Company: Oracle
Date: 2008-12-23
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Not for everybody
Pros: - Flexibility - most people in product development work from home as needed. The company has enough infrastructure (vpn, remote access to dev servers, softphone, audio conference) to allow workers to be very efficient working from home
- Technology - Big, sprawling company, chances are you will find something that you like to do at Oracle. Internal transfers fairly common
- Compensation and benefits not great but competitive provided you perform well
- Company culture is very aggressive and when required can move very quickly for a company of this size. Generally very aggressive, type-A type personalities that are also smart tend to do well at Oracle.
Cons: Especially with the recent acquisition spree Oracle is now starting to look like a GE-like conglomerate. Some of my comments are specific to my organization, although I think most people in product development will have similar issues:

- Office politics is rampant. There are very few rules about anything, so most of the time mid management tends to jockey for position with senior management
- Compensation scheme has zero transparency. Titles don't matter in Oracle, there is no specific formula for granting raises, bonuses or stock options that I am aware of. It essentially boils down to how well you have done in convincing your manager that you have done a good job. There is no formal review system, each group tends to have its own system (or has no system at all). Also generally there is not enough money to go around which means in order to be well-compensated you need to be a really top performer (at least in the eye of your boss)
- No information sharing. Everything is on a need-to-know basis, there is very little downward communication from senior management. This sometimes leads to situations where even people who need to know about things are sometimes not informed, and tend to work at cross-purposes
- Release planning sometimes tends to overlook the fact that, well, people have weekends off. Release deadlines are generally unrealistic and stressful. Generally people are bullied into rather than motivated to meet deadlines.