Company: Oracle
Date: 2012-10-31
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Oracle Financial Services (Oracle FSGBU) - Avoid
Pros: Brand name. Probably that is all. Your future employability would be limited by working here. The brand name will get you past a recruiter's filter, but after that your skillset matters.
Cons: 1. Use of outdated skills in day-to-day responsibilities.
    You can expect to find people using outdated and non-standard tools and techniques here. The managers advocating for the use of these tools are out of touch with the real world. Your future employability will be affected by having an outdated skillset composed of non-standard practices. The only place for these skills is in implementation of the product. If you're ambitious and plan to find a better job in the future, the skills acquired here will leave out of favor with hiring managers.

2. Incompetent management and incoherent organization structure
    Managers in OFSS pay lip service to problems, despite having the authority to fix them. They're reactive to problems and seldom react correctly because they're technically and functionally clueless about the product. Delegation of responsibilities within the organization structure is absent - managers perform product design without delegating such activities to engineers even when the said managers are clueless in product design using modern techniques. Engineers are second-class citizens in this company. The organization structure is unlike other companies with senior software engineers, principal software engineers, technical architects and members of technical staff in the organization hierarchy. The management strucuture is bloated with a lot of people resting on a few accomplishments.

3. Very low opportunity for growth
    The company does not invest in its employees. Expect to train yourself to obtain new skills. Even if you gain new skills, few or no opportunities exist to use them in your work. Your future employer may value those skills better. Promotions of qualified engineers to higher positions is far and few; switching jobs almost always results in an instant promotion for the highly skilled employees.

4. Appraisal system
    The appraisal system is terribly broken and one of the most unprofessionally run systems in the organization. Employees are not rated across the organization but within teams. Being a top-performer in a team bringing in revenue has little meaning, since you'll be rated the same as a top-performer in a team with little or no responsibilities. Action letters for the appraisal cycles arrive very late (around 6 months after the appraisals), and are not pro-rated - you essentially receive a very late hike for the year, while your counterparts in other companies receive better treatment from their organizations.

5. Hiring and retention practices
   The company tends to retain incompetent people while letting go of valuable talent. Again, no serious attempt is made to retain the top performers. The ineffective appraisal cycle coupled with outdated retention practices is responsible for a gradual and visible degradation of quality of work within the company. Top performers will be expected to engage in "firefighting" exercises due to their incompetent colleagues and managers.

6. Working conditions
    The work environment is not appropriate for a product development company. Expect to see a cubicle based work environment with a lot of disturbances during work hours. The administration department tends to switch off the AC frequently, making it worse. The food in the company cafeteria is abysmal requiring you to step out for lunch extending your working hours. The company premises is in the city outskirts requiring a long commute time, with little or no scope for working remotely.

There are many more, but an organization with these cons is sufficiently broken enough, to not recommend to anyone.