Company: Oracle
Date: 2017-06-17
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

It's perfect if you want to clock in, clock out, and go no where
Pros: Work life balance is great, I never worried about work once I left. The managers are nice even if they feel incompetent. Working with people your age is very nice in the COE
Cons: The company doesn't know what to do with out-of-college grads, which unfortunately they are hiring for the new "Center of Excellence" model workplace. From what I saw, there is little to no focus on personal development or growth, rather an emphasis on work-life balance. This model works well for older employees who have family's to go home to, but not for college grads who hope to build skills and move on. After two years of working here, I learned few broadly applicable skills. College grads be warned.

Training when I started was simply PowerPoint after Powerpoint. After this, they expect you to do months of "self study." This loose method of training doesn't work well for everyone. Many people complained, since Oracle is a company that owns Oracle University, but refuses to use its own resources on its own employees. I found that a theme my entire two years here; Oracle will not train you, help you, or move you, despite its gargantuan size and ample resources. If you work for the COE, do not listen to your managers who tell you that "after a time" you can move here or there, to this department or this city, because  while your manager might be sincere, they don't actually have any power to make that happen for you. Oracle is very limited in this way, despite its size.

There is little change in this role. I performed the same duties 4 months in as i did 2 years in. Thus, I saw no salary increase or formal title change. Suddenly you look up, two years have passed, and while your peers at other companies have moved up a ladder, you sit on the same job title, the same duties, the same pay, and the same day to day tasks as you had 4 months into the job. I asked repeatedly for greater responsibility but with a company this big, there is little room for creativity in your role. 

Unless....of course.... you are a "manager favorite." As in every company. 

One pro which I mentioned is work life balance. You will be pleased to know that few people actually work 40 hours here. This is great at first; you can go home and watch all the tv you want. You might even consider getting a pet. And then a few months in you realize that this gets pretty old. Because the reason you can leave is that no one will notice. The work is not important enough to keep you at work. You will rarely work overtime...because overtime isn't often allowed because they *dont want to pay you for it.* Managers simply cannot show on paper that your extra hours added any benefit to whatever project you were working on. "Let the real consultants do the work."

Speaking once more of personal development and growth- recently the COE came up with a growth model. Unfortunately, It took a year and a half for executives to even take the time to make a career path for the COE employees. And while it's touted and celebrated by the managers, its just corporate nonsense. From my experience, it's actually just a tool for managers to use to tell you while exactly you have not been promoted yet. For instance- "manager, why have I not been promoted? I seem to remember a promise." "Well, if you look at the 10 career boxes here, you have strengths in every area except this one- you simply have not given enough presentations!" There is no metric used to measure your progress other than your managers own eyes, and honestly they might not be watching you. I know at least three people that in two years never got a raise or promotion. These are people that Managers swear they want to keep, they might even be the best in their product area. But they didn't jump through the right hoop at the right time. 

The different product areas are NOT the same. If you want attention at this company and decent training, you need to be either on the tools team or in procurement. The other areas have very very weak training materials. You will be expected to learn a product directly from a person who barely knows it, using materials created by people who didn't know it. You might spend a year trying to learn a product because the company won't send a professional to train you.