Company: Oracle
Date: 2013-08-16
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Awesome Foundation for Learning Enterprise Software Technology!
Pros: I worked at World Wide Headquarters in Redwood Shores, California (The Emerald City).  Opportunity to use Oracle University to develop knowledge about enterprise technology.  The company has enough business unit scale such that making lateral or vertical changes in career is possible.  

Acquisition of core technologies from other companies provides added opportunities to learn something new and applicable to industry.  Pay commensurate with level of entry into the business and previous experience - however, as is the case with most all enterprise software companies, Sales produces some of the biggest rewards in terms of annual compensation.

When I worked at Oracle, the culture was rich and diverse ethnically, hard-working professionally and fairly relaxed physically.  There was a restaurant on the ground floor of almost every building on the campus back then - not sure if that remains the case.  The food was tasty (not five star by any means) and you never had to leave the campus for much of anything throughout the day, unless you wanted to.  I ate breakfast before work on the ground floor of building 4 almost each day.

Great place for young talent to begin a career in enterprise software and equally a great place for seasoned and experience veterans to finish a career in enterprise software.  There aren't very many enterprise software companies that I can say that I would not mind having the opportunity to retire from, but outside of SAP, Oracle just might be that company!
Cons: Sometimes low to mid level management can be volatile in terms of turnover and change management can be somewhat overdone on internal procedures.  

Entry level salaries can be on the low-side, but well rounded employee benefits, on-site facilities, state of the art equipment, generous vacation and paid-time-off can help to buffer.

Depending on what you do and where you work, demand for output can be high - but you don't become a $6bln enterprise software company without high output somewhere - get used to it.