He was right and I was wrong.
Shared by Derek from PeopleSoft Insider · November 8, 2026
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In 2005 I was managing a PeopleSoft team of 5 people at a private shipping company, and I was certain I was watching the end of my career.
Oracle had just finished a hostile takeover. The read in my office, and in every office I knew, was obvious. Oracle wanted the PeopleSoft customer list. They would keep the lights on for a few years, let the product rot quietly, and move everybody onto Fusion.
I believed that completely. I believed it enough to act on it. In fact, so many people believed it back then, that they jumped ship and left their PeopleSoft careers.
On nights and weekends, leading up to that date I had built something called PSoftPros, the first PeopleSoft community site and job board. Part of that was ambition. Then, I thought to myself: If the product was going to die, the people were going to need somewhere to land, and I wanted to be standing there when they did.
Every year since early 2000, I went to conferences. I would speak about whatever had just shipped, and then I would sit in the audience and listen to Paco Aubrejuan tell a room full of nervous people that PeopleSoft was not going away and to stop worrying so much about it.
He said Oracle was investing more than ever. He said it with total confidence. He said it the next year, and the year after that.
I wanted to believe him. I am not sure I did back then.
Twenty-one years later, PeopleSoft has Premier Support through at least 2037, PeopleTools 8.63 shipped on-premises three weeks ago, and I make my living in this product and space.
Back then …. He was right. I was wrong. So was almost everybody I knew.
Paco retired this month after eighteen years of leadership at Oracle. Most of you have never thought about him for a single minute, which is sort of the point. His job, for the better part of two decades, was to stand in front of frightened people and answer the same question until it stopped being frightening.
But this isn’t really about Paco. What I want to highlight is the question itself, because it never actually left.
I have started calling it the standing question. Is this the year it ends?
IS THIS THE YEAR IT ENDS?
Every generation of PeopleSoft professional inherits it wearing different clothes. In 2005 it wore Fusion. In 2010 it wore SaaS. Around 2015 it wore migrate to the cloud, and by 2015 it was Workday.
Today it wears AI, and it sounds like this:
if Oracle is building agents for Fusion and not for us, how long do we have?
Same question. Twenty-one years running.
And here is the uncomfortable part for anyone who, like me, got it wrong the first time. Acting on the fear was not free. I know people who left this product in 2006 because they were sure. Some of them did fine. Others spent a decade becoming mediocre at something new while their PeopleSoft peers became the only people left who could do the hard thing.
I know the objection, because it is the honest one.
“Sometimes the thing really does die. Survivorship bias is not a strategy.”
True, and I am not telling you to believe things because believing feels better. Products do end. The discipline is to separate the fear from the evidence, every time the question comes back, and look at what the vendor is actually doing rather than what the market is saying about them.
SO LOOK AT WHAT ORACLE ACTUALLY DID IN THE LAST THREE WEEKS.
The new leader of the PeopleSoft business is Alex Man [ https://substack.com/redirect/da3ae0d7-fa32-4935-994e-3811fb898ac5?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ], who started as a PeopleSoft developer in 1994.
Not a finance executive sent to manage a decline. A person who wrote the core PeopleSoft code and PeopleCode before most of your users were complaining about the slowness of their queries.
And four days after that announcement, Russell Broom [ https://substack.com/redirect/79341422-cd26-4b27-bae3-2f6e8ed9bc82?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ], VP of PeopleSoft Strategy and Development, published the investment direction in plain language:
“Our investment focuses on AI infrastructure rather than embedding AI directly into the applications.”
Alongside it, planned REST services for core business objects. That alone right there gets me excited.
You can read that as abandonment. But, it is not even close.
Oracle’s agents are going to Fusion, which is true and which I have written about.
You can also read it as a company putting a developer in charge and shipping raw material to people it expects to build with it. Which is also true.
In 2005 I read the evidence through the fear and got it wrong. That is the mistake I am trying not to repeat, and it is the one I would watch for in yourself this year.
HERE IS THE PART FOR ANYONE WHO OWNS A BUDGET.
Your ERP and PeopleSoft team has been and still is carrying this question whether or not anyone has said it out loud. People who think they are maintaining a museum behave differently from people who think they are building something.
If nobody in your organization has answered the standing question for your staff, with evidence, in the last twelve months, they have answered it for themselves. Probably wrong, and probably pessimistically.
FOR THE ERP & PEOPLESOFT RECRUITERS READING THIS
The best PeopleSoft candidates on the market right now are people who stayed through at least two rounds of the standing question. That is not loyalty. It is judgment, demonstrated under pressure, with their own careers as the stake.
Paco spent eighteen years giving the same answer, and the answer turned out to be true. And, I am so grateful for the opportunity to continue learning and earning everything that is: PEOPLESOFT
This week somebody else inherited the question.
Alex started as a PeopleSoft developer in 1994, which means he has been answering a version of it for himself since before he had to answer it for anyone else.
Wow!
Just think of that for a minute.
FOR THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP PEOPLESOFT RUNNING
If you support PeopleSoft every day, you are the one actually carrying this question. Not your Manager, Director, or CIO. You.
