Oracle has told its hiring managers and recruiters to shun prospective employees living in coastal tech hubs New York, San Francisco and Seattle, according to a report.
The cloud computing giant will instead opt to hire talent from American cities that have lower cost of living as well as Eastern European areas — a move aimed at cutting costs in the face of fierce economic headwinds faced by the technology sector.
“Oracle doesn’t want to be in the upper echelon in terms of salaries,” an Oracle employee who works in the company’s human resources department told Insider news site.
“They’re OK passing on the top candidates and going for the second-tier, more affordable candidates.”
HR employees told Insider that Oracle has told its hiring managers to avoid candidates from “tier 1” (the San Francisco Bay Area) and “tier 2” (Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC).
The average wage for a tech employee in the Bay Area is $175,909 per year — the highest in the nation. Seattle is second-highest with an average annual tech salary of $171,432. New York is third with $162,261.
Instead, upper managements has told its underlings to focus its recruiting on tiers 3, 4, and 5.
Tier 3 cities in include Austin, Texas — where Oracle is headquartered — while the fourth tier includes cities in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Hawaii, Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado (outside of Denver and Boulder), New York (outside of the New York City metropolitan area), and Connecticut.
Tier 5 is comprised of more than 20 states, among them Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Ohio.
“We’re not considering candidates within tiers 1 and 2,” one recruiter told Insider.
“Salaries are too high, so we’re looking in other areas where salaries and costs of living are lower.”
The Post has sought comment from Oracle.
“If you get one US head count, you can go to India and get five or six depending on the year,” a former employee involved with hiring told Insider.
“In Romania, I’ve hired three to four to one, maybe.”
“If you need to build a team and need bodies, that’s the way to go,” the former employee, who left Oracle a few months ago, told Insider.
Insider reported that current and former company employees have heard about the directive taking effect in the cloud software, advertising and customer experience, security, and recruiting divisions.
The news site reported that it has long been practice at Oracle to fill roles with talent that doesn’t cost as much. The company has about 140,000 workers worldwide.
Oracle, like other tech giants, has frozen hiring and undertaken layoffs in an effort to shed some $1 billion in costs.
“They’re really trying to tighten their budget. They’re trying to get super, super tight,” one Oracle employee in the recruiting division told Insider.
Ken Glueck, an Oracle executive, responded to Insider’s request for comment by telling the site that the policy “sounds crazy to me.”
Glueck acknowledged that Oracle is “not hiring as many people in the Bay Area as we did a few years ago” due to the company’s relocation of its headquarters to Austin.
According to Insider, Glueck declined to address whether Oracle is shunning candidates from New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
“We hire the best people wherever we can get them,” Glueck told Insider.
“It has nothing to do with any particular geography.”
Insider reported that recruiting managers have expressed frustration with the new policy, saying it is more difficult to find qualified individuals in areas where tech workers earn less.
This story originally Appeared on NYPost
