email is not broken, it's actually doing exactly what it was designed to do. Email is optimized for speed, it's optimized for scale, it's optimized for consistency. You can send one message and reach thousands of people across different time zones instantly. Like that. From a system perspective, it's incredibly efficient. But efficiency doesn't make it right. Now, email itself doesn't understand context, right? It doesn't know whether the message is low impact or life-changing. It treats everything the same, but we are the ones that need to understand it. A product update, a password reset or a marketing campaign, a system alert, they all go through the same pipeline. And when you push a high impact human message through a system that was designed for neutral, repeatable communication, the experience breaks. Not because the system failed, but because it was used in the wrong context. So let's look at the scaling problem. There's another layer here that is very easy to miss. When something scales well, we tend to use it more. Not because it's always the right choice, but it's because it's the easiest one. Email is incredibly easy to scale. There's no coordination needed, no scheduling, no one-to-one interaction required. You write a message once and it reaches everyone. You send it and it's done. And we've trained ourselves to accept that model. According to Adobe's email usage study, the average person takes email around 15 times per day, but only responds to about 25% of what they receive. So we've normalized constant delivery without real engagement. It's part of our life now. And that makes email an even stranger choice for something that actually requires attention and understanding. So what should replace it? Because when the input is human, the communication should be human too. That doesn't mean everything needs to be perfect or deeply personalized, but it does mean that there needs to be some form of interaction, a conversation, a call, even a structured meeting where context is given and questions can be asked. Something that allows people to process what's happening, not just receive it. Because communication is not just about delivering information, it's about making sure that information is understood in the right context. And email, by design, is not built for that. The real question. And this is where it goes beyond this specific case. Because in our world, we spend a lot of time optimizing email. We talk about automation, segmentation, timing, personalization. We remove friction on purpose because that's what makes the channel effective. And to be clear, it works. Email is still one of the highest Roy channels out there, returning around $36 to $40 for every dollar spent. That's huge. But we almost never talk about the boundaries of the channel. We don't ask where email should not be used because email itself is not the problem. It's how it's used. In world-run organizations, email is not used to deliver the decision. It is used to support it. Let me give you an example. Airbnb during 2020 did a lot of layoffs, but the company communicated the decision directly through leadership conversations and then follow up with a detailed email that explained the reasons, the process, and there was support available to all of the affected employees. The email didn't replace the moment, it reinforced it. It provided clarity, documentation, next steps. That's email used properly inside the process, not replacing the process. And that's the difference. Because just because something works at scale doesn't mean it should be applied everywhere. Email is one of the most powerful tools we have. It's reliable, scalable, and incredibly effective when used in the right context. But not everything should be sent through it. So that's it for this one. I wanted to invite you to subscribe, turn the notifications on, like this video if you want to hear more about the email and marketing world and tech news. We want to be in touch and learn what you want to hear from us. My name is Marcus. I'm part of the Mailtrap team, and I will see you next time. Cheers