You are the one who hears a rumor in a hallway, reads a headline about Fusion or SaaS agents, and spends a week quietly wondering whether you should be learning something else at night, or stick with your sexy PeopleSoft career.
Nobody is going to call a meeting to settle it for you. They didn’t do it in 2005 for me either.
So answer it yourself, the same way every year, with the same four checks.
It takes twenty minutes.
Is the support date still moving out?
Premier Support currently runs through at least 2037. A product being wound down does not get its horizon extended. Check it yourself rather than trusting what somebody said at a conference.
Is PeopleTools still shipping real releases?
Not cosmetic ones. 8.61, 8.62, and now 8.63, each with new architecture in it rather than a reskinned page. An MCP server and planned REST services for core business objects cost real engineering money. Nobody spends that on a product they are retiring.
Who is running it, and where did they come from?
This month the answer became a person who started as a PeopleSoft developer in 1994. That is a different signal than a finance executive brought in to manage a decline.
Is anyone still hiring?
Look at actual requisitions, not vibes. A dying product does not generate a $98 an hour program manager role in DC.
Four checks, once a year. That is the whole discipline, and it beats twelve months of low-grade dread.
Then the part you control. Whether Oracle invests is not your decision. Whether you are the person in your shop who can build something with what they ship absolutely is, and that distinction is about to matter more than it has in twenty years.
The people who left in 2006 were not wrong to be afraid. They were wrong to act on the fear without checking the evidence first.
So here is what I will leave you with: the last time you asked yourself whether this was the year it ends, what evidence did you actually look at?
Reply and tell me. I read every response.
See you next week.
Derek Tomei
Founder, PeopleSoftCareer | Editor, The PeopleSoft Insider
He answered it for eighteen years. I asked it for twenty. Only one of us was right.
P.S. If you were in those rooms back then too, I would like to hear what you thought was coming in 2005 and what actually happened to you.
Some of the best conversations in the community start exactly there. community.peoplesoftcareer.com [ https://substack.com/redirect/9ba91deb-7bc6-4a7a-ab9e-b74c6a6adec0?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ]
THE PEOPLESOFT JOB MARKET THIS WEEK
The board refilled overnight.
Eight of the ten most recent postings went up in the last 48 hours, and the shape of them tells you where the money is.
Administration and database work is carrying this week. Five of the ten are DBA or PeopleSoft administrator roles, several asking for Cloud Manager and Integration Broker together, which is the lifecycle skill set rather than a single tool.
The other pattern is Washington DC, where three remote roles posted with real hourly rates attached.
Senior PeopleSoft HCM Program Manager - AHU Technologies, Remote (Washington DC), Contract, $95 to $100 per hour (2 days ago)
OCTO Senior Technical Program Manager, PeopleSoft - RIZEUP Technology Training, Remote (Washington DC), Full-time, $80 to $90 per hour (9 hours ago)
Senior PeopleSoft Administrator, Enterprise Application Systems - Bloomberg, New York NY, Contract (1 day ago)
Senior System Administrator, PeopleSoft - Business Center 2, San Antonio TX, Full-time (1 day ago)
Senior PeopleSoft Administrator - Tri-Force Consulting, Remote (New York NY), Contract (1 day ago)
PeopleSoft Oracle DBA - Tri-Force Consulting, New York NY, Contract (1 day ago)
PeopleSoft HCM Technical Developer - SoHo Dragon, Albany NY, Contract (1 day ago)
Technical Support Engineer, PeopleSoft - Peraton, Virginia, Contract (10 hours ago)
PeopleSoft Financials Functional Consultant, 9.2 - Inabia Software, Remote (Washington DC), Contract (2 days ago)
Two things worth noticing.
Bloomberg hiring a senior PeopleSoft administrator is a useful counterweight to the assumption that only government and higher education still run this.
And $95 to $100 an hour, remote, for HCM program management is a number worth quoting the next time somebody tells you these skills are commoditized.
View all open PeopleSoft roles: PeopleSoftCareer.com/jobs [ https://substack.com/redirect/c4e50cf7-1217-467f-bab0-7273411b8476?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ]
FROM THE PEOPLESOFT BLOG
PeopleTools 8.63: Inside Oracle’s 2026 PeopleSoft Update - the full feature breakdown now that on-premises installation is available. https://blog.peoplesoftcareer.com/peopletools-8-63-2026-update/ [ https://substack.com/redirect/092a811b-abac-4b4f-b8df-35fcc4f777ed?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ]
PeopleSoft MCP Server: What PeopleTools 8.63 Means for AI Agents - what Oracle shipped, what you still own, and why agent queries hit the search cluster instead of your production database. https://blog.peoplesoftcareer.com/peoplesoft-mcp-server/ [ https://substack.com/redirect/2f9ac6ba-8b04-4d9d-9715-d87aa14f1bc7?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ]
Oracle September Layoffs: What PeopleSoft Pros Do Next - what the cuts signal about where the money is going. https://blog.peoplesoftcareer.com/oracle-september-layoffs/ [ https://substack.com/redirect/c026aca0-2fa2-456b-ba3d-477209063e67?j=eyJ1IjoiMTR3eXB3In0.f-xldB9G03IXstk7BAMCqX62DEM2cFHI5JhVsvW8cAA ]