Company: Oracle
Date: 2012-04-12
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Sun finally has the direction it needed
Pros: -- Very sharp set of engineers, who really care about what they are doing. 
-- Surprisingly, wide variety of technologies under development. Not what you'd expect from Oracle.
-- Purchase by Oracle has led to a renewed sense of purpose for a lot of folks.
-- For a company with a globally dispersed engineering team, communication is quite good.
-- Travel budget is pretty free-flowing, though that seems to be changing.
-- Actions seem to take some time to catch up to the words, but they do seem to get there eventually.
-- In Santa Clara, at least, everyone has an office. Only cubes are for visitors or interns.
-- Free soft drinks, bottled water, coffee, etc.
Cons: -- Lots of antagonism towards HQ. Sun was a technology company, Oracle is a business software company. The cultures don't always mesh that well. There's an underlying fear that the boring business software will crush everyone working on cool technology and we'll turn into soulless IT types.
-- Cafeteria is disappointing, though it doesn't look like it should be. Apparently it was much better when it was Sun.
-- Some have been there too long and want to continue the failed strategies of the past.
-- Some business processes are way too bureaucratic, and like many tech companies, seem to be dispersed around the company with no clear reason as to why.
-- Can be very hard to get new hardware or software that doesn't fit the corporate standard